McNair Lake

Trip Date: October 3, 2010

As I gingerly ease the Tracker in and out of the large holes that crater the road leading away from McNair Lake, the springs in the seat creak and we sway this way and that. My passenger (contented and glowing from sucking in great drafts of beauty) leans over conspiratorially and says  "You won't blog about this place, right?"

I've heard this appeal before. The concern seems to be that if I show people what a special place it is they will all flock to it and trample the beauty into mud and gravel and then throw beer cans and old tarps in the water. We have seen this in too many other places already.

Lunch At McNair

The trouble is, that if the yahoos don't be-spoil it the forest companies probably will. The trees around McNair are getting big enough to harvest. Before long the saws will start to whine and the hillsides will lose their beautiful blanket of undulating fir to be replaced by a patchwork of logging cuts. Beauty is not nearly as valuable as logs and fiber.

I'm not against logging. I'm not a tree spiker or tree hugger. But I have to confess I feel pretty sad to think that this area will soon look like a half plucked chicken.

The Sayward forest should, in my humble opinion, be protected because of it's beauty. But my opinion isn't likely to have much effect on changing the fate of this place. Still, I do what I can. And part of what I can do is post some photos and at least let posterity see what a beautiful place this was before the loggers had their way with it.

Because of course once the saws get busy it will be a hundred years or more before it will look like this again. I'll be long gone by then. I wonder if my photos will remain? Probably not.

So what is this post about then? Perhaps just one human mind contemplating how everything changes and celebrating the beauty while it is still here.

For more photos of McNair Lake, click here.

The Defintion of Kanjaku

light stripped of blue
warms the shoreline reeds
the oboe's voice

Summer morning, toes in wet grass, reaching for the kite resting on the back of the lawn chair, large piece of duct tape over the tear. Also an evening as dad brings the power boat in, the wind blown out, the waves gently slapping stones, me on the dock, watching, sand in a line on my thigh. Also up the West Fork, fly rod in hand, sweat drying on the back of my neck, the way the elderberry  flowers are half turned to berries, the redness of ripe against green. And recently the sound of cooling metal, the softness of the silence lying out across the lake after the engine is turned off.

 Near Regan Lake

There are moments, fat as summer raindrops, which hit you from a blue sky. The sudden awareness of awareness. The sudden appreciation of slackness that would be exhaustion if you had worked for it, the sudden slumping of something inside, like a pile of sand slumps as it dries out next to a sand castle. That very fine sound of grains tumbling. It is a pleasant sensation, a deep adjustment in the muscles. And complex, because while being relaxed and tired, it is also sharp like pricked dog's ears.

Brewster Lake

In Chinese the word is xian, in Japanse, kan. A state of mind that is free from worry, open to embrace the Dao. The root kan is joined to jaku, which means lonely or still. Jaku has a active element though, even in the stillness, like the action of making oneself loose and open. Shaking out cares, limbering up. One translator puts it simple as, "carefree idleness," and that is not bad, but there is the missing element of being open to the larger meaning in things, to being open to the smaller meaning of things. Being open to whatever there is without expectation or anticipation. Just letting go and being present.

Gray Lake

out over the dark lake
wing tips peep
sharp specs in the silence