From High Sierras

From High Sierras
By Kevin Trammel

I write to you from nearly one hundred feet up, atop an ancient and beloved cedar at my home in the foothills of the Sierras, California. Georgetown, California, to be exact. This town was known as Growlersberg during gold rush days, when men came up into these hills from all over the world to find wealth amidst the prickly Manzanita, the dust and the skin-searing heat. Back then, a “growler” was the name given to a large gold nugget which, when panned from the banks of a stream, would “growl” while rolling against the metal lip of the gold-pan. I’m up here in this tree “panning” for the gold of ideas and insight amongst the clouds and the streams of sunlight. Things seem much clearer from this arboreal vantage. I think there are indeed growlers here to be found.

Looking down into the orchard below me, I see the shadow of the cedar laying across the expansive boughs of an old cherry tree. I wave my hand and my shadow waves back. He will keep my place in the world below until my return.

I’ve been thinking. I could build a platform here in this tree. I could live here. There are several even taller trees rubbing shoulders with this one. Gangways or small suspension bridges could be constructed. I could build other platforms in the adjacent trees, each serving a needed purpose: one as bedroom, one as kitchen, another as study and library, and another as living room, for when I might chance to have intrepid guests.

The world below could easily carry on without me and underneath my canopy dwelling. They could sell the property, for all I care. None need know I live up here. Things could carry on as they will, below.

Yes, I could stay here. It’s all so easy to see and understand from here. Here, I am on the edge of life and limb. The wind swings the tree, and me with it. My life is completely in the balance of Now. Branches could break or I could slip. Yet all seems sturdy enough. Still, I am really into this moment because of my acute awareness of the specialness in being here. The wind won’t let me forget that I am here only because greater powers have given me leave.

When I look out to the hills and valleys, out over my orchard, there’s almost an irresistible urge to leap off and soar like the hawks I’ve so often observed from below. I could almost do it.

But, I have this life as it is, a sacred and precious gift I’ve still so much yet to comprehend. It’d be premature and the height of arrogance to pitch it to the winds.

I’ll sit here, in quiet expectation as my head presses up against the blue vale of sky. Perhaps I will be afforded a glimpse beyond. The Sun is so much more present and alive here. He seems to be sitting with me in the branches. Stillness and beauty emerge like guests for dinner and conversation. No one will climb up here to hand me a bill or tell me a lie. I’m alone with majesty and glory here. Of course, they’re in my living room, too, down in my much-in-need-of-repair-and-renovation house. They’re in the company of my wife, and friends, though few. I’m not an unlikable man, eccentric though I am and often wrong in many things of consequence. I’m not fleeing the world or hiding out. In fact, I feel that here I’m refitted with a sharpened sword, a clearer eye, not because this place is special above others, but because I here allow myself to stop, pause, check in with a greater truth and beauty. The fragrance of it and its glorious sound are always present in every corner of creation. Time and again I fall from its wonderful company, only to be once more swept up by its ineffable grace and grandeur as the yearning for true Home eventually, as it must always do, strikes me dumb and humble.

Everyone desires that blessed reunion. Few have the courage to weather the turbid seas of our world and remain steadfastly fixed upon the shore’s Beacon that guides to safe port. Few have the balls to climb up into a one-hundred-foot tree to see anew! How many startlingly majestic trees have I walked under unaware? Many, I can assure you. Perhaps needless to say, I refer not only to our natural companions, but also to those hidden, mystical trees of ideas, in whose forests we walk surrounded. If I half-close my eyes, I can see softly teeming in etheric winds, the oak of dedication, the blue spruce of sincerity, the cedar of humility, the sequoia of wisdom…

From up here, a parade of facts, fictions and precious truths smiling just above, passes before my quieted gaze. I enjoy the act of crafting word. But this craft, like any other, fails to convey what surges within.

The air is so clean up here. I can see almost to the Sierras themselves, in the neighborhood of lovely Tahoe.

Below, a truck passes, filled with logs from the surrounding forest. Life’s activities, life’s demands, continue. The gem of mind, despite the protests of its bodily encasements as they go through the press, will continue to be honed, refined, and cleansed, to become a better reflection of what can’t be spoken.