Rime Ice

Standing on the abyss lying between subject and object.

I started the hike from the East Portal of Moffat tunnel. My first time here I was skeptical as I drove the car up the dirt road to the portal following the tracks lodged into the mountain. What a scar I thought.

As I came up through the trees it was snowing and it was quiet except for my breathing. I had the tails of my skies tucked into the pockets on the bottom sides of my pack, and lashed to the top straps. Coming out of the tree line it soon felt more exposed and the summit was above the clouds. I passed Rogers Pass and Heart Lake to my right and started up the slope towards the peak. At around 12,000 feet I entered the clouds.

There was more wind, and I guess more snow in the air. My sight was severely restricted. I could see my boots and a few feet in front of me. The supercooled water droplets of the cloud, known as rime ice, was forming on my outerwear as icy needles. The whiteness of the slope blended into the whirling snow. There was a clear sense of climbing, descending, or traversing. A type of dead reckoning guided by the steepness of the slope.

The challenge faced here is that there is no place to start, and just this vague idea of which direction we should start out after. Like climbing a mountain in a snow storm. You have an idea of where you are going. It is either up, down, or traversing, and much more than that is unknown. We carefully move upward with rime ice on our outer gear.

This family of ideas that move before me have yet to be connected into some kind of coherent personal story. And in the end it must be a personal story because it has already been said. I hazard to state that these ideas are deeply connected to what makes us human, and will lead us to a clearer picture of what that humanness is.

May all living things find their release from our suffering;
May all living things find peace in our existence.
May all living things.

The writings of C. G. Jung’s [Jung1956] have been influential on my thinking. In the Symbols of Transformation he states the following:

Has mankind ever got away from myths? Everyone who has his eyes and wits about him
can see that the world is dead, cold, and unending, Never yet has he beheld a God,
or been compelled to require the existence of such a God from the eveidence of his
senses. On the contrary, it needed the strongest inner compulsion, which can be only
explains by irrational force of instinct, for man to invent those religious beliefs
whose absurdity was long since been pointed out by Tertullian.

C. G. Jung, Symbols of Transformation

He believes that the techniques and practice of psychoanalysis can be applied to the image of God. One can perform this scientific exploration of God as the projection of the human mind. So one such projection would be Hinduism, and another Christianity. I found this to be a remarkable idea. I can throw in The Origins and History of Consciousness by Erich Neumann [Neumann1956] here.

His development of the idea of a collective consciousness is interesting [Jung1978].

… the tide that arose in the unconscious after the First World War was
reflected in individual dreams, in the form of collective, mythological Symbols
which expressed primitivity, violence, cruelty: in short all the powers of
darkness. When such symbols occur in large number of individuals and are not
not understood, they begin to draw these individuals together as if by magnetic
force, and thus a mob is formed. Its leader will soon be found in the individual
who has the least resistance, the least sense of responsibility and, because
of his inferiority, the greatest will to power. He will let loose everything that
is ready to burst forth, and the mob will follow with the irresistible force of
an avalanche.

C. G. Jung, Civilization in Transition

Another author who has had a major impact upon the direction of my ideas is Loren Eisley [Eiseley1979].

End with the Poem on his Birthday [Thomas1971]. The ambush of his wounds, and the rebellion in light of all that is seen and reasoned about. The “thinking reed” of Blaise Pascal. Our dignity arises out of our movement towards self-awareness and our ability to understand our place in the universe. That we are God looking back upon itself.

Navigating by falling stars instead of the North Star.

Thirty-five bells sing struck
On skull and scar where his loves lie wrecked,
Steered by the falling stars.

– Dylan Thomas

Citations

[Jung1956]

Jung, C. G. (2004) Symbols of Transformation. Great Britain. Routledge. The Introduction, and the following chapter Two Kinds of Thinking, are important to my thoughts going forward.

[Neumann1956]

Neumann, Erich (1954) The Origins and History of Consciousness. New York. Bollingen Foundation, Inc. The mythological stages in the evolution of consciousness. The psychological stages in the development of the personality. The balance and crisis of consciousness. Centroversion and the stages of life.

[Jung1978]

Jung, C. G. (1978) Civilization in Transition. Princeton University Press. The Fight With the Shadow.

[Eiseley1979]

Eiseley, Loren (1979) The Star Thrower. New York. A Harvest Book: Harcourt Inc. The essay The Star Thrower and his style of writing.

[Thomas1971]

Thomas, Dylan (1971) Collected Poems. New York. New Directions Books. The poem Poem on His Birthday.