On our little pier this morning, they'd left the gate open to the ramp that goes down to the jetty. It's usually locked. I was the only person on the pier. Down I went for a new view of the pier itself.
It was a calm, sunlit, very clear morning, the sort of morning that sometimes gets called "magical." I can see why, but it's not magic, it's greater than that - a chance to feel the complete nowness of it all. Clarity in the world around, clarity inside the mind. No need for exaggerations, or even for adjectives and superlatives. Though it must be said, it was a pretty superlative day!
I was alerted to it all by a heron coming in to land back at the water's edge - the slow, determined wingbeats low over the water, the little turn and uplift, then a drop onto long legs. I watched him closely, until the heron, the morning (water, hills, sea-smells, buildings, distant workaday noises) and this organism writing to you now felt - identical. The same thing/s.
I grabbed the chance to get close to the water - not the edge of the waves for once, instead I was close to the flowing, ever-changing ripples and swirls.
All matter changes, flows - the tide, me, even the distant mountains - and all matter is also now.
"Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present, all time is unredeemable."
Or - you can't put your foot in the same tideflow twice.
A memory is a present event, the future is a present event, in my mind. The present is the only place I am, and yet it is instantly gone, as soon as it arrives. So where am I?
I am on the end of the pier, in the now, with the heron. That's all I can say, and it won't really do. You can't describe the non-verbal state of mind through words, because it's a state of being. You can teeter round the edge of it with words, but that's trying and of necessity failing to describe a Zen state, it isn't being in it.
Back to the water, then.
I turned and walked up the ramp. I'd been alone on the pier, but now a steadily increasing number of people were walking about. Contrary to my feelings of defensive privacy and anxiety about rubbish and noise in a previous post (the Secret Valley walk), I found myself pleased to see these people wandering around in the slightly aimless and relaxed way you should wander when you're on holiday. I found myself feeling thus, I wasn't trying to be nice. They were welcome by the water, and I hope it spoke to them. I find it usually does.
Moel Siabod is a favourite mountain for the walker who is in the - let's say the prime of life plus some. It stands alone, so it has fine views all round of much of northern Snowdonia's mountains and moorlands. It's quite easy to get at from the A5. It's satisfyingly mountain-shaped, yet not too high at a little under 3000 feet. And as the years go by, every 100 feet less of ascent is - noteworthy.
Much harder to describe, and certainly unphotographable, was my state of mind on the way down Siabod the other day. I was alone for a while, and tired. As I plodded on, my feet seemed to be finding their own way, which is not to be recommended in the shattered rock around the summit, but fine on the path above.
I found myself in the slightly detached, accepting, calm sort of state that can come during a formal sitting meditation. Things seemed right just as they were, although my legs ached and I was weary.
I was in and with where I was whilst I was there. In the present moment. Impossible to describe, it can only be hinted at.
So it wasn't so much "what Siabod says" as in "what the water says." It was more what Siabod had done, to make me feel so much part of it.
When I caught up with the others, we agreed it had been a wonderful day out, a splendid and not too difficult scramble up the east ridge (Daer Ddu), lovely weather, some of the best views in Snowdonia, uncrowded. All useful categories and responses.
I wondered if anyone else had entered, for a few minutes, the state I'd been in, but it's not really a topic for discussion whilst you're easing your boots off and looking forward to tea and cake.
The benefits of being in the present moment lasted until long after the tea and cake. As did the aching knees, but it was worth it.
