Chapter 8: Rafting the Rolling Thunder: The emerging creative energy of the universe

By Frosty Wooldridge

“This grand show is eternal.  It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is every rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.”

                                                                                               John Muir

            This was a day of rest—do nothing—relax and sit around.  I got up and returned to my rock to read.   The river was down.  My rock was dry.  The sun readied itself to rise over the canyon rim.  When it did, the river lit up and white water sparkled like diamonds.  The canyon turned red/tan/gold/ black/brown in the many cliffs above me. 

The sun rose high in the sky from the eastern end of the canyon and burned hot on my cheeks and neck.  It was a scorcher of a day.  I read and wrote until noon.  Gary came over and invited me to come up to the end of a small box canyon to spend the rest of the day in the shade and near a cooling waterfall.  A 25-minute walk carried me out of the 103-degree heat.

A half-hour later, I packed up my chair, some food and headed up the canyon.  Gravel and boulders served as my pathway up a dry riverbed.  This small canyon was cut from centuries, in fact, millions of years of flash floods.   Great swaths of rock had been swept away by erosion.

I walked on until the canyon ended with a waterfall dropping a shower of water from a green plant (that had grown into the cliff face) 20 meters overhead.  It was a horseshoe-shaped rock walled sitting room.  Layers of sandstone created a multi-colored mosaic tapestry for our enjoyment.  A red/tan rocky floor completed the room with a huge blue skylight above us.    Everyone  sat and read, or played chess and backgammon.  I sat down and read Depak Chopra’s “SEVEN LAWS OF SPIRITUAL FULFILLMENT.”  It was a cool 80 degrees in the shade and the spray from the waterfall cooled the air even more. 

During that five-hour stay, several people sat in the pool beneath the waterfall.  When Sally came up, she laid on her back and stayed in the falls until she had cooled off.  Wocniss hiked up for the fourth time and he too, relaxed in the pool.   

By 5:30 in the afternoon, the day waned.  Everyone packed up and walked back down to the main camp.  I stayed behind to listen to the silence.  It quieted my soul.  I walked out at dusk.

As I walked along, Chopra’s words played on my mind.  This life is an adventure and it is a giving up of what is known to move into the unknown.  It’s like walking.  We don’t walk so much as we fall forward into the future.  As we are about to fall on our faces, our other foot moves out to stop of us from falling.  Yet, we keep falling and saving ourselves.  When we do that, we give ourselves to uncertainty.  It’s scary and exciting at the same time.

Chopra’s word echoed in my mind, “Relinquish your attachment to the known, step into the unknown, and you will step into the field of all possibilities.  In your willingness to step into the unknown, you will have the wisdom of uncertainty factored in.  This means that in every moment of your life, you will have excitement, adventure and mystery.  You will experience the fun of life—the magic, the celebration, the exhilaration, and the exultation of your own spirit.  Uncertainty is the fertile ground of creativity and freedom.”

In so many ways, I’ve been accused of being too enthusiastic. A friend of mine, Pam, also possesses uncommon enthusiasm.   Some people actually recoil from her energy.  What they don’t know is that her vibrancy is living energy.  The root word for ‘enthusiasm’ is Latin for ‘en theo’ which means: ‘with God’.  If God is the ‘emerging creative force of the universe’, then, anyone with a great deal of ‘enthusiasm’ is continually moving with God or with the emerging creative force.  No wonder such people are ‘enthusiastic’.

Would you rather be around a dull person or do you turn on to an enthusiastic person?  Do you like the safety of the known or the unknown?  Richard Bach, the creator of Jonathan Livington Seagull, wrote in his “RUNNING FROM SAFETY”:  “Why does growing up spiritually mean never growing up?  Can we peacefully co-exist with the consequences of our choices?  Why is it that only by running from safety can we make our wildest dreams take flight?”

I’ve been trying to figure that one out all my life.  I’m going to keep trying. I’m going to keep my spirit alive by keeping my enthusiasm at full throttle.  Pam will, too.

One day, the answers most certainly will appear.  If not, I’ll keep trying. That’s the adventure of living:  “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

As Winston Churchill, the great Prime Minister of Britain said on his death bed, “Never, never, EVER give up!”

##