Nature's Altar

Last Sunday I went to my church's 8:00 a.m. Eucharist so I could skip the 10:30 service to go on a photo shoot.  After helping set up an altar on a picnic table at Chewacla State Park (for our yearly outdoor Eucharist)  I headed down the side of a mountain on an almost nonexistent path to make my way to the creek and falls, proving to my church that I am as strange as they know me to be.  Holding on to trees on the very steep decline I kept wondering if I would start having fun at some point.  Then I heard the water in the distance.  Oh, my, water in the distance will draw me faster than anything I can imagine, so I plunged on down and made it (wondering if I would ever make it back up). 

Words cannot describe the beauty of such a place that looks like it must have looked before touched by a form of humans who do not respect nature.  On this type of day (I call a blue/gold day of Fall) everything glimmered in the sun and wind.  I wondered about my native American ancestors who lived in a world like this - hard and beautiful - who did not have trouble believing rocks had souls as they talked with animals, the Great Spirit whispering in their ears.  I felt like that alone on the creek marveling at the revelation of beauty hidden down there on the rocks as the people of God up above tried to find the Great Spirit under a state park pavilion, never knowing, never knowing.    

I photographed a rock that looks like an altar.  Too bad the church couldn't bring the Eucharist down to the creek and set it up on the rock.  It would have been lovely.