Once Upon a Time

Winston from Nobody Asked posed a question in his blog and suggested readers interested could answer there or in their own blogs with links back to his-- Things to do before you die. I liked the question but had a few topics I wanted to cover first, plus wanted some time to think about it.

Paraphrased: What things, that you have experienced, seen or done, do you think everyone should experience at least once in their lives?

He didn't say how many we should include. Leaving out big, family events like when I got married or my children/grandchildren were born, my best experiences have not been big ones. The things that stand out for me are moments. Here are a few--

Standing on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon in Arizona at sunset. The sun goes down and the air whooshes out of the canyon with an audible sigh. The colors deepen and the quiet seems to surround you with its peacefulness and timelessness. Even if others are nearby, their voices are hushed and the ageless canyon is all encompassing as the shadows in it darken and night falls.

Sitting on a big rock on the bank of the Madison River in Montana. The sun is shining and you feel it warm on your back. Nearby people fish by wading out a ways, casting their fly rods out into the river. Farther away you see pelicans land on the water as they also fish. A river raft goes by full of people laughing and talking. There is no place you have to be. Nothing you have to do and you are free to experience the moment and the river.

Chaco Canyon in New Mexico where you drive in over dirt roads that can become quickly impassable during summer storms. To stay, you camp in a small campground. Everywhere you feel the culture that built this place. The colors are intense, the ruins still very impressive from the time the Anasazi had this as their spiritual center. There are traces of their roads which led here from all around. The kivas are huge where sacred work was done before the people were compelled to leave possibly by intense drought of the times, overpopulation, or some cultural shift the cause of which remains mysterious with many speculations as to why and where they went but which no one can prove.

Experiencing the ancient Sinagua ruins in Sedona, Arizona, and it can be done many places. Hike up a small canyon where you have to bushwhack your way up a dry draw. At the head, crumbled under the rim are the remnants of a civilization long gone. You sit there and think about the women who sat there hundreds of years before. Later you watch the moon rise over some of those canyons. Walking to another ruin and hearing an Indian flute playing. Is that real? It seems ghostly. Even when you later meet the ranger who was playing the Native American song, it doesn't lessen the feeling of touching the past.

In the mountains, but desert is good too, hiking up a wilderness trail where you have never been (or have been) and coming around each bend with the expectation of new places of beauty, sometimes the air is full of butterflies doing their mating dance, sometimes a stretch of rapids in the river along the trail, maybe a pool where you can swim, sometimes seeing wild creatures before they run off. It's not what you see so much as the stretching out of the legs, the moving along, the smell of the forest (desert), the quiet, and a dirt trail underfoot.

Walking on a beach, scrambling over rocks to make it around the bend before the tide turns. In Road's End, Oregon, around the bend was a secret cove, accessible only at low tides, primal in its beauty. When you look at it, the birds landing and circling, the waves huge as they crash against the rocks, the mists rising on the air, the beauty is so pristine that you don't even want to enter. You remember it and hold it inside to retell sometimes to yourself or others.

Being with someone who is a soul mate of the sort where two are one in a way that goes beyond the flesh. It doesn't matter what you are doing. Just sitting on a sofa with your arms around each other is enough. It's not about sex, but I believe it is a mated experience. When you hold each other, your bodies seem to melt together. Logically, you know your flesh didn't really do that and yet it feels it did. When you touch, it goes beyond the five senses to a sense that you rarely tap into.

Waking up in the morning after a colorful, vivid dream that was so real you can still taste and feel it. Lying in bed and thinking of all the nuances of that dream and knowing it was a gift. Then someday learning what the dream meant, what it told you that you had needed to know.

Connecting with god in a personal way that, while you are communing, it seems to flow over you almost like a climax that fills your whole body with a glow that grows until it seems to be everywhere inside you. There is a spiritual ecstasy, a connection to the other side, to what we call god, that I don't think can ever be held onto, but we all will benefit from having known it for ourselves, not just heard about it.

Creating a piece of art, writing words where the flow moves through you like a tide. It goes beyond conscious thought as the feeling takes on reality in clay, paint or words. That kind of creative flow happens only now and then. When it does, the experience is exciting and you work to keep up as the ideas flow. For a few moments, you know you have tapped into the heartbeat of creation.

There are many others-- as well as things I have never experienced but know deep inside would be good. Some are dreams for the future that may never become real and yet in my imagination, they are.

So how about you considering this question (it's a fun one to think on especially if, like me, you are not the type to think backward often)-- What have you experienced or done that you believe everyone ideally should have known at least once in their lives? If you answer in your own blog, please put a link in comments either here or in Winston's blog.