Santa Lucia Mountains
“Sculpted with huge patience over millennia, landscape has enormous diversity of shape and presence. The beauty of the earth is the first beauty. Millions of years before us the earth lived in wild elegance. Landscape is the first-born of creation.” ― John O'Donohue, Divine Beauty: The Invisible Embrace
A few years ago, I hiked along the Garzas Canyon trail in Garland Ranch Park in Carmel Valley to the very top of the Santa Lucia Mountains. I was so inspired by the beauty and magnificence of the landscape on that day that over these many months I’ve used the power of inner vison to be there overlooking the canyon whenever I wanted to be enchanted and enlivened, to step out and beyond the routines of daily life. A few days ago I knew it was time to return, to reunite with why my soul called me to remember who I was in the first-born wild elegance of this special landscape.
On a bright June day driving down Hwy 1 towards Carmel my heart pulsed faster upon seeing the distant Santa Lucias silhouetted against a pale blue sky. It felt as if I was going to meet up with a dear friend that I hadn’t seen in a while. John O’Donohue ruminates, could it be possible that a landscape might have a deep friendship with you? That it could sense your presence and feel the care you extend towards it?
It is with this intention that I took my first step onto the dusty trail. I walked past the gentle swaying of Spanish moss hanging from the branches of ancient oaks and stopped to touch million-year-old stone formations covered with shades of green moss. The ascent brought me up and out to a passage that was so beautiful, that indeed I sensed that invisible embrace of those green hills hugging me. With a child-like sense of adventure I traveled the trail with curiosity and wonder. I communed with the mountain. I asked, “Mountain what can you teach me?” And the mountain said, “Let go of your sorrows. Let go of your expectations. Who are you right now? Be that.” I asked the trail, “What can you teach me?” And the trail said, “Keep walking. Go around the bend with an open, trusting heart without knowing where it is taking you.” I asked the wind, “What can you teach me?” And the wind answered, “Let me soften you. Let me blow away your whirling thoughts so that you can be present in the moment, so you can hear your soul guiding you to love, to peace, to your deeper beingness.”
And I was. Completely enraptured in the moment of wildflowers, blue sky, and the small pairs of butterflies dancing together circling in front of the movement of my steps as I slowly climbed the steep grade towards the top.
I finally arrived at the place in my visions holding my staff overlooking the canyon. With exuberant joy I extended my care to the landscape with my presence saying out-loud over and over again, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” Then after many moments of standing within the beauty of this place I asked, “Landscape what can you teach me?” And the landscape said, “You are this same beauty.”
Intention: Take time to appreciate nature. It knows when you do. Take time to appreciate your own beauty. It knows when you do.