Labyrinthine days

Last Thursday, violent gusts of wind ripped through the gorge tearing still-green leaves from their branches. Apples, chestnuts and crimson mountain ash berries were dropped abruptly at the base of their trunks. The sound was of a winter storm on the coast, strangely misplaced on a late summer day. The brightness and depth of the upriver view was obscured by smoke from fire devouring the dry grassland and forests to the east.

I was here to do a communications training for The Climate Trust.  We talked about biogas digestors and carbon sequestration and climate mitigation. Then we talked about how people get inspired when the story actually has something to do with themselves.  So we turned the conversation to cows who create electricity for our homes, and farmers who preserve the beauty of birds in flight for everyone to see.

But the most brilliant part of the afternoon was after. The training was held at Camp Menucha, which houses a beautiful brick and stone labyrinth in the center of a rose garden inside its vast treed grounds that stand high above the Columbia River. Ever since I walked my first labyrinth earlier this year, which I wrote about here, I've wanted to try the labyrinth at Menucha.

When I arrived, two women were sitting on the grass in the garden. I wanted to do this alone, so I continued along the trail into the woods where I found a glossy deep green oak leaf with thin celery-colored veins.  Cut from the tree too soon, it was larger than my hand and beautiful in its simplicity. As I circled back, the women had gone and I began to walk through with my new found leaf in my hand.

I noticed how rare silence is. That even in a dense circle of trees on the plateau of a high stone cliff, the sound of cars and trains from far below shuttled up to where I stood. I noticed it was no easier to concentrate the second time around.  My feet hurt. My shoes weren't right for the uneven stone surface. I was hungry. And I still had to resist the desire to look ahead to see where the path turned next.

But something happened. A phrase started passing through my mind. "What does it mean that we come and go." I have no idea where it came from, why it came, or what it really means. Yet it didn't feel like a question in search of an answer. It felt more like an invitation to accept the difficulty in finding meaning, to gather solace from the mystery of the uncertain. At least that's how I chose to interpret it.

On my way home, the low light lit up the horses and farmhouses on the old highway. As I turned the final bend, a perfectly brilliant sunset, searing red, dropped behind the forested hills. Radiance created from the destruction of the faraway fires. At home, I closed my leaf inside a book, wondering what will happen to its color and shine in the weeks to come.