Drowning in a Glass Half Empty

Wearily walking into the lobby of my residence hall, a group of my classmates gathered to embark on a pilgrimage through Poly Canyon. We meandered over to our rendezvous with our professor on a gravel road sided by a grove of eucalyptus trees rising up like a rib cage. I doubted that this was going to be anything like what Henry David Thoreau intended in his essay “Walking,” when he described walking as being “absolutely free from all worldly engagements.” If one frees oneself from worldly engagements, one may journey into mindfulness, a state of total awareness of being. We had a guide, we were a class, and we brought with us society. I carried a backpack with pen and paper, a sweatshirt, and cynicism heavier than the fog we drudged through.

Campus housing structures disappeared behind us, and we were on a road winding around hills. I observed sprinklers watering dead grass, telephone wires cutting through trees, and a dumpster full of waste, worsened by a car passing through our ensemble. We had a ways to go before we could get away from civilization.

My pessimism deepened as I listened to my classmates chatter in awe about deer on the hillside and heard our professor mention a toxic waste controversy. One deer stood majestically atop the hill, its dark, shadowy outline nearly transparent in the dense fog, while two others eyed us with less interest than we eyed them. I had seen more deer on a public golf course the day before. One of my classmates began her narrative aloud, adding to the worldly engagements I wished to remove myself from. Moving on, I passed under a stone arch onto a trail where I sat and wrote down my thoughts; drawing a blank, I agitatedly listened to the birds of morning, chirping back and forth.

After crossing a wooden bridge erected as a student project, we began our rocky climb to the top of Poly Mountain. I walked directly behind our guide, and was able to concentrate upon serpentine rock, not on the people now behind me. My feet stumbled over rock that has been developing for millions of years, humbling me in my comparatively insignificant existence. Serpentine provides a hostile environment for vegetation, and its hostility is reflected in the dwarfed trees and small plants inhabiting it. All of the organisms atop the mountain adapted to the environment, as my attitude was adapting away from cynicism. My deepened focus upon our climb up blessed me with an opportunity of mindfulness where I was completely aware of my being, each step and every breath.

For a moment we sat as a group to compose our thoughts, and I tried to keep my mind on the nature at hand. In front of me were golden bunch grass and a yucca plant. Morning dew was dripping off of the feathery tip of the grass, while the yucca plant stretched its leaves commandingly and forcefully over rocks, grass, and another yucca looking like an explosion of long, splintering leaves. The sun peeked through the fog barely enough to make the green plants glisten in the early rays. The most green was a leather oak, growing like manzanita along the mountaintop. Near the top of the mountain, holding a spider web sparkling with dew on intricate lacing shuddering in the breeze, the leather oak shimmered.

The sun appeared to take its time, knowing it would eventually prevail over the moist fog. The lighting was just right for me to see the moisture in the air floating past me. A girl’s black shirt provided a backdrop. The moisture flew frenziedly as if trying to escape the growing heat. Gray turned to green, red, and gold in the muffled morning sun. A tiny resurrection plant at my feet turned from brown to red. I noticed a faintly sweet fragrance, so I turned to find the blossom it radiated from, and realized it was simply a girl’s perfume.

The last visible telephone pole faded into the fog, and my cynicism faded away with the pole. As I neared the top of the mountain, I found a sample of the serenity that seems to radiate from Thoreau’s narrative on walking. At the peak, I looked back on the ground I’d surmounted, covered with sporadic yucca plants, miniature leather oak, golden brown bunch grass, and serpentine rock outcrops. Shifting my gaze from the ground, over a cliff, and into the sky, I felt awe as I gazed over Poly Canyon, the campus, and the town all covered in fog.

Bright, soft, and solid, the white cloud below looked firm enough to stand upon, while the mist radiating from the cloud disintegrated under the sun. The transparent blue sky shone brilliantly above it all, bringing out the brightness in the dark fog. Our position above the fog granted the illusion of standing at a great height. The tip of Bishop’s Peak protruded out of the fog like an island sitting above the sea. As the sea of fog receded to a lower level, before rising and vanishing, more islands of land were visible, and were in actuality, a solid land mass. Occasionally the fog rolled over the mountains, hiding them from view, as waves over rocks jutting out of water.

From above, the fog was a carpeting cloud, covering the town, the school, and my monotonous routine below. The sun warmed my back as if I basked on a beach, looking out to sea. Birds chirped, cows mooed, cameras clicked, and an oddly calming and reassuring white noise of car traffic were all audible. I was alone.

In the end, my cynicism is fog. I couldn’t have enjoyed the walk as much as I did without overcoming my negativity; moreover, I couldn’t have appreciated the beauty of the fog without walking above it, to look upon it in its entirety. I sauntered, walking towards a holy land. I gained mindfulness through looking at the bowl of milk that was Poly Canyon submerged in fog, focusing on every breath and each step upon ancient rock, feeling the dew from bunch grass cool the pokes of yucca bush, and traveling to a new place in body and spirit. I undertook a pilgrimage despite fighting it the best I could. Walking gradually beat my cynicism, as the morning sun slowly withered away the fog.