Rare Metolius River fog: my misty philosophical musings

Just when you think you've seen it all...

A familiar saying. Yesterday I lived it. Big time. 

I've walked along the banks of central Oregon's Metolius River many, many times. I've seen the Metolius in sunny, rainy, snowy, dry, stormy, calm, and all sorts of other meteorological conditions. 

The Metolius is so beautiful, I'm always awed by it when we visit our cabin in Camp Sherman -- a two hour drive or so from our home in Salem. 

After a cloudless 94 degree day suddenly turned into a 62 degree afternoon thunderstorm with heavy rain and hail, some sort of rare weather happenstance created fog on the cold spring-fed waters of the upper Metolius -- where family dog and I set out on our usual walk.

Which I quickly realized was going to be marvelously unusual. 

A fog was floating above the river. It created an atmosphere, a presence, that threw me out of my customary Metolius River Walk Mental Zone.

I felt blessed, but not by anyone or anything.

I felt worshipful, but not toward any sort of supernatural or transcendent entity.

I felt awe and a sense of mystery, but not outside of the laws of nature which produced the phenomenon that was blowing my mind in a highly positive fashion. 

The setting sun illuminated the fog through the Ponderosa trees that line the Metolius. I was struck by how pitiful manmade cathedrals are compared to the beauty nature effortlessly produces.

I felt hugely grateful that in my longstanding churchless frame of mind, I could look upon sundrenched fog-beams as they actually were, rather than as a religious metaphor of God's imagined glory. 

Unexpected, unusual, awesome, inspiring -- I began to sense that the feelings being produced in me by the fog were always close at hand (or rather, close at mind). It just takes a Big Knock on my head, in this case by nature, to jolt me out of my habitual ways of looking upon reality.

Since I don't believe in divine miracles, this opens the door to everything being naturally miraculous.

The chance of what I was experiencing some 14 billion years after the big bang did its universe-producing thing was simultaneously vanishingly small and absolutely inescapable.

I only encountered two other people on the trail. They were camping. Asked if the fog was common, I said, "No, not at all. I've walked along this part of the river hundreds of times during the past twenty years. Never seen anything like this before. You're fortunate to be here just now."

Well, as we all are, not matter what the "here" and "now" consist of.

Since I consider that every human life is a singular event, a one-off never to be repeated, no second chances in an afterlife, rebirth, or whatever, each moment, without exception, is an experience that will never be seen again and has never been seen before.

Some moments, of course, grab our attention more strongly than others. But lurking behind the familiar backdrop of our usual everyday life is... NOBODY KNOWS! 

I find this marvelous. Mystery is so much more intriguing than knowing-it-all -- another reason I'm happy being irreligious. For devout true believing religious people, God or some other higher power is the answer to all unanswered questions. 

For "poetic naturalists" like me, a term I embrace that physicist Sean Carroll uses in his new book, we're pleased to have so much Unknown in the universe.

I stood on the bridge that crosses the Metolius near our cabin and enjoyed the unfamiliar sight of foggy nothingness.

Having been a big Lord of the Rings fan during my college years in the 1960's ( the Tolkien books obviously), thoughts of the Mists of Mordor, which may or may not exist in the trilogy, wafted through my psyche. 

If I'd seen this creeping fog while stoned on LSD or mescaline, a common occurrence back then, I might have seen it as malevolent. Or, comforting. Hard to predict how a psychedelic experience unfolds. 

Yesterday the fog just struck me as being... what it was. And that was all the profundity I needed or wanted. 

After taking a few last photos from the bridge I walked the short distance back to our cabin. Fed the dog. Gave her a rawhide chew stick for dessert. Made myself a cup of coffee. I felt refreshed by the fog.

Fortunately, I knew that my next experience of not being able to see clearly what's going on in my life was near at hand. Like, as close as the next moment.

Comments

[777]

It's not the mist, the mist triggers something else

From now on slowly_wise, you will contact all water this way , even taking a bath, even a lake, the sea even mud on TV
I wrote about the power of Simian, I guess the 32 years were not quite without effect :)
It includes even that after some time your simian will revive and you
will see your Beloved Master everywhere

June 2015 I wrote a personal message to you to Brian on WATER and if you forgot . . . . wow then . . .
go
http://hinessight.blogs.com/church_of_the_churchless/2015/10/a-walk-in-nature-could-be-better-than-meditation.html#sthash.hXiA85L7.dpuf

Sometimes it's a peace of cake
 and all nature seems in Blossom and Bloom,
— SPECIALLY WATER -
 and this is only what appears on the outside

Imagine the inside

Please don't give it up

http://hinessight.blogs.com/church_of_the_churchless/2015/10/a-walk-in-nature-could-be-better-than-meditation.html#sthash.hXiA85L7.dpuf

777

A vast serendipity for You
-

[777]

tYour photographs bring a strong representation of
what you talk about
But It's not the mist, the mist triggers something else

From now on slowly_wise, you will contact all water this way , even taking a bath, even a lake, the sea even mud on TV
I wrote about the giant power of Simran, and I guess the 32 years of you were not quite without effect :)
It includes even that after some time your simian will revive and you
will see your Beloved Master everywhere

June 2015 I wrote a personal message to you to Brian on WATER and if you forgot . . . . wow then . . .
go
http://hinessight.blogs.com/church_of_the_churchless/2015/10/a-walk-in-nature-could-be-better-than-meditation.html#sthash.hXiA85L7.dpuf

Sometimes it's a peace of cake
 and all nature seems in Blossom and Bloom,
— SPECIALLY WATER -
 and this is only what appears on the outside

Imagine the inside

Please don't give it up

http://hinessight.blogs.com/church_of_the_churchless/2015/10/a-walk-in-nature-could-be-better-than-meditation.html#sthash.hXiA85L7.dpuf

777

A vast serendipity for You

-

[david r]

Brian, you are not God.

Believe me.

I am God.

You are about to die from old age and LSD usage. But when you pass over you will meet me face to face in the grave of oblivion, not hell. You will have a succession of images passing through your mind and brain before it dies, and you will see all the bad things you did. And those visions will be all the things you did physically that will impact the external world through the memories of other people acting it out. Which is a very bad legacy to leave behind.

I appreciate your inquisitive nature and quest for truth. But the idea that you know that I don't exist was what caused me to question your intelligence and knowledge base. Since your brilliance was not eclipsed by my groking, I had high hopes that you would evolve to the next upper level of normality. But I am shocked by your intellectual suicide and I have decided that you deserve to stop existing altogether.

Don't say I didn't warn you. After all, a warning is not a threat. And you should be old enough to know that by now.