There Stands Our Holy Ground
A sliver of a late June journey — five wood elves at an open-air mixer with gods and songs, trials and glimmers of real reality
We begin.
I’m immediately winded. I’ve always gotten winded easily, even when I was a trained runner in my prime.
I love where we are, but this feels abusive right away. Should the price of a few hours’ transcendence be so high?
But the cheaper options are for those less bold and daring, those who go cheap because they’re willing to accept less.
Not us. Not this day’s gang of five.
The worst comes after the dreaded beginning, after I’ve acclimated to being winded,because then comes the biggest challenge. The ritual begins in earnest; we’ve arrived at the Trial of Courage. The next thirty minutes brings us far greater physical challenge and mental terror than I ever remember — even after nearly a dozen times up this path, I never remember until I’m there.
I remember this part, of course — I remember that I always forget how hard and terrifying it is until it’s too late, but I also feel like maybe it can’t be that bad if I’ve done it so many times.
Then it’s too late and I’m terrified and battered. That, I say to my companions, is the sign that we are near the top of the ledge. We need only continue on a bit further and we get up over the crest.
Relief.
Then comes the second test — the Trial of Faith. The test here, as we disappear far, far off the map like the Monadnock Wood Elves that we are, is to continue on even when we become certain that we’ve missed our mark, that we follow an illusion not a trail, that the way has, by some spell or mischief, been closed to us forever.
Once more, when that moment comes — as ever in life — the destination lies just a few bends around the way. You just have to keep going and you’ll get there.
And we do.
Hardly is there ever a more joyful arrival — especially on such an occasion as this, the first (and very late) sacred climb of the sacred mountain of this blessed 2019 season.
We open the door to New England’s Living Room and inspect the interior. All is as well as can be expected, although no log is currently intact or in use and the roof still needs the repairs it needed last year. The steel door could use a little work on its frame. It could be worse, though.
We settle in, staking out the territory; not just the ground beneath our feet but all the lands spread before us from here to the sea. We let our spirits stretch out before us as our bodies stretch out on the rock and the dirt.
Removing our shoes as one does on holy ground, we plant the flag, marking this mystical in-between place not for the sake of the country that is, but the dream we fight for, the country that will be. By our hands and from our souls.
The heights await and we must be on.
The spine of Pumpelly Ridge is known well to all who pass by its ways as Gods’ Country. It is here that the divine beings — be they angels or demons or little gods or representatives of the bigger gods hiding away elsewhere, perhaps on greater heights — it is here that they converge, that they confer, that they conspire and construct.
We intrude, to be sure, but they abide it because we’ve paid the price of admission. It’s not by their grace that we gain entry, but by right and with limited exceptions it is not theirs to deny us.
We do well to be on our way with some small measure of humility. We see that holy majesty beneath our feet and in the wind and in the silent and sneaky expressions on the hardy scrappy pines and we feel the bond between us, the unity of our company, now already made something other than what we started at the bottom — *??* hours ago.
The gods we find here must let us pass, but they have their tricks and their messages, too. They can turn their mood and nature with but a snap of the finger — perhaps in ways directed at us, perhaps in response to matters wholly outside our purview, scope, and business.
We’re inside a cloud now, with water less falling as rain than being transferred from air to humans and ground, as though it were being applied by some misty spirit’s hand.
I put on my face of grit and determination.
The rain is nice, after all, in the season of Midsummer.
A gift and not a curse — for the most part.
“Ripple in still water, where there is no pebble tossed, nor wind to blow” — there before my eyes, except that’s no small fib with so much wind and water drops and spirit pebbles to make the ripples.
I think the point rather remains the same, still hearkening ever back to that fountain that was never made by the hands of men.
The rain left us another gift — a peaceful, deserted summit. Just us and the other clouds, flowing together and flowing apart.
High above that great forest in which we live and crawl and grow without usually ever realizing it, we see how we’re all just this one thing, drifting on over the surface of this planet like these clouds over these rocks, blowing through on our way from place to place.
And as we do and will do, the clouds moved on, the day brighter and more colorful than ever before, as though timed precisely to the moment of our descent.
There stands our holy ground.
We make our way down by the mossy brook and pass back into the world, but knowing, as we do, that we remain here. Not physically, of course, but in spirit — at least in part — we stay on these heights, above all, aware of that great forest in which we live. It’s not easy to maintain our awareness of this, but it’s there waiting for us whenever we go to look.