Magic - for PMC - July 18, 2021

 

On one reasonably warm late winter afternoon I was sitting on a low rock wall just off the north end of the Kaw River Bridge. I looked down at the river running though this patch of the planet. I have come to know it well. Across the way, the levee trail cut across my view in a straight line and then it turned, heading downstream and out of sight. The still bare trees along the banks of river, hiding the distant horizon, were beginning to show hints of green. Spring was late in coming.

The limestone boulders on the face of the levee under today’s hazy sky were a sort of reddish beige. The day was a little windy. The river rippled slowly along its way between the levee on this side of the river and the far bank.  The river reflected the sky above as it always does. 

 

I sat watching the turkey vultures as they circled high up against the sky. They were soaring with hardly any apparent effort on the updrafts lifting off from the face of the levee. Everything around me seemed quite satisfactorily beautiful. It is all, of course, just a piece of the simple beauty that I have come to expect to see in the various places where I wander up and down the river. 

Walkers and runners and bikers passed me by as I sat there on the ledge. Ordinary people enjoying an ordinary day.

I tried making a few sketches of the scene in front of me with disappointing results. But I was not really disappointed. It was just a way to practice seeing what I was looking at. The river is a frequent subject. 

For me, the river has become more than just the muddy water of the Kaw. It is a place without clear boundaries, all of its parts drawn together into a whole, embracing an ever flowing river.  And so the river has become a place where I come to be myself. The river interests me. I find it beautiful. And in the end, the river is a place that is not really about me at all - and yet I belong here. The Kaw, an everyday river, an ordinary wonder. But the river is also a place where I sometimes glimpse magic.

After thirty minutes or so of sitting and watching, I was ready to move along. I was riding a bicycle that day and so I rode off downstream along the levee trail. I rode across along the line that I had been looking at just a few minutes earlier. Peddling easy, I looked down to see islands of rocks and sand dividing the slow current of the Kaw River. I kept pace.

I hadn’t decided how far I would ride. I simply rode along the top of the levee, both seeing and not seeing the world around me. You should know that seeing everything is simply not possible. The natural world is much too rich for that. But without attention, much of the world can become a kind of background. A blur. I usually try to pay enough attention to see some of the beauty around me. I usually succeed.

And then as I was riding, part way down among the levee rocks I spotted a good-sized silver ball. Now, that silver ball was indeed out of the ordinary, but I would hardly say it was magical. Still, I slowed to a stop and then I walked my bike down a nearby gravel path to a small grassy area between the levee and the Kaw. I then carefully made my way across a short stretch of limestone boulders, reddish beige in the hazy sunlight. They were haphazardly tumbled in front of me. I watched my steps and my balance.

The silver ball turned out to be larger than it had thought standing on the levee trail above. It was quite a bit bigger than a basketball. I picked it up. It was a thin-walled chrome ball, somewhat dulled from the weather and deeply dented in several places.

I had my camera along with me so I placed the ball back on the rocks and took a few selfies with me reflected in the ball. The trees growing along the river stood there for a backdrop. Then I made my way back over the rocks and began to amble towards the river. I had been in this place many times before. I call it Pilings Point. There was a barely visible trail to follow along through the grass and leaves toward the river. Through a tangle of mostly thin tree trunks and branches, I could see the broken pilings of a railroad bridge that crossed the Kaw here about a hundred years ago. The river was low. Spring rains would be welcome.

The river – this stretch of the Kaw River and the river bank here – is as it is, the same and yet always changing. That is also how we human beings generally experience almost everything. Things are same. Things change. But this is what matters. The world waits for any of us to see it as it is and as it is becoming. And so for me, once again, this particular place held out its everyday beauty for me to see.

I sat down on the bank. After watching the sunlight playing on the surface of the Kaw for a while, I got up and turned to walk back to my bike and the levee. 

And now how else should I say it? I simply turned around - and the ordinary world disappeared. 

Magic.

It didn’t happen in an instant. But within a few gradual moments it was as if I had entered a kind of enchanted tangled river bottom forest. I lack the words to describe the sensation that I felt then. Nothing had apparently changed, but I somehow very much felt as if I was no longer in the familiar place that I knew. 

I saw the majestic, rough-barked tree with downed limbs around it. A tree that had been growing there for a hundred years or more. And other trees stood around it as though sentinels. Large vines as thick as my arms were twining up the tree trunks. And beyond my transfixion, that pale reddish beige of a hazy sunlit levee. I had seen it all before. Many times. It was all entirely the same. Except that with my turning, somehow the place I was in had become wholly magical. I existed there, motionless, within a moment of timeless wonder.

Then perhaps I broke the spell by deciding to take a few pictures. But I don't think that the kind of magic I am talking about is really like that. The magic is simply not about me at all. I think that I pass through its spell. Or perhaps it is the magic that passes through my being. The enchantment is neither bidden nor unbidden. I might miss  the magic if I haven’t opened myself to the possibility, but I don’t make the magic. It appears.

I suspect – it is not much more than a hunch, really – that magic might be always everywhere. We live within it unseeing. And then sometimes, somehow, we become aware of its presence. That afternoon I got a glimpse of the magic – for a moment - and then I came back to my ordinary life.

Let me be clear. I don’t think that there is a right word to describe my experience. Call it magic. Call it mystery. Call it whatever your want.The incomprehensible is not there to be explained. And so I have simply told you what I can tell.

It was just this: I was tramping through a perfectly good ordinary day, and then I was somewhere else. And then, some very brief moments later, I was back. 

But I am here to tell you now that there was indeed something like magic in between one ordinary moment and the next.

And so I did take a few pictures then, but really only to mark the day. And afterwards, I walked my bike up to the levee trail and rode back towards the bridge. Everything looked just as it had before. The rocks on the face of the levee were still a pale reddish beige. The hazy sun had settled closer towards the western horizon. It was time to go home for supper. The magic that afternoon hadn’t changed anything. 

Well, that's not entirely true. Magic changes me.