Finding Awe at Tinaja Ridge

For at least a half dozen years, maybe more, my wife, Cedar, and I have been spending one or two days each year with seven to ten others at a mountain retreat located a forty-minute drive northwest from our house. For those of you who don’t know, we live in Boulder, Colorado, a smallish city that’s home to the main campus of the University of Colorado. Boulder has several other claims to fame, not least that it lies in a valley on the eastern doorstep of the Rocky Mountains. It’s a wonderful place to live. But this blog isn’t about the wonders of Boulder; instead, it concerns finding wonder 1,000 feet higher than our mile-high location at what the husband-and-wife owners, nature educators, call the Wild Heart Center for Nature & Psyche. So, on May 25, 2024, we left home at 9 a.m. to take part in an all-day program called “Rewilding Heart: Communing with the Living World.”

Gene and Lauren, our leaders, own a 10-plus-acre, boulder-covered property high above a sparsely settled valley near Lyons, Colorado. Between them they have three master’s degrees and several decades of experience supporting groups and individuals in nature-based human development. Usually we attend their day-long Summer Solstice program, but this year we couldn’t and substituted this day in late May. Typically, the group begins by sitting in a circle in a clearing at a high point on the ridge. Our leaders’ dog, Ruby, spends time with us as well. After a brief general introduction to the day including a poem by Mary Oliver, we are sent on a 15-minute solo exploration with instructions to “find awe.” I am attracted to a tight line of two-way ant traffic which manages not to have accidents between those hastening for some unknown reason in opposite directions. Where are they going and why? How do they keep from crashing into each other? I also find myself standing between two closely situated ponderosa pines and fancy myself in the transporter room on the Starship Enterprise. Not twenty seconds into it, I feel as if I am about to beam up to parts unknown. The drum sounds, however, calling us to reassemble in the clearing. After a feedback session where participants share their experiences—and it seems that everyone has had short but intense encounters—we are sent back out for a longer commune. I begin by going in a new direction, though one I’ve gone in at various times in the past. I hug and verbally greet a slender pine—one I’ve known from former visits. I then follow a narrow path and use my phone to photograph items that capture my attention. (See several pictures, below.) Soon enough, it seems, the drum signals for us to return. This time we pantomime our experiences. Later I have a chance to share a poem I’ve written called “Almost”:

When a cloud covers the sun
It’s almost cold
When the sun reappears
It’s almost hot.
As a human being 
I live in a field of Almost. 
But I also know
That Almost is a near neighbor
of Always.

After we have eaten our picnic lunches, we are assigned a long solo wander out on the land. Our instructions: Really try to commune in a two-way manner with the natural world. Remember that we too are part of the land and that it is part of us. Let our wander be a kind of family reunion with our long-lost relatives, the Earth and all her children. This time my body insists on a biology break in the owners’ home before I set forth. When I came out, I notice a nearby Hollywood swing that calls to me. Soon I am fast asleep until a strong wind, seemingly out of nowhere, along with a few big drops of rain wake me up. So I head for the nearby teepee, our gathering place in case of the forecast rainstorm. Despite missing the afternoon walkabout, I feel really full and continue my nap on the teepee floor. We end our day together and with our wild family in nature by sharing our experiences. Cedar and I return home, relaxed, refreshed, and—in some ways—no longer the same persons we were when we left. Awe had done its job.

Photos from my longer morning walk at Tinaja Ridge