Joshua Tree

We got back late yesterday from Joshua Tree National Park. High desert country. Lovely. Cold (I insist on sleeping with the door of our old VW camper van open--one night, Louisa said, "It's really cold!" "Nah," I said. Macho-man. In the morning, I was scraping an eighth of an inch hard ice off the windscreen...)

Later I wrote...

What is freewill, anyway? We were talking about it last nite, trying to come to some sort of agreement, one of those "I know what it is until someone asks me about it" deals (I think St. Augustine said that about time). It became clearer this morning after we'd walked up to Ryan Peak. I was scrambling down the gulley that would bring me back to the road below--while good ol' Boo went back down the 1.5 mile trail, down 1200 vertical feet more or less, to get the van.

I was in awe of my body, turning this way and that, finding the best route through the sagebrush or chaparral (whatever my generic term is for scratchy prickly dry underbrush in the desert). I'd find myself thinking, "Wonder how I'm going to get past this patch of nastiness?" and before you know it, I'm halfway through, confidently swinging past these thorns on the left and this rock on the right. Perfect example of body and brain happily--eagerly (like they're showing off)--wending their way, navigating, plotting, strategizing, weighing options, making decisions on the fly, just wonderful, while me, I--whatever passes for this "along for the ride" awareness--I'm tickled pink that somehow all this computing power and bodily articulation allows me to play along.

In fact I--conscious me--is worse than useless. As soon as I think about where I'm going, I make a misstep, like playing table-tennis. You think about what you're doing and you're dead in the water. "I" am allowed to get a ride along with all this wonderful, savvy, instantaneous navigation-and-motivation system. How cool is that?

And how much of life is like that? Just doing, without a conscious thought in the world. No self-consciousness, no sense of making decisions, watching the whole incredible play unfold.

Joshua Tree photos, first folder at http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/barryevans9/my_photos