The green waters of the reservoir are like glass. On the surrounding ridges, motionless pines tower over the man-made lake, and reflect off the surface of the water with mirror-like sharpness. There isn’t a trace of a breeze. It’s so quiet that the crunching of almonds between my teeth seems loud. This place is an [...]
Overhanging the gorge are great angular outcroppings of volcanic rock—solid and sharp-edged protrusions from some long-ago eruption of Lassen or some other volcano in the area. In many places, the sheer sides of the gorge have huge slabs balanced on top of them–some looking like a giant stonemason had placed them there. Other large formations, [...]
A group of young fellows are swimming in the creek at my usual sitting spot, so I walk a couple hundred meters upstream and put the pad down across the stream from a picnic site. A lone cyclist is there, and the minute he leaves, a family descends on the place, complete with dog and [...]
After a bad start on a hot summer’s day in the hottest part of California (the not so Great Central Valley) other than the desert, and not being able to write, I got out on the bike. If I was going to take a sitting in the shade under the sycamore along the creek that [...]
It’s strange how one can sometimes have more in common with people that hold opposite views than one does with people who hold very similar views. Such is the case with Buddhism, a ‘godless’ religion with which I have much sympathy, but little simpatico. Lest I play into the hands of believers who are willing [...]
The attitudes we hold about our relationship to the universe, as well as to our own species, are the most important elements of our worldview. Pascal said, “When the universe has crushed him, man will still be nobler than that which kills him, because he knows he is dying, and of its victory the universe [...]
Though to some readers (and even myself) I have written ad nauseum about psychological revolution, I’m compelled, by God knows what motivation or muse, to do so again. Until the question (can the revolution in consciousness that changes the disastrous course of man ignite now?) is answered in the negative, or by its occurrence, I [...]
There is a great paradox to human evolution. It took billions of years to evolve a brain with the capacity for awareness of the sacred, but employing time prevents the realization of that potential. Most people believe, consciously or sub-consciously, that man is either made in the image of God, or man is incapable of [...]
A well-known principle at the quantum level in physics is that an object being observed is affected by the very act of observing it. It’s called the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and it has tremendous psychological implications. Though the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is expressed in the language of mathematics, it basically says that attempting to accurately [...]
The creek is as high and voluminous as I’ve ever seen it, a frothing brown torrent racing from the mountains to the ocean. I sit on the bank above my usual sitting spot, which is completely under water. For the first time I witness how the tunnel under a large sycamore at the other end [...]
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