OUT OF SIGHT; OUT OF MIND
Rex Burress
The remote control for the television came up missing, and as it is when something important can't be found, I was obsessed to find it, looking in the same places dozens of times! Finally, I found it, merely out of sight under a piece of paper!
Thus it is when any number of important things are out of sight, which usually means out of mind, too, unless it is something important like the remote, or a set of keys, or a billfold. Semi-panic can rage until the matter is solved.
When important places are out of sight, such as Oakland Feather River Camp, or a favorite National Park, or a special nook along the river, they are not completely out of mind when there are mind joggers like photographs and the written word to remind us that they exist. Memories are fugitive, but pictures and words are long-enduring.
I have before me a photograph of Spanish Creek that flows alongside Feather River Camp near Quincy, CA,, a seemingly contradictory title even though the creek flows into the river a few miles downstream. The picture shows the creek rounding a bend before tumbling over a small waterfall. The water continues slowly through a long, straight section, past a beach where Senior Camp used to have cookouts, and at the other end of that sector there is another bend right at the foot of a high bluff where I've seen rattlesnakes and dipper birds. Through the years at the camp-with-cabins, as camp naturalist I've seen a great variety of flora and fauna, and know a thousand niches and coves where certain animals and plants live. The photograph reminds me of those occasions.
The stream-edge Indian Rhubarb is in the picture, too, and away from the water, growing on the mountainside all the way to the top, are the conifers and black oak trees. That's where “Poop-Out Trail” awaits the arrival of the energetic city kids, who are not so rambunctious after being pooped out, according to the stressed councilors!
I know that Death Valley wonders are down there in the desert, hot in the June sunshine [117 degrees June 18, 2015], but I have seen the sands during winter pleasantness when the dunes are calm and curl away into the distance. Whatever the state of climate change and weather extremes, you know that some things will basically be there even with some variations. You can depend on it!
On the other hand, I hope Yosemite Valley will still be there for future generations, unblemished by too much embellishment, and that no more water-grabs out to claim another valley for water storage will creep into 'our' Yosemite National Park. I feel more confident about the mountaintops being there, exalting in the splendor of their thrust into the sky. I would expect Mt. Hoffmann to be there with its marmots and mule deer and the Sierra Club registry on top. I felt gratified to reach that summit where John Muir also climbed his first Sierra Mountain nearly a hundred years earlier, at a time when the Sierra Club didn't even exist! He was also the first to climb Hoffmann.
I know that ocean waves still pound the rocky shoreline at Muir Beach and go sliding over the sands time and time again. There is plenty of salt water along the edge of California, even though inland fresh water may be at a premium. The sound of the surf is a hauntingly melodious rhythm that will persist as long as the ocean water prevails and the moon tugs at the tide. You hope the sea-life will survive the follies of civilization and populate the tidepools with wonder forever.
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“Just because I cannot understand or see something doesn't mean it doesn't exist...understanding comes when, standing on a beach, we can sense the long rhythms of sea and earth that sculptured its landforms and produced the rock and sand of which it is composed and contemplate the force that populated the edge of the sea with life.”--Rachael Carson