Into The Light Of Sunrise

Revised from my writing practice notebook 08/15/24

We are camping.

     Praise the Lord, we are camping!

     I was just feeling sad that the exciting parts of summer were behind me, with all the family vacations being over and the season of Seasonal Depression starting to creep up on me- when Mom and Dad surprised us with a camping trip. Praise the Lord.

     So I’m sitting on a rock in the cool morning air on the shoreline of Blind Lake. Dad is fishing and it seems to be an extension of himself. The ‘vzzz’ of his casting fits perfectly with the sounds of the forest.

     I didn’t sleep well last night and got up at 4-something in the morning. I sat on top of the car for about an hour watching the sky turn from a deep to a light blue through the trees, then walked to the rocky beach and watched the sun rise over the pale green water. It was so still I could see the world reflected in it.

     I was aware of every sound, every movement, every smell the way your senses are heightened when you are in the woods and it’s quiet. I listened as the birds and squirrels started to make noise and the fish started to jump. I’d try to tell you how beautiful it was, but I will never have enough or the right words in my life to come close. I love it.

 As I watched fish jump, I found they were eating the bugs that landed on the surface of the water. As I watched them, I was thinking about how hungry I was and realized that the fish were hungry, too. It's an odd thing to think about, but in the morning everything but the nocturnal animals are hungry. Being hungry like everything else there made me realize that I am not an intruder in the wilderness. I belong there. I was thankful for the hunger because it gave me something to share with the fish, with all the creatures just waking up. I shared something with the beautiful place I was surrounded by.

     On the way here, Dad was driving past a hill with trees all across it, emerald and beautiful. Dad has always had a thing for trees- our lack of them is the only thing about The Farm where we live that he’d change. He looked over and said, "I've always loved those trees.” happily and a bit longingly, as if he and the trees were old friends. I looked out to the trees and thought, he loves his wife and he loves his mom and dad and he loves his siblings and he loves my siblings and he loves me and he loves those trees. Now, I know that love can vary, the way you love your friends is different than the way you love your spouse, but it’s all love. All the same when it comes down to it. So, to some part of Dad, the part that loves things, the trees and I are the same. We are the same because Dad loves us both. And, to me, Dad and the trees are the same because I love them both. And Dad and I are the same because we both love the trees.

     This place and I are the same. It feels like I’m becoming more like it every day. I feel like I bare its mark, like the Quakies have carved their name into me.

   I never used to feel like this when I went camping. But after going through some dark times, now that I'm healing, every color seems more vibrant. Like I had been missing something but I didn’t know until I found it. But now, looking back, I can’t believe I went so long without it. Maybe that’s how it will feel when I meet the person I will spend the rest of my life with. Will I see things in a new light, then? Will colors again be more vibrant? I hope that I feel this same peace, this same deep belonging, the same hope that I feel here, in the beautiful wilderness, when I am with them, my soulmate. 

     Once, I was walking in a field by my home just as the sun was showing her first rays behind the mountains that rim the valley I live in. I remember looking east and seeing the sunrise light the cloudy sky on fire. The oranges, yellows, and pinks contrasted with the deep blue of the mountains. If you don’t live in a place with mountains, you may not have known that they look a sort of blue, especially when the snow paints them white on the tops and contrasts the dark colors. The snow lasts through spring on good water years and when the plants bloom and the world fills with color as it does in the spring, you feel like you are in a painting with every color you’ve ever seen and some you haven’t. It is breathtaking. I was seeing all of this, taking it all in and feeling the cool breeze of late summer dance around my bare arms and I remember thinking that it had to be the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

It was the same place I have been living for most of my life, the same sky against the same mountains that had been in my peripheral ever since I could see. The only thing that had changed- was me. And I had, truly, changed. I had emerged from a state of darkness into one of light just by sacrificing a bit of sleep, going on a walk at the right time, and looking to the east. I hope finding my soulmate feels like that, too. 

     I don’t know what works for you, but I have always found that depression is cured by watching sunrises. I have never been in a pit so deep that time in the silence and wonder of the forest could not pull me out- and I’ve been in some deep chasms. That is the power of the light that surrounds us. 

     I hope, when people see me, they see that light and know that they can find it, too. That's why I love being in the mountains, in a state of untouched nature. I feel like it rubs off on me, and I love that. I want to be a part of the wild, a part of all of it! As much as I possibly can in my short life, I want to carry myself the way the forest does. Like the trees that seem to grab hold of the sky and pull themselves out of the ground, higher, towards the stars. It's what I want to devote my life to. Being here only makes me realize it more.

      It’s ignorant, ridiculous, even hilarious to think that we, as humans, are above nature. To think we even come close to her grandeur.

     But maybe, someday, maybe after I die and am given back to the earth, 

We can be equals.