Wow, I've been busy. Busy in lots of different ways. Busy with work, busy with love, busy with life. I like being busy. It keeps me positive and focused on growth. It's made me think a lot about something I read that Stephen King said once. I am paraphrasing but he basically said that life is just a huge conglomeration of cycles of all different types, sizes, and speeds and every now and then various of those cycles line up in crazy ways in our lives. Before reading this I'd never thought of reality in this exact way but I love it. It makes so much sense to me and is simple if you don't think about too much. I have definitely been living some of those alignements lately in both positive and challenging ways.
For some reason, these thoughts have been making me think about an experience I had in college. It keeps coming up in my mind. I can't figure out why but it seems related in some way. Since I can't figure out why I keep thinking about it, I am just going to write about it and see if by the end of telling the tale I can figure out what it means for me in my life right now.
I went to college in northwest Michigan. It was a small state university. I don't really know why I ended up there. For some reason I think I chose it because I heard it was a "party" school - like all of them aren't. Guess I didn't realize that at the time. It ended up being the perfect place for me to be at that time in my life. The campus was pretty much the town and the town was right on the edge of this beautiful river and this huge national forest. I was a big time outdoorsman, mountain biker, fisherman etc. etc. at the time so that ended up being a good thing for me. I met some really great people who were in to the same things. We were a small, tight group of friends. We spent a lot of time in the woods doing a lot of things that were good for us and a few that were not. It was a spiritual time for me in that I spent a lot of time alone in the woods thinking about life, reality, God, the past, the future and everything in between.
I think it was my sophomore year. It was winter and had just snowed like 8 inches or more. The storm had passed and the sky was full of crystalline stars and a moon the size of Kansas and it was a weekend. My best friend and roommate and I decided to take a trip. We ended up deciding to go down by the river (I always think of Saturday Night Live when I say that).
The rivers in Michigan are primarily spring fed and due to the glacial moraines from the last ice age, of which Michigan's landscape is composed, they tend to meander like snakes until they reach the Great Lakes. This meandering is caused by the water finding it's way around the moraines. In doing so it carves big, half-bowl shaped wash-outs in the moraines along the banks.
Well, the campus as I mentioned was on the edge of this river and more specifically sat atop a VERY large and expansive moraine along the edge of which flowed the river. This river is decent sized averaging probably 100 feet or so across. So as you can imagine the banks of this river had lots of large bowls. Additionally, because the moraine was so large, it's edges rolled with forested hills and valleys created by the erosion of the receding glaciers. Not to mention that the river was frozen over and at each bend were little moutain ranges of ice formed by the tectonic activity of the frozen ice floating on the water below.
Anyway, as you can probably imagine if you try, the reflection of the moon on the snow covered hills made it one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen. I didn't care about the cold because I was so distracted by what I was seeing. When I looked at the profile of the tree branches against the night sky or the pattern of the forest against the white hills or when I listened to the wind blowing through the trees, all I perceived were patterns. It was very powerful for me because it was so intense and seemed so clear to me that it all had a spiritual definition behind it. Everywhere I looked I saw evidence of this, from the smallest snowflake to the wholeness of being immersed in those woods at that moment in time.
My friend and I towards the end of our evening decided to hang out at the top of one of the more impressive bowls and smoke and chat. The conversation pretty much immediately went to spiritual matters. We talked about the existence of God and whether this was all just completely random in nature and by nature. He was pretty certain it is all random. I think I'd already figured out that I believed it wasn't but his certainty made me question my thinking. Everything made me question my thinking at that moment so I guess a grain of salt was called for.
I think my mind keeps going to this memory lately because I think I have been struggling with my beliefs. Or maybe struggling to believe. It's easy to be uncertain when you have so many risks in your life all at once. On one hand I see these cycles manifesting themselves in my life in what seems like random patterns. On the other hand I see these moments of brilliant clarity where everything truly seems to be happening for my benefit in accordance with the themes in my life at that moment. The latter always seem to support my current Path and lead me farther down it. The former always make me question my Path.
This is all about my Journey I guess. Maybe this memory is just another tool for me right now but one that is being used on me instead of by me. Or maybe I will find it's use soon. Maybe I already have and just don't realize it yet. In any case, it's a good memory. One of those memories that you don't let go of.