Go Ask a Mountain

Some people postulate a hierarchy of value based on sentience. Under this system, dumb objects that have no observable responsiveness can be used as tools with impunity. You don't have to feel empathy for the hammer you repeatedly bash into a nail. Stones and substances, lacking agency, have no moral ontology under this worldview.

To me, these stones are ancient guardians.

Next up the pyramid come the responsive "primitive" beings, natural or manufactured, which humans imagine we can manipulate for our own purposes. These items are said to have no sense of self, mere automatons without feelings or thoughts, whose functions we imagine we can exploit at will. Plants cannot initiate slave revolts against their plantations.

A lodgepole pine flexes is muscles.

Not even animals are generally granted a place at the table, except as meat, or as more responsive automations suitable for servitude. They are capable of suffering, so "humane" treatment of them becomes a human obligation.

One of my favorite people, my dog Brisket.

We are shocked whenever we "discover" that a magpie can recognize itself in the mirror, dolphins have language, or that elephants mourn their dead. We fascinate ourselves with characters like Data from Star Trek TNG, and the ramifications of Sophia's citizenship. These spikes of high intelligence under our purview torment the ethicist.

Well, what about ranking our fellow humans, and advanced synthetic machine sentients by their "Intelligence Quotients"? Isn't that the next logical conclusion? That if a person is vegetative, they might as well be harvested by their superiors?

Some plants do resist harvesting!

All of the above is the worst delusion humankind ever invented. Ranking our fellow passengers on this material plane, placing an elitist capstone on top, has propelled all of the current atrocities and injustices, resulting in pollution and desecration as far as our grasp may reach, beyond our Earth's very atmosphere. It has resulted in the current mass mind control called the Cremation of Care.

Flashy but parasitic

The transhumanist agenda of simultaneously turning humans into robots, and robots into persons, is at its basis a goal of slavery and world domination.

Even the mighty must fall.

When brings are truly free, as is natural and sacred, they are free to exist as their own ends, or telos. If you want to know what somebody's telos is, you ask them. And then, you still your inner cacophony--and listen deeply. If you want to know the ethical way to treat a family member, you must stop treating them as a means to your ulterior motives, but as an end in themselves. It has been called relating as I and Thou. The trick is knowing that everything on this planet has its own sacred ends and purposes.

A manzanita longs to flower for fruition.

Even the insentient objects that comprise the building blocks and tools we avail ourselves of have their telos. There is a story in a Michael and Kathleen Gear First People of North America series where the acolyte stubs his toe on the same rock every morning when fetching the medicine man water. He curses it, until he asks it, "Why do you trip me every day?" The stone replies, "Why do YOU kick me every day?"

Bare stone is all this succulent requires.

So lately, as I daily stub my toe on the mindless savagery of worldly affairs, I wonder who to ask for higher wisdom. We are embroiled in a kind of Byzantine Iconoclasm where the capstone's veneer of authority has toppled. Who can possibly be trusted to grant me the understanding I seek to continue with my project, what I like to call the Creation of Care.

Navigating tumbled boulders

Go Ask a Mountain

I go contemplating human foibles while navigating the San Andreas Fault. Tectonic forces toy with jutting crags of earth. Weather polishes and erodes them, and living things blanket and populate them, an ephemeral carpet.

How long is a human lifespan? "The San Bernardino Mountains achieved their current elevation a few million years ago." https://geomaps.wr.usgs.gov/archive/socal/geology/transverse_ranges/san_bernardino_mtns/index.html. The stone blocks propping up existence here are billions of years old!
I am but one granule of decomposed granite flowing inexorably with the massive landslide, a liquidity of falling pebbles.

Modern humans are spoiled; my husband drove us to the very top of Bluff Mesa overlooking Big Bear Lake. We were instantly transported into a serene Eden: Bluff Lake Preserve.

He kissed me goodbye at mile 1, and Brisket and I headed off on our 10.5 mile trek plunging over the lip of the mountain into the creek below. Then we'd be climbing back out on an agonizing 3 mile set of switchbacks, where our hero would meet us and drive back home.

Source: https://photographyontherun.com/prun.asp?id=1146

The plush meadow is presided over by the Champion Lodgepole Pine, which is over 450 years old. No tree hugger has long enough arms for her embrace. She towers over the mountaintop as a witness to the cycle of humanity over the course of countless passing generations.

Our planet is like a gemstone with a myriad of exquisite facets. With every twist of the trail onto north facing vs. south facing slopes, the flora and fauna changes. Changes in elevation and exposure refine the community sustained by the firmament of this mountain. Primordial forces beyond our puny scope pulse and flow. The trail is at times a fragrant tunnel of blooming shrubs, at others, it is a barely-there trace across a steep face of scree. A kindly oak offers me its gnarled, bare root as a balustrade as I spider crawl over the slippery gravel.

The downhill plunge is brutal on my knees. By mile 5, I am kind of sidling, limping, and trying to favor the weaker of my two weak knees, when a large hawk feather appears on the trail before me. I stick it in my ponytail, and Hawk tells me: "Don't flap. Float!" I feel into my body and alter my gait to float over the uneven terrain. I choose each footfall and claim it as I allow gravity to propel a half jog.

Glades of black oaks and oceans of ceanothus!

Mile 6-7 folds into a gulch of deep shade and Giant Redwoods. Ferns and thimbleberry thickets choke the padded loam. Siberia Creek returns to grace the trail with its cool tinkling twinkles. Gravity rules life in the mountains. Everything is constantly falling into entropy, but the passion of mortal life keeps sweeping it up and organizing it.

This descent is over 3300 feet, and I still haven't hit bottom yet. It is still a freefall through a cathedral of pines and live oak trees, hushed and profound. The generosity of their acorns form drifts on the ground.

The next bend winds past Siberia Creek Group Campground, a primitive site for fishermen and hikers. And the next thing I know, I find myself on the gurgling shores of Bear Creek.

I peeled off my shoes and socks, and sprawled like a mermaid on a boulder in the middle of the creek to eat my lunch. My dog devoured his own meal, and stretched long and low in the bright green grass. Clusters of peppermint and stinging nettle decorate the edges of the stream. White alder trees strive to outdo one another in height for access to sunlight in the narrow canyon.

I lose track of time in this feminine slot of the mountain, drifting my toes next to little brown trout, and gazing at birds so busy all around me. The sun begins to join the dance of entropy, falling slowly behind the ridge I must climb. I fill my pack with filtered mountain creek water, and begin the steep ascent.

Again, I ask the mountain: teach me enduring truth. And the mountain serves me an ordeal in an idyllic setting. This southeast exposure gets full sun from dawn until now, and it has exploded into full bloom. The perfumed air dazzles my senses and I push myself against the current of gravity.

My dog and I took frequent breaks when our hearts and lungs felt pushed to their limits. The switchbacks keep serving us up first a view of San Bernardino Peak, then the Snow Valley Ski Resort ridgeline silhouetted against the setting sun. Gazing across the wide traverse we crossed uplifted me as I regained thousands of feet of elevation. Perspective inspires.

Most of this climb up Camp Creek Trail, I asked the mountain again and again: Why? Why visit a botanical garden on a stairmaster? The ends and means get all discombobulated, and the only truth is my straining quads and how quickly I am running out of water. And the beauty just keeps on unrolling and enfolding me. As I accomplish my telos, I know. The Mountain is its own answer.

Love,cat
@creationofcare

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