As I finished the closing pages of Cynthia Bourgeault’s most recent book, EYE OF THE HEART (Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 2020), I knew it would take much time and space to absorb and engage more deeply with the wonders and challenges presented in the honest and vulnerable hope she unscathingly shared in the book. With tears standing in my eyes and the book still held in my hands, the aircraft that we had boarded in Denver a little over two hours prior was gently landing onto the runway of Kalispell’s Glacier Park International Airport in Kalispell, Montana. This marked at least the 7th time we (Leonard and I) have made a trip out to the uppermost Northwest corner of Montana bordering Alberta Canada.

It was all a calling, from way back in 1995, when we drove all the way from Louisiana to Glacier National Park just a few months following my brother’s death. I was introduced to the Western United States, and it’s treasury of national parks and monuments as a young child by my Mom’s parents. This particular national park was the one that my Grandmother had been so impressed by, namely for the amazingly engineered 50-mile long roadway that cuts east to west through the Lewis and Livingston mountain ranges, and magnificently displays the ever-changing facets of monolith cliffs formed by the crushing power of mighty glaciers thousands of years ago. It was a calling, as I said, on one level, that first trip, because it was one place that I had never visited before… or so I thought.

I can recall waking in the tent we pitched first on the west side of the park (Fish Creek) then again on the east side at Rising Sun, back in June 1995, with that sudden sinking realization that all had happened and was real. It was almost as if at first, when I could sleep, there was a forgetfulness of my brother’s passing. Yet in the morning light as it shone on the mountain peaks hauntingly lit by the dawn, there was that gut-wrenching return of the reality of the absence. There in the majestic wonders of the mighty presence of these gazing mountains, there was also absence – presence and absence were never apart from each other – always a part of each other. This was my first introduction…

[And I hear now in my heart Cynthia’s reminder from Rumi, “When was I ever made less by dying?”]

The Going-To-The-Sun road (GTTSR) that stunningly winds through the sacred mountain ranges was not yet open that first year we went out there. I had not done all my research to learn that the continental divide portion of the road at Logan Pass had to be cleared of snow and ice, and that was always determined by the combination of human work and the weather’s temperament. (Perhaps combination is an inappropriate description – maybe confluence or attunement would be better) It was mid-June. So, we “made the best of it” by traversing as far as we could up the Western portion of the GTTSR, and then going back down, driving the long 98 mile road via US Highway 2 along the border of the park to the Eastern entrance and driving as far as we could up GTTSR that way. The road was both open and closed on both sides.

[Memory? It’s funny how we tend to mentally piece together our pasts to create a static present, which, if we allow ourselves to be tilted, can be transformed into something seemingly foreign yet also strangely compelling to us. This tilting occurs when we allow the heart and body to come onboard as well. Perhaps this was what I was just scratching the surface of that first Summer of 1995 in Glacier.]

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After touching down on September 5th of this year in Kalispell, we rented a jeep at the airport and headed into the mountains of Glacier. After checking in to our small cabin at Lake McDonald Lodge, we ate a dinner served from the open window of Russell’s on the Run (the lodge restaurant, which was closed due to Covid 19) and then walked a small portion the Lake watching the sunset on Mt Stanton, Mt. Vaught, and Mt Cannon. We met a young couple from Great Falls, MT, who had made several trips to the park. They gave us some good tips on eating places outside of the park and hiking trails that we could take, while we were there.

Part of our conversation with the young couple centered on the fact that the Eastern entrance of the park had been closed due to the decision made by the Blackfeet Nation, who live on the Eastern side of the national park and were highly vulnerable to the Covid19 environment. This decision made by the Blackfeet seemed to be making things very ‘inconvenient’ for the park’s tourism this season. We also learned from the couple that there were many privately-owned areas along the Lake McDonald lake, which we found curious if not a bit paradoxical. The clash of perspectives oddly seemed right at home in this wilderness landscape.

Lake McDonald Lodge is located on the upper east side of Lake McDonald, which unfurls its waters at 10 miles long, one mile across and 470 plus feet deep. The largest lake in the park was gouged out by Ice-Age glaciers that once filled the valley thousands of years ago. Western Cedar and Hemlock trees grow in the woods surrounding the beautiful lake. The views are spectacular and surreal and imaginal in Cynthia’s sense of perceiving and participating from the total Heart.

“Our Common Father really does love this world,
because it is here that the restless roving and churning of that sea of Eros comes to rest, and we hear in the silence the still, small voice of love”
(Eye of the Heart, p. 131)

Where water meets mountain and trees look on…  It was great to be here in the place again – this place we had been before; a space, though, where something new is always arising. Standing on the shore of the lake looking at the mountains, I realized that this “Now” was not about sentimental memories, but more a responsible presence. The physical landscape was beckoning: there was so much to be heard and learned from the ground of this earth, the depth of the lake, the heights of the mountain, and the ancestry of the land and its life. And I also knew that there was no solo teacher, no lone student – only interaction and engagement and all else flowing.

“The higher blends with the lower in order to activate the middle” (Eye of the Heart, pp. 38-39). I began to wonder about this dynamic agency of the middle: the past memories connected with death and life – woven together by some mysterious middle that was energetic, externally, internally, and eternally!