Got up at 5 a.m. today to go to a sunrise site. 6 below zero on the thermometer. Roads were good until I got up on top, then they turned to yuck. I was traveling so slowly, that I couldn’t make the hike to the photography point in time for sunrise. I guess I should have known better and started earlier, but that’s just the way I am. I came back to Moab for breakfast and to figure out what I should do. Went back to Arches for another beautiful hike. On the trail I met another foreigner (well, a Canadian–they’re foreign, aren’t they?) and had a nice chat about Taoism, Ma Nature and climate change.
Taoism is one of my favorite study areas. When I was in China, I visited the Dong Shan monastery, where Lau Tzu is said to have written the Tao te Ching (Daodejing in Pinyin, the current Chinese transliteration method). It was a magical place, as one would expect, and it deepened my interest in the discipline. At some point in our conversation, it dawned on us that we were witnessing the principles of the Tao at work. Wei wu wei, or effortless effort, or work without effort, is a guiding principle of the Tao. Lao Tzu’s primary example is water. Water is soft, yet water can do amazing things just by following its nature. We saw some fine examples of that.
Oh, this isn’t the Canadian I met, nor is it water at work, but I found him and decided to include him in this post. (Don’t forget to click on the images to enlarge them.)
Desert Bighorn
Then there’s the water at work in Arches:
Juniper and Icefall, Arches NP
And
Icefall, Windows, Arches NP
And, there’s one more thing water does quite nicely: reflect.
Reflections, Colorado River
More to follow.
Bob
The photographs from this post and the earlier one of the Arches gave me a sense of the spirituality of this place and what you must have felt being there. Glad you got to share that with a fellow traveler. These photographs are beautiful, and though I know it was challenging, I appreciate seeing these beautiful formations with snow and ice on them.
Thank you for sharing.