(A Walking
Meditation)
“Geology acts as a kind of collective unconscious for
the world, a deep control beneath the oceans and continents.” (xi)
“We have all grown out of the geological
landscape, and perhaps unconsciously we still relate to it.” (367)
-
Richard Fortey
Earth: An
Intimate History (2004)[i]
Humility is essential
for a compassionate life. Bernard of
Clairvaux once said that true humility is thinking neither more nor less of oneself than one ought. The pursuit of humility is a life-long
process of balancing these two urges. For
the Poetic Naturalist, perhaps the primary way in which such humility is fostered
and nurtured is in the depth experience of Nature; being out in the natural
world and open to its beauty and sublimity, its mysteries and what it can
reveal to us. We arise from the Earth, and are connected to the
Earth in genetic, existential & experiential, sensual and intellectual,
mystical and spiritual ways.
I have written in other
blogs about meditation in/on Nature; meditating on the periodic table, on walks
in the turning of the seasons and on the geologic ages of the Earth. Over the last couple weeks, I’ve been going
out walking old, familiar paths on the backside of Bear Ridge,[ii]
and have been led – by imagination and experience – into meditations inspired
by the landscape and the various rocks outcropping in the steep sides of the
ridge that tell me where I am in the geoscapes of the planet. While incomplete, these meditations contribute
to an ongoing experience of myself as a being in the becoming of the world;
self-becoming being part of that process.
Meditations on/in Nature situate us in Earth & Cosmos and help to make
a truer humility possible. Awe and Wonder are our guides in this devout endeavor.
We are in the cusps of
Spring, here in western PA, and while there are signs of greening here and
there in the still brown-gray landscape, the rocks and outcrops under the bare trees,
bushes and vines are still visible. I am
oft drawn to the foot of a particular mountain stream – called “Bear Run” – which
flows serpentine down through a small ‘gorge’ in back end of Bear Ridge, even
in dry seasons. Cleansed by the winter snow
and rains, I open to meditative engagement in this favorite place to hike and
sojourn. Here I find outcrops of deep time! Rocks witnessing to the age of the Earth! _And much more!
Heading in from the
road to this natural area, I wend a way around through the hardened forms of
last year’s briars and berry bushes, following a deer trail to a pool below a footbridge
that carries day-hikers across the water and on_ to a path that skirts along the
southern feet of Bear Ridge. A margin
lined by tall Hemlocks and a few Black Spruce stand between walkers and the
rising ridge to their south as they go. Not
led to take that path yet this month, I have each time stopped at the bridge.
Here a walker can
center themselves and prepare for a challenging yet always aesthetic climb. This stream, flowing down through a cleft in
the ridge, is the collective run-off from both sides of the gorge it has eroded
out of the rocky hillsides over a span of geologic time; a temporal age far
outstripping a human life-span. We have
always thought that at the top there must be a spring or two that keep the
water flowing, even if diminished, in drier periods. Looking up the way I will go, I imagine the
hike before me. Ascending along this
creek, you come to 9 small waterfalls in turn demarcating its serpentine way. These are the stations on an earthen
pilgrimage. Bear Run, no more than three feet across at
its widest points, turns subtly this-way-and-that, though never straying far
from a straight line; like a snake slithering down through the rocky cleft in
the ridge. At the highest point of the
stream a climber ultimately comes to what we call “the hidden falls” – a tenth
waterfall – so named because from no angle you can get to a vantagepoint from
which to get a glimpse of where this highest source of the mountain stream burbles
up out of the ground! We always imagine
a spring pool up there, somewhere; the arche
of the water.
I am ready to ascend,
as I have twice this month already; a meditative walk.
THE ASCENT—
Tarrying at the bridge,
I take a few slow, deep breaths, leaving the ordinary rounds of the day behind.
I look up into the water-made gorge. I think of the wooden footbridge as a
threshold, from which one has to choose one side or the other to begin an ascent;
depending on which side of the stream you want to traverse. I turn and look down at the clear water
flowing beneath the bridge and into the pool beyond – around which peepers were
hollering yesterday! – to help establish where I am. Stationed between the above and below, I
begin my climb, leaving the bridge from the west side; my favorite side of the
stream to hoof my way up. The stream
here has a sandy bottom; granules eroded from the sandstones that make up much
of the ridge. There are grains of quartz
and mica in the water, reflecting sunlight as it dances across the pool.
Ascending along the mountain
stream, a walker enters the gorge, with the flanks of the ridge rising – higher
and higher – on either side of you, both sides punctuated by outcrops where the
layers in the rock reveal evidence of a stretch of millennia in the history of
our planet! To ascend along the stream,
on either side, is to take a trip upward in time. The rocks at the level of the footbridge are
older than the rocks up at the 9th waterfall. I imagine myself time-travelling toward the
present as I ascend the stream.
At the bottom, on
either side of the footbridge, you can see strata of what is called the Mauch
Chunk Formation, which was laid down around 310 million years ago in this area;[iii]
a mixture of sandstones and shales, which seem to me to have a blueish-green
cast in some places. [iv] As you climb, moving from one flat rock to another,
getting your footing at each level, you next come to an outcrop of what is
called the Pottsville Formation[v]
here in western PA. Rocks of this age begin
to crop-out at about the level of the third waterfall and you can catch a
glimpse of them two or three more times as you ascend to the fifth waterfall. In the rocks at this height you see whiter
sandstones, then gray shales, red and gray claystone and a little thin layer of
black coal; the transformed remains of Paleolithic life-forms from a world 300
million years gone. The large boulders in
their present stations on the sides of the ridge –which make interesting
stopping-places for hikers on the ridge trail that flanks the stream – have been
broken off from these Pottsville strata as those rocks eroded away over
thousands of years. Once you pass the
fifth waterfall, the sandstones that outcrop the rest of the way up are from
what is called the Allegheny Formation, which also display layers of sandstones
and shales, claystone and seams of coal mixed throughout. By the time you get to this level, the rocks
you see are between about 300 and about 290 million years old at this
particular geo-location.
Whenever I make this ascent,
I am stilled and centered by the thought that, before me, on either side, is a
physical exegesis of the Earth’s deep history and evolution’s mysterious
pathways. I stop and meditate on the
layers that can be seen in each outcrop as I ascend, imagining the planet as it
was at each geologic time. Crinoids; aquatic
plants that grew in shallow to deep waters were common in this area of PA in
the Carboniferous Period, as western PA was covered by a shallow sea. Tetrapods were coming onto land and living
out-of-water in more numbers in this period.
These early four-legged animals were evolving from ancestors that lived
in the oceans in earlier ages, mutations and natural selection leading to the
development of lungs and the ability to stand up on their four legs over tens
of thousands of years of adaptive change.[vi] Trilobites[vii]
and cycad-like seed ferns also lived here in great numbers. The coal I see in the hillside, as I ascend
up-along the stream toward the hidden falls, is likewise known to have been
formed in in this area in sea-side or swampy areas. I try to imagine what the world looked like
from artists’ reconstructions, based on the fossil and mineral evidence, and
always find myself in a somewhat ‘alien’ world![viii] “Ferns and Scaly Trees everywhere” as a
geologist friend of mine used to exclaim when imagining this point in Earth’s
history!
How wondrous and
awe-inspiring is the vast time during which life has been evolving – mutating,
changing, adapting, transforming its environments – and how humbling it is to
realize that, no matter how unique we are in the biosphere, we are just one of
the most recently evolved life-forms on the planet_ hundreds of millions of
species! – all of which are unique in their
own way. So much life has come and
gone. The fossil fragments I sometimes find
in the stream are markers of living things that used to be here and are no
more.
On hikes like these, I experience
the mystery of time. Can we imagine such
temporal expanses? Maybe we feel dwarfed
by deep time? Is it beyond anything
other than mathematical calculation and designation? Three
hundred million years ago? We can
imagine a hundred years; after all—some people live that long. If we are historically informed, we can probably
imagine hundreds of years without too much trouble. If we have studied ancient history and
meditated upon it, we might be able to actually imagine four or five thousand
years – back to the time of the ancient civilizations; Egypt, Babylon and the
Indus Valley – and narrate what has happened in that time and before. No matter how much I study paleontology and
geology, however, I still find it difficult to imagine stretches of time in the
hundreds of millions of years! _Though I am always working toward such an
understanding. The sheer length of
geologic time essentially brings me to my knees in experienced awe on hikes
that show me some portion of the geologic column! The experienced evidence of geoscience – when
out in nature – has become a touchstone of earthen humility.
The strata above the
Maunch Chunk Formation are from the Pennsylvanian Period; the upper half of the
Carboniferous. In this time period, evidence
shows that Pennsylvania – the local earth where I live – was in the equatorial
zone (not at 40° N Latitude,
where I am right now), and the Appalachian Mountains – of which this ridge is a
foothill – were being thrust up as a result of the collision of two continents;
Laurussia and Gondwanaland. When out hiking
in locales that reveal geologic history, I reflect on my location being at the
equator and I marvel at the processes of the Earth! The first part of a line from a Carole King
song oft comes to mind, “I feel the Earth, move, under my feet…” and the irony
is that we don’t, usually. The movement
of the plates on which the continents sit,[ix]
and on which they have been carried around about on the mantle of the Earth for
billions of years, is unnoticed by us in our ordinary daily experience. To meditate on this inspires me to yet
another threshold of wonder which then brings me back to my earthen knees. The understanding of plate tectonics is yet another
touchstone of earthen humility.
At the top of the
stream – standing before the pillar rocks on the massive sandstone ledge of the
Allegheny Formation down over which the water flows from that un-see-able –
hidden, almost mysterious – source, I am at the height of my meditations on
deep time. I have observed the strata in
the hillsides on the way up and meditated on the life-worlds that they
reveal. Here, I have reached a pinnacle;
both in terms of the climb and in my own state of physical and spiritual euphoria
brought on by the physical exertion of the ascent as well as by a sense of self-transcendence
triggered by meditations on deep time in which I have engaged at each level. I have left my own time, imaginatively informed
by the revelations of science! It is
exhilarating; the experience of communing with the history of the Earth through
geologic imaginings.
DESCENT—
As I turn to descend
back down to the footbridge at the bottom of this mountain stream, my mind
turns back toward the present. At each
station on the way down – from one little waterfall to the next, watching my
step; keeping sure-footed so as not to slip and fall—I remember experiences I
have had in the turning of the Seasons in this gorge along Bear Run. I remember the assassin beetle I saw and
identified a couple years ago on a hot summer afternoon on a rock at the 6th
waterfall. I remember – as I step down across
what I call “the sitting stone” at the fourth waterfall, the snake that was
basking there one late Spring day in 2006 as I was making the ascent with a
geologist friend. I was climbing up and
just as my head rose over where the edge of the sitting stone, I came face to
face with a magnificent coiled Copperhead sunning itself on the stone where I had
hoped to take a short rest! Fortunately,
although startled by us, it decided to slither off, disappearing into the
underbrush in a matter of seconds rather than attacking! I now remember the morning I arrived (just in
time!) to see a Bobcat chase a young Stag down through the gorge past me (only
about 30 ft away!) at the footbridge and out into the wildfields beyond. That was 10 year ago now, but it is still
vivid in my memory! The Stag escaped,
and, not knowing where the Bobcat had gone, I walked away as stealthily as I
could toward the parking area_ and left!
These memories bring me back to the present from the Carboniferous world
of 300 million years ago.
As I reached the third
waterfall on my way down one day last week, I saw Coltsfoot (Newcomb’s p. 358)[x]
blooming on the far side of the stream. They
are one of the first woodland flowers to bloom in the Spring in western PA and
look like Dandelions except for the scaly stem.
This sighting in turn reminded me of all the various wildflowers I have
seen along Bear Run and on the Ridge Trail that circumscribes it. The beauty of it! As I write this, I look forward to the
Nodding Trilliums and Large Flowered Trilliums (Newcomb’s, 124) that I may see
in May if I continue to visit this ridge as the Seasons turn. Then there will be Drooping Trilliums and
Garlic Mustards, Smooth Solomon’s Seals (Newcomb’s 342, 346) and then the
Canadian Mayflowers in bloom. Faery
Bells and then Jack-in-the-Pulpits of the Arum family (Newcomb’s, 381) will
come up all around an old road abutment that still stands, 60 ft or so down
below the footbridge, in a swampy area where the peepers are now and where, later,
tadpoles and frogs will then romp and frolick.
I have identified Japanese Honeysuckle (Newcomb’s, 108) here and even, I
think, Riverbank Grape (Newcomb’s, 444) along the stream at the level of the 5th
waterfall. In the shadows of Summerwood
this cleft in the ridge is ablaze with wildflower colorings!
While to descend back
down to the footbridge is to follow the rock outcrops further back in time, I
always find myself returning to my own local time as I reach the
footbridge. Re-affirming the ordinary is
necessary in the spiritual adventures of life, especially after imagined trips
into deep time and, on other occasions, meditative explorations of the
expanding cosmos beyond our planet or investigations of the unseen realms; e.g.,
the quantum realm. As I return to my own
time and place, I admire and luxuriate in the diversity of Nature in this
little local habitat. In moments of
wonder at the diversity, the colors and forms of Nature, I experience a touchstone
of an earthen humility.
Returning to where I
began, I often reflect that the ascent
of the stream and the meditations on deep time that it inspires teaches me not
to think any more of myself than I
ought. We are a single species on a
small and fragile – yet awe inspiring – blue planet; one amongst millions of
species in the twigs of the Tree of Life; the current manifestation of evolutionary
history—the roots of which reach back almost 4 billion years. Meditations on deep time inspire me to think
not only about the wonders of the past but also the transitory nature of
life. The Pennsylvanian and
Mississippian age rocks on which I so often reflect while out hiking, were laid
down between about 318 and 298 million years ago in this geo-area. At the beginning of the Carboniferous, life
was recovering from an extinction event.
After the next period, the Permian, the Earth suffered a great trauma
around 252 million years ago, much of the wondrous diversity of life on the
planet going extinct. We are here; we
are transitory. Everything changes. These are touchstones of an earthen humility.
The descent, however, reminds
me not to think any less of myself
that I ought. The flowers and animals I
see here lead me to reflect on all the evolutionary changes that had to happen
for us to be here and to be able to experience this sense of naturalistic wonder. Granted, every
other living thing also has such a history, yet each is unique.[xi] Evolution
has brought us to what we call sentience. We are self-conscious toolmakers, and while
we share toolmaking with other animals, no other species has so transformed the
world as we have, for good and for
ill. While not being ‘better than’ other
species, we can allow that we are unique on this planet; as unique as any
animal—as we do not (yet) know of any other species with quite the same kind of
consciousness as we have evolved to possess.
I am conscious of myself and of my place in the world as a temporary, transient
member of this species, acknowledging my deep biological connection with all of
Nature. I need think no less of myself
than this. Our species has emerged from Nature, and we are Nature having
become aware of itself; we are Nature reflecting on itself. This could perhaps be our saving grace.
As I leave Bear Ridge
and hike back into town, I revel, for these meditations on deep time show me not
only our smallness and our transitory nature, but also speak to our unique nature, inspiring in me ongoing
meditations on how we fit into the web of life.
Whence comes meaning. A balanced
earthen humility may yet enable us to embrace our place in the Web of Life;
never succumbing to that “cosmic chill” which tends toward nihilism, nor
allowing ourselves to lose our existential center in a hopeless loss of
personal power and potential in the face of the vastness of the cosmos or the
depths of time. I believe a balanced
humility can still tame our tendency to overrate ourselves; leading to actions that
have undermined ecosystems and unbalanced Nature. To be humble in the presence of grandeur; the
vastness of the Cosmos and the mysteries and sublimities of the long history of
life in all its multitudinous forms—is to find oneself in-concert with the
music of being-in-becoming. It leads to
possible answers to the ‘big questions.’
To embrace our existential being with earthen humility may open us to a deep
compassion for all the Earth and everything – and everyone – living on it,
because no matter how strong we may be, we also necessarily experience how
fragile and temporary we are. It is humility
such as I imagine here that I believe can inspire earthen responsibility
grounded in compassion for all life and the planet itself; for we are
manifestations of it.
So mote it be.
[i]
This book, which was first published by Knopf in 2004, was a naturalistic
adventure through the history of the Earth, written – as the title infers – in
an ‘intimate’ manner, which I took to mean a non-academic, non-technical style. It is still a great read! His description of a descent through geologic
time by burro down into the Grand Canyon is certainly a template for my own
imaginative trips into deep time wherever I come to a rock-outcrop for which I
know a reasonable date and can place in Earth’s history.
Another excellent read about
our planet is Robert M Hazen’s The Story
of Earth: The First 4.5 Million Years, from Stardust to Living Planet (Viking,
2012).
[ii]
Bear Ridge is a fictional location in my imaginary landscape. The mountain stream and its waterfalls are based
on an actual location in western PA. I
have fictionalized the location, but not the experiences – all of which I have
had. By using a fictional location,
however, I hope to ‘liberate’ the experiences somewhat, allowing that such are
possible in many different locales, not just in this one natural area.
[iii]
This date was given to me by a park ranger in 2005 as ‘approximate’ for the rocks
outcropping at this level along the mountain stream where this ascent/descent
experience is set.
[iv]
One of my primary guides for learning understanding local PA geology is The Geology of Pennsylvania Edited by
Charles H. Schultz (Pennsylvania Geological Society and the Pittsburgh
Geological Society, 1999; 2002 reprint).
It is a huge tome and is well
worth the time to peruse and read. If
you are interested in exploring various areas in PA from a geologic
perspective, this book is an excellent reference work. A more introductory guide is Roadside Geology of Pennsylvania by
Bradford B. Van Diver. (Mountain Press
Publishing Company, Missoula, 1990; 2014)
[v]
See Schultz, pp. 151 – 153 for a good description.
[vi]
If you are up for a detailed, in-depth read based on the fossils that reveal
the evolutionary paths of the earliest tetrapods, I highly recommend Jennifer
A. Clack’s Gaining Ground: The Origin and Evolution of Tetrapods
(Indiana University Press, 2012).
[vii]
For a good read on Trilobites, I would still recommend Richard Fortey’s Trilobite! Eyewitness to Evolution (Alfred Knopf, 2000) to start with, though
there are numerous excellent books on these creatures who ultimately went
extinct after the Great Extinction at the end of the Permian Period.
[viii]
There are plenty of good websites where you can see artists’ portrayals of life
on Earth in the Carboniferous. I do not know of one specific to Pennsylvania,
but the University of California Museum of Paleontology site https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/carboniferous/carboniferous.html is one I often visit for information on
geologic periods. For PA geology I read
the Pennsylvania Geology magazine published
by the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation of Natural Resources (DCNR).
[ix]
Plate Tectonics is a fascinating planetary phenomenon. You can read a good introduction to it at
Geology.com (https://geology.com/plate-tectonics.shtml).
[x]
Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide by
Lawrence Newcomb and illustrated by
Gordon Morrison is one I have used for almost 40 years. My copy doesn’t even have a title page
anymore, but the reprint edition available is published by Little, Brown &
Company and dates from 1989. Its key
system is quite useful in identifying a new flowering plant. I used to record the page numbers in Newcomb’s in a field notebook I long
carried with me. Whenever I identified a
new wildflower, I would write the date beside it in Newcomb’s and enter its
name and page number in my notebook.
Before writing this blog, I reviewed my field notebooks from walks over
the course of a decade in various natural areas, including the actual “Bear
Run” where this fictionalized blog is set.
[xi]
I prefer “unique” to “special.”
“Special” often carries the connotation of “better” (e.g., than
others). However, we can each be unique
without being ‘better than’ other people.
