5 minute read
The Liturgy of Autumn in the North Cascades
Story and Photos by David Inscho
“Both awe and wonder are often experienced in response to nature, art, music, spiritual experiences, or ideas. In the midst of these moments, we can feel overwhelmed by the vastness of something that is almost incomprehensible—it almost feels like what we’re witnessing can’t be true—like we’re seeing something that doesn’t fit with how we move through and understand our everyday lives.”
- Brené Brown
Thosefortunate enough to live here in Cascadia enjoy carefree access to wild places that inspire a trinity of feelings: wonder, reverence, and awe. In the moment, this can leave us speechless and deeply imbued with the incomprehensible.
What follows is an attempt to explore further and bring voice to that experience, or as Brené explains: “Awe and wonder are essential to the human experience. Wonder fuels our passion forcuriosity and adventure.”
Four seasons of vibrant color bless the Pacific Northwest. Our glorious springtime signals the sun’s return in a thousand shades of hopeful green, and the abundant summer sun yields a dizzying kaleidoscope of multi-hued wildflowers. Even winter’s colors can energize the senses as the forest’s understory is painted in the technicolor green of mosses, nourished by our generous rains.
But autumn is the culmination of the feast of color, a triumphant celebration of luminosity before the lights dim once again.
One of my most powerful memories of autumn is standing in a spindly grove of larches in a high mountain cirque around the first week of October. Several miles of off-trail travel in the Pasayten Wilderness meant solitude was assured when I arrived, reverent and humbled by my surroundings. Warm sunbeams sifted through the canopy. I wanted to inhale their light like oxygen.
A strong breeze above stirred a flurry of needles, causing them to drift brightly through the shadows and create a golden carpet of spent summer at my feet. There was divinity in those precious moments on the eastern margins of the Cascades that still lingers.
There is also a sort of divinity on our western slopes, draped with the ruddy robes of blueberry, not unlike the crimson of a high cleric, punctuated by burning mountain ash bushes. Every breeze carries the scent of frosted blueberries.
I have encountered black bears, sometimes in close quarters. I consider them acolytes of the backcountry; they remind us of our place, but they are wonderfully peaceable if we stick to the agreed-upon observances of respect: tread lightly, honor hierarchy, and say nice things as we pass from afar. Then we are freed to amicably observe our respective liturgies: the bear foraging for calories, and I, seeking inspiration through camera lens and pen. We both need to gird ourselves for the winter.
However memorable singular experiences can be, a collective understanding emerges from these pilgrimages, shared these days with many other lovers of beauty. It’s no mystery why cars clot the highways for miles around each trailhead or why the faithful shuffle the dusty trails en masse as if they were pathways leading to holy sites. I solemnly commune with these souls as they pass, seeking their own bliss.
There is a supplicating quality to a climb that leaves the pilgrim properly humbled. It is then we best comprehend an unbidden simplicity, an ineffable unity with all of life on this beautiful planet. There is an interesting paradox here too, and on occasion, ascending through a windy shiver of dry leaves and rattling seed pods can bring us unexpected grief, a sudden awareness of the ephemeral nature of our time spent dancing on this breathtakingly beautiful planet. But yet renewal is in the air: seed fuzz and the flashing silks of spider hatchlings ballooning upward on a sun-warmed breeze; or spawning salmon in the rivers below.
And let us not forget the autumn nights as they lengthen and set the stage for sparkling winter constellations. The cold has dispatched the mosquitoes and made it possible to once again sleep under deep starlight without a tent. The long cold nights bring a greater appreciation for the rising of our nurturing mother star, melting away the frosty crust from our sleeping bags. That same cold glazes high mountain tarns with a delicate filigree of new ice, illuminated by the morning sunshine. With the sun swinging lower toward the south, ridge line shadows may reach into the meadows with long cold fingers. Still, those shadows and the contrasting clarity of light in every scene ensure that the whole day is visually superlative.
Of all the seasons, autumn imbues me with a profound sense of the holy. These scriptures are written in a lush chorale of color shimmering in the stained glass reflections of high mountain lakes, rock faces as ornate as any cathedral, and larches chanting their golden prayers into vaulting blue skies. It is the staccato vespers of picas in yonder rockfall and more so these days, the incense of wildfires. It is an incomprehensible liturgy to behold.
While autumn occupies a special place in the calendar, I hope we can all find something sacred in our shared wild places, no matter the season.
This sacred beauty can make fervent believers of us all.
