Here I am beneath your shower
By: Steven Rayesky
Tags: Writing, Hiking, Memories, Spirituality

campsite

We came upon an illuminated garden. The ground was red with dead trees and fern fingers. The trees were in a deep cycle of life, they were growing and their arms were outstretched, midlife yawning. Fingertips outward and green, light zooming through the fibers and onto the wet ground. Everything is wet there. And steam rises, and dew settles, a light gleams golden down upon what had become our campsite. On the lowest point where water gathered and there was nothing but dirt, mud, and roots we pitched the tent that was a temple. At first we could not see it. Could not hear, smell, taste, or touch the low hum that resonated from the mountain. The water does not move and the ripple runs through it. And when you stayed long enough, it would run through you.

The dinner was prepared by Matthew in the traditional form of a small band of heat captured upon a tin plate. Auspicious meats covered in warm naan. Away from the tent and atop the dead trees we communed with the garden. Matthew raised the question:

“Upon whom’s ground do you stand?” The trees were outstretched but the light was gone. The woods were falling asleep except the lone bachelor bird who sang all night long. The far off waterfalls were all that animated the silence. The stillness brought dimension to the cylinder of our presence, and it would flex and bend as we moved within. The weight of this newfound sensation gave rise to a figure that would protrude and whip around our bodies, making way about the space against our movement. This portion of the woods was surrounded by anomalies. A lake held by two mountains. A ribbon that stretched from one horizon to the other. A working shower. And all that I had not yet names for. What could I say but the mountain?

Beyond the tent was a low point that gathered the surrounding water and surrounded a boulder. After dinner we gazed into the stars as they peeped into the deep blue of the twilight sky, our backs on the rock. Abreast like corpses our eyes gathered the final rays of the day. We watched as stars were shot across the sky and rocks burned up in the atmosphere. Disks of light glittered across, and the brightest burned brighter. Then I was alone on the rock, and I heard a voice in the woods. It spoke when summoned, when I asked if it were real,

and if it were there,

and could hear me.

“Here I am”, it said. I thought, “Here I am” and it was there. I had been thinking of it today and yesterday but could not hear. I had found out. I had known and forgotten. The mountain may speak through a stillness. I heard it through our tent in the golden sunlight. It was the warmest of days as the memory was pressed against my mind, as if I was living my past, when I could hear “Here I am” in the mundanity of tossing a stick or riding a swing. I was not alone upon the rock.

The tent was filled with ink and was the only movement in the cylinder. But then it stopped and became like the rest. Two souls in the nothingness of the mountain side and forgotten in the landscape of the night.

It was a short climb from the campsite with a natural pathway weaving between the trees, up tiny plateaus until a stacked group of stones from which the water flowed down. The shower had run for thousands of years and was seldom used, pouring off the side of the cliff, blasting away a pit of wet sand. Above was the face, 50 feet up was the top. Splashing down off the rock the water came. Sifting through the cliff, pouring through the creases making a glistening reflection in the sun. The sand was quick, and the stone was cold and soft from the moss that covered the surface. And when your hands ran through it, you could feel the heartbeat of the mountain. Who else could it be but the mountain?