AN UNEXPECTED RETURN

Fiddleneck and Popcorn:
San Joaquin River Gorge Special Recreation Management Area

RETURN TO WARD LAKE

     Recently I drove over Kaiser Pass, edging along the treacherous, single-lane road that forces drivers to take turns hugging the cliffside. Feeling adventurous, I ignored the turn-off to Mono Hot Springs and came unexpectedly upon a small lake, no more than a pond really, where tules were flourishing next to the road. Across the lake a rock formation rose like the grandest, most formidable cathedral on earth. The place seemed eerily familiar, so I parked the car and stretched my legs. Suddenly, as I gazed at the lakeshore, I noticed a blue dragonfly, which transported me back to a moment in my childhood forty years ago. Whatever I was supposed to think or feel or be fell away, and, just like forty years before, I experienced pure being in a timeless place.

     As a child, I usually didn’t associate experiences with specific geographic locations, so I didn't know the name of the lake or its relationship to other places. I’m still surprised when childhood memories unexpectedly flood back to me after I encounter a creek or river or lake that I once haunted for a few hours. My father, in search of a fishing hole, had ended up at Ward Lake early one summer morning, a drive from Fresno of almost three hours. We must have left home during the wee hours because I woke up as he was parking the car, not long after sunrise. The first thing I encountered as I was dashing to the shore was a sapphire dragonfly hovering in the tules. 
     

The San Joaquin River:
San Joaquin River Gorge Special Recreation Management Area

     Like all twelve year olds, I had dreams that I was sure were going to come true. Almost all, of course, have since vanished. As I stood gazing at the dark lake as a child and as a man, I wondered uneasily why we choose not to stay in such a timeless place. I concluded as a child that human society must offer something better. As a man, I wasn’t so sure. A place like Ward Lake puts a lot into perspective.
     The quiet lake and the huge trees and the massive rocks gave me the uneasy feeling that most of what we think and feel and believe and dream about is just noise, yet we play the same tune over and over as if the world depends on it. At Ward Lake the tune vanished, and for a moment I felt afraid. I longed to return to a place where I could hear the noisy tune of civilization. At that moment, the tree trunk that I was standing on reminded me only of death and chaos. I had a bizarre desire to clean up the humus and the fallen branches, to pull the dead, water-logged trees from the dark water. I sighed as I stared at the awesome rock rising high over the lake, its reflection extending deep into the water. I couldn’t imagine a way of making the rock less intimidating. I was faced with an “otherness” that I could not control.
     

Goldfields and Popcorn:
San Joaquin River Gorge Special Recreation Management Area

     I realized then that I was having an irrational desire to manage an ecosystem that contained its own inherent order. I wanted to recreate the place in the image of humanity, to restart the tune that I understood so well. Yet in the quiet something inside of me said no, let it go, and once again I returned to a state of simply being. I felt complete. It seemed easy, as if all I ever had to do was make a conscious choice to let go of the fear of losing my identity, but I soon suspected that I wouldn’t be able to maintain that feeling for long. 
     The lake and the massive rocks and trees were imbued with a life that did not need humanity at all, which inexplicably troubled me. I strolled back to the tules where the blue dragonflies hovered and bobbed here and there. I remained still, conscious of my breath, letting go of the noise in my head, contemplating the otherness, as if I were meditating with my eyes open.

Fiddleneck and Fiesta Flowers:
San Joaquin River Gorge Special Recreation Management Area

     I remembered seeing dragonflies all the time when I was a child, sapphire and ruby red and shimmering green, and it occurred to me that I had not encountered one in many years. Suddenly I missed them terribly. Where had they gone? Were their populations decimated by cultivation and pesticides and urbanization or was I just visiting the wrong places? I felt a profound sense of loss as I gazed at a blue dragonfly hovering nearby. I wanted to snatch it and hold onto it. Then I remembered that my father had died about five years after our trip to Ward Lake.
     Once again a sense of chaos and death and the unknown overwhelmed me. I felt like a Puritan at Plymouth Rock facing the dark forests of an unchartered continent. I wanted to cut down the trees and level the ground and create a safe, comforting, glitzy civilization where suffering and death could be hidden away and ignored. I wanted a city to spring up on the hill. 

Popcorn Flowers below Bluff:
San Joaquin River Gorge Special Recreation Management Area

     Yet the sense of timelessness again enveloped me. I felt renewed, like I was a child again, like my father was still fishing somewhere by the lake. I wanted him to remain there in the brilliant sunshine, dwarfed by the magnificent trees and rocks, his shining line deep in the dark lake. Of course, I knew he wasn’t there, but because in my mind there had been no passage of time, he was standing there, his body a still shadow in the dark water, the lake even more sublime because of it. 
     I was snapped back by the clock. I had to head home. I shook my head, suddenly feeling queasy, as if my inescapable need for human order was a chronic sickness that always eventually blocks any connection with nature. I wanted to silence the noise in my mind for good and just listen to the quiet lapping of the water and feel the timelessness and the sunshine and the breeze.
     At that point I realized that deep in my soul I needed the quietness and the sense of otherness, even if it was occasionally accompanied by a feeling of being out of control, but I also needed human order, the noisy song of civilization. I needed to strike a satisfying balance, and I hoped that my children wouldn’t lose the rejuvenating sense of pure being and timelessness and otherness. 
     We need wild public lands near where we live, such as the San Joaquin River Gorge Special Recreation Management Area, which might soon be buried under hundreds of feet of water if Temperance Flat Dam is approved. We need those places to rejuvenate us and help us maintain our sense of continuity and our connection with something beyond us--with something sublime.