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What I've dreaded most about death is the prospect of leaving, of lapsing into a nothingness beyond life. But in this endless process of metamorphosis, there can be no final death, only a transmutation of life. A flowing through. A constantly changing participation in the living community. And the fate of all livings is an earthbound immortality. During these moments, a profound comfort spreads through me, as I look at the island, the forest, and the stream, realizing I can never be separated from them, can never be alone, can never fall away...
Like the cloud, I am transformed during every moment of my existence. There is a change, a flowing through--the cells that fall invisibly on this ground, the wetness that evaporates from my opened eyes, the churning inside my body. What grows on the island today will be taken into me--for an hour, a week, a year, or ten years--then someday will return. The cloud's fate is undeniably mine. What I was, I have become; and what I am, I will remain. I stand within the earth, within the island within me. All of us sharing one breath, all of us alive. And death seems the purest of all illusions.
I seek no paradise beyond the one I've known in life. My reprieve is here, to become part of the island--to linger in the muskeg ponds, flow in the blood of deer, blossom in the salmonberry's flower, soak down in the sphagnum moss, cry out in the gull's voice, whisper in the wind's breath, grow upward in the hemlock's trunk, swim in the clear stream, shiver in the alder leaves. I have loved this island, willed my body and soul to become part of it. In this way I would touch whatever is eternal and absolute. Watching a raven circle overhead, I know someday I'll soar above these shadowed forests and stare down into the throat of Kluksa Mountain. I will see the image of earth fixed in the raven's gaze.
I ask no heaven but this Raven's world.
Richard Nelson |
