A Fine Act of Insurrection

Yesterday I met up with the intrepid ladies of the Santa Ynez Valley women’s hiking group for a trek into the local mountains. Weary of living with a smoldering rage inside me, and not yet able to figure out how to channel that rage and use it constructively, I sought solace in nature’s wonderland, and it didn’t disappoint.

This particular hiking group began forty years ago, and though elders have faded away and new people have joined, it continues to gather for Wednesday hikes weekly. There were thirteen of us yesterday. We are all broken and repaired and still mending and vulnerable, and none of us is young, but we are irrepressible and strong and will not go gently.

And the rule is that we don’t talk about politics, but we love this place and this planet with all our hearts––and that too has become political. But let’s not go there right now.

Anyway, it was a spectacular day. Davy Brown, Fir Canyon, Hurricane Deck, Munch connector, East Pinery road, Figueroa Mountain…these names for places within the Los Padres National Forest have significance and picturesque reality for us. There was a lot of bushwhacking involved in one tedious stretch of the hike, but then the path opened out to a golden rolling terrain, soft with a bed of pine needles, and now and then a remnant of crunchy snow. The sun was warm on our faces but not overly hot, and someone passed around cookies, as women often do. We sighed. I am so grateful.

One of my mentors in this strange time in history is the writer Rebecca Solnit, whose work I recommend. “Despair is often premature,” she has said. “It’s s a form of impatience as well as of certainty.”

I agree. And despair is a deadly, self-fulfilling prophecy. Uncertainty, on the other hand, provides a space for possibility, so let us face the uncertainty. And let us cultivate hope, for it provides incentive for action.

And maybe I’m trivializing or letting myself off too easy, but I contend that a hike in the mountains helps too. It’s essential to witness and partake of the miraculous outside that is quietly trying to be. Joy happens in such moments, and it’s healthy. It replenishes the soul.

“And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated and isolated,” writes Solnit, “joy is a fine act of insurrection.”

Once again, Mary Oliver said it well, in an old poem of hers called Don’t Hesitate:

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,
don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty
of lives and whole towns destroyed or about
to be. We are not wise, and not very often
kind. And much can never be redeemed.
Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this
is its way of fighting back, that sometimes
something happens better than all the riches
or power in the world. It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it in the instant
when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the
case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid
of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

Yes, it is far more than a crumb, and I am devouring it. It seems foolish and ungracious to do otherwise.