22.12

I recently went on pilgrimage to the place on Earth where I feel closest to God, a valley in Kings Canyon National Park, in October after the tourists have left but before the snow falls, and during the height of fall. I've been there three times before, but never so deliberately to sit and meditate and do nothing else. Other occasions, I was still unfamiliar with the place, worried about the extent of the valley, too late to get a campsite, too lonely to settle in, too shy to seek company. I had excuses. I made them up when I didn't have them. But this year, I was willing to be content. I was prepared. Food I had plenty. Shelter and warmth. Clothing for all contingencies. You can't know how reassuring a walk through the woods can be once you have your gear totally dialed in. With the correct hat, shoes, pants, gaiters, and shirt, you can be as content in the mountains as in your own living room. Nothing will get into your shoes or poke your legs or burn your balding head. You can be totally present. Totally secure.

I kept a list of every creature I saw and could identify. Ants. Squirrels. Deer. A fox, far away and moving fast. Fish of some trout or other. I took in trees like conversing with an individual. I lay under a giant in my campsite and imagined the world tipped sideways, myself walking up the immense trunk. I sat in a meadow and listened to the wind soughing through the valley, skittering through the blades of grass.

With a dumb suddenness, the sort that sometimes grips you, shakes you like a table cloth, I decided to go for a swim. Walking through a low natural arch of close-growing trees, the forest opened up to reveal a new view of the cliffs which crowd the valley, and I was so crushed by the sight of it that I collapsed, my legs literally swept from beneath me by the immensity of what I saw. I swear on my honor that I swooned.

Thirty seconds or three minutes later—the details are unclear even now—I noticed a fly on my cheek. Another was crawling on my arm. Three more were on my shirt when I looked down. Looking down, I saw that I had practically knelt in bear scat. Vaguely I remembered two years before when I had practically stumbled into a bear cub and mother in the early morning on this same hike. But I couldn't bring myself to lose that sense of beatific calm which had settled on me. I'm not playing word games with you. The only English word which suffices is beatific. I was unassailable. Replete. I wished the flies a very happy feast and continued my carefree way to the river, where I struggled for an hour to remember the entire text of the 23rd Psalm.

There is no place as safe and happy as where you are, if only you are able to accept that you are meant to be there.