mindfulness, mountains, water

When out walking in the hills, the usual attractions include: the scale of it all, the high, isolated peaks with huge views, the wind sighing and whistling through the rocks, the steady plod plod of feet that are mine but eventually seem to be moving quite independently, to fit the rise and fall of the land's surface rather than my instructions. These feet swing round a boggy pool, lift up yet another step, clatter across some scree, until they, not me, reach the top.

So a distant view of the highest peak in the area:

or the pleasure of contact with the very last snow of the season:

These are the elements of the day that expand consciousness until it takes in the swing of the seasons, the flow of life, of geological time itself. And as the day wears on, the shadows change, the clouds roll, disperse, gather, regroup: you can feel the planet rolling you towards the evening. These are the big things, the spaciousness, in the face of which your own mortality seems not to matter very much.



Increasingly these days, another element of the experience holds me, a smaller, more immedate thing - the water. I'm stopped, about to cross a little torrent - not a  mighty waterall, just this:

The changefulness of the water is indescribable - water, air, light, rock, gravity, all interplay - play - and I am held, to pause and focus in for a while, just to be with the water, in the moment.

 

I don't need the concept "meditation," I don't need bells or cushions, this is enough, for now.