Slocan Lake Experience April 2014

On Saturday I ride my bike north on the highway a half kilometer uphill out of New Denver turning west off of the highway to rejoin the Galena Trail (an old narrow gauge railway line) descending downhill along the east side of Slocan Lake. About three quarters of the way to Roseberry which is the small town 8 km north of New Denver the trail is flat and 40 meters from the side of the lake. Something about the beach and the shallow water off the beach attracts my attention. There is a feeling here of quiet, calm and restfulness about the place and an immense strength of some sort. Riding on to Roseberry  I take pictures of a rusted antique truck in the woods and sit listening quietly by the lake. I ride through town to a campground on the side of Wilson Creek which runs through Roseberry and in to Slocan Lake. After riding around the campground for a bit I head back up the Galena Trail towards New Denver and home. Reaching the place where my attention was drawn earlier I stop. I see a small trail off to the right which winds down to the lake. Walking my bike down I see a former wooden address sign with a name and number on it attached to a tree like an invitation. Leaning my bike against a dead birch tree  I walk the rest of the way down to the beach perhaps 20 meters. Sitting on a log I pull Daniel Deardorff’s book “The Other Within” out of my pannier and I lay down on my back on the rocky beach with my bike helmet over my face to relax. The day is warmish and I go into a kind of reverie gradually relaxing in my body. I feel teary-eyed with weariness from the tension I’ve been carrying in myself for quite some time. I feel like this place could support me without asking anything of me, sort of like being on both our parts. I doze for about half an hour and then waking up I see a storm front coming in from the south. I decide to pack up and ride back uphill to the highway and down into New Denver.

The following day I repeat the route towards Roseberry stopping at the beach again. This time after I sit down on the beach and start reading Daniel Deardorff’s book things start to happen. First I notice that the lake is absolutely calm. I feel a responding sense of serenity and quiet rising up in myself leading to an opening feeling in my body and mind. Now I hear noise on the lake. Thirty meters offshore three little brown ducks swim slowly in the calm water. I notice with delight the moving, rippling and shimmering water around the swimming ducks. Suddenly one duck, the next and then the last one dive underwater with a schlooping sound hunting fish. About a half minute later each one comes back up with a schliping sound. I watch the ducks move around for about 10 minutes. Gradually the sound of splashing and many bird calls in the middle of the lake comes in to my consciousness. Looking out on the lake I see hundreds of birds, maybe Terns, splashing and moving about on the water. They have a feeling of life, vibrant life, a sense of continuity and instinct which touches and activates something primordially similar in me. I notice my breathe deepening  Another sound off to my right at about 2 o’clock. Turning I see silvery white movements and splashing of water. At first I can’t make out what is going on especially as it increases in intensity over five minutes. Slowly I realize the silver shapes are large trout spawning, mating or just playing in the water near the surface. I feel the connection, the erotic feeling of it all as my instinctive imagination responds to the action. A ladybug flies by me and comes back landing on the meaty part of my left thumb. Looking down I see a red carapace with no black dots. The red color has a faint purple undertone. The beetle seems be staying so I decide not to disturb its repose and I sit reading and watching all the goings-on in the lake. I feel softness come in to my heart and body around her trust in me. A few minutes later me I hear a snap and a crash behind me. Twisting around to the right I see something dark move in the trees at the edge of the beach. At first it looks like something lept from a dead birch tree into a cedar tree so I search the trees for a minute or two looking for a cougar.  When nothing ferocious appears I relax. I realize a branch has fallen from the dead birch by the trail down to the beach. A large gray branch is lying down on the trail. I leaned my bike against that tree yesterday. Something suggested to me today that I bring my bike all the way down to the beach. If I had left it by the birch it would have been damaged. Hmmm? I feel a sense of compensation, a sense of something balancing out, from this experience.  The image of the dark, alive wooden wagon in a recent dream comes up in me. The dream seems to be speaking about balance from one scene to the next. Now I notice that the ladybug has flown away from my thumb. Maybe from my movements. Looking down to read I see that it has landed on page (XXI) on the word “the”. The full sentence containing the ‘’the’’ is ‘’Blake says Improvement makes strait roads, but (the) crooked roads without Improvement are roads of Genius.” Inside I say well this speaks to me because I have been so busy Improving myself at times that I neglect and don’t fully value the crooked roads. Today was certainly being on one of those crooked roads. She flies away and I say good bye to her, thanking her for her trust and love.

I look out at the lake and I notice FOUR little brown ducks all schlooping and schliping in and out of the water. Something joyful leaps up from my heart. And then the negating rational voice comes. Was I being too irrational  in my seeing and responses to all that I have experienced today? Nature couldn’t be speaking to me so directly could it? Or is it that nature simply speaks holy/wholly as its own being which has nothing to do with me? So then the voice says all of this was coincidence and instinct on the part of the creatures I was with. I pause and take a deep breath in. I listen inside. Deep in my heart and from previous experience I do know that “something” was happening. Putting the negative voice aside I feel deeply blessed and honored to be able to be witness to sacredness of Being all the while being in the container of the Slocan Valley and the mountains. Looking up at the sky I notice the weather is shifting towards rain again so I read a bit more from my book,  pack up and pedal back to New Denver ruminating and mulling over my experience.

In Golden on my way back home I’m lying in bed before going to sleep. I start gently weeping in gratitude for the gift of those moments on Slocan Lake. I keep saying thank you, thank you in deep gratitude. Later, before I fall asleep a sense of service towards this experience begins to take hold in my heart. I pray to Mystery to guide me further. Sleep.

In the next blog I will write about imagination and how I walked further along the crooked path out of this experience.