It's always strange to follow a trail with a dead end. I think I automatically want a trail to loop. To know I'm not going to have to waste my time. And yet today I walked down a dead end trail because it felt undeniably like the right thing to do.
There were few footprints ahead of me. The trail was mostly overgrown. There was a sense of isolation and forgotten-ness. I liked it. It gave me a sense of peace and of patience. I didn't need to rush.
I stopped at the start of the trail and shot back - towards the lake. It was pleasant and reassuring listening to the wind and waiting for the clock to tick.
I felt my tension melting as I stood there in the forest. As I walked in I felt better and better. The farther I got from other people the better I felt.
The trail curved around the hillside gently for a while. And then it started to descend. Steeply. I was aware that I would have to climb back up this trail. But I kept going down anyway. Stubbornly. Pressing myself. Not letting my laziness stop me from what I might find.
Halfway down I saw the ridge above me was opening - the treeline was right where the trail ended. I wanted to get up there to see the openness - to see the open sky. I had to clamber up a steep deer trail through brush and probably some poison oak. And then it opened. Great bright sky. Great rolling yellow hills. Isolation. No trail visible. No other people. Just quiet rolling grassland. Distant hissing trees. And a view to the ocean. It was exquisite. I quickly set up my camera looking out towards the sea. It was a pleasant and easy composition. The trees nestled down into the valley. The yellow grass waving in the foreground. I loved the sense of peace and being held in the nature. There was no rush.
There was the strange anxiety of a mountain lion attacking me. I never used to think about this but my partner kate always asked about it and always told me to be careful. So now my nature trips were tinted with fear. Maybe not a bad thing.
I was happy to be out in the open. To be in some place unexpected. I wondered why I never went out backpacking in places like this. Why I always thought about it but never did. Some kind of anxiety about following the rules. an anxiety that has gotten stronger as I've gotten older. More to loose. But what a loss to always just be a day visitor. To never feel the real anxiety of night time.
I returned to the trail satisfied. I headed further down and turned a corner where a number of birds were feeling they had the trail to themselves. They were annoyed I was coming through. The trail went down further and more steeply. I'm pretty sure it was an old logging road. Or an old ranch access road. But had clearly been ignored for a long time. I circled again down to the bottom.
The creek was there - overgrown and with a wide flood plane. It was the water from the lake up above. It was nice to see it. It was nice to be near it, despite the distance down I had to go. The creek was small and subtle. There hadn't been rain in a while. But pleasant. The sign in front of me said trail closed. I had reached the end of the trail. It kept going beyond on the old road and I saw that the road was washing out once, than again farther on. I kept going a little farther looking for the reason I had come down here.
Down in the creek a gentle glistening was shining out. I stopped and decided to set up. There was something charming about the tiny glistening and the surrounding dense green. The chaos down here. The deep ignorance - ignored by people for how long? I shot and sat. Shot and waited. I thought of Heidegger's fourfold world: await the dieties. I felt I was doing that. And that it was my privelidge to do that. To await the dieties that they might show themselves to me through my lens, if they wanted to.
I was struck by how lucky i felt - at the end of a trail, alone, in a deep forest, with my camera, in this holy state. I felt lucky and set. Satisfied. I knew I had a long hard climb back. I knew I Was a little late to my schedule. But as the camera rolled and the seconds ticked by, I felt relaxed. I Felt good. I felt happy.