Reclaiming childhood flight and sight
Author: Macy Guppy
Now for the solar wind
“How many times have I returned in my dreams to this hill. It is always summer as I look out over the gold and green fields, ditches foaming with hawthorn and lilac, river glinting under the sun like a blade. When I was young, I found sanctuary here and the memory of it deep in my soul ever after has brought me comfort. Once I believed it would never change, but that was before I came to know that all things must. It’s a car park now, a sightseers’ panorama.”
-- Gabriel Byrne
Life at Route 4, Box 309, in Hood River, Oregon
I, too, return in my dreams to my childhood's sweet spaces. My dreams sometimes take me to the orchards of pears and cherries that embraced our old house and its yards. The memory of the sound and sight of tumbling water in our little side yard stream still invigorates me.
When I was young, I found sanctuary in my outside special places. I spent my alone time with untamed flowers, a tiny bridge to my godmother’s cottage, a cherry tree stubby enough to climb, and myriad, sometimes clandestine hideouts — such as the secret door to a child’s work bench in my bedroom.
Memories of these spaces are soul deep. In these dreams, a sprawling spiraling bush always appears. It was easy to climb and full of reward at its top, where I was sure I could see even more than the birds could. Sometimes, in my dreams, I felt the unbridled joy of flying.
Seeing again
Now, 70 years later, my eyes begin to open again … remembering that child through a glass darkly, yet clearer.
I have a few words now that I did not have as a child to describe those precious times. Yet I want only to reclaim and magnify the joy of that imagined flight -- a gift and a surprise -- and seeing again.
These words in Annie Dillard's “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek” have sustained me through a life encrusted with deserts and forests, a mountain climb and lava plains. Through years of pain—joy—joy—pain. Through the love I still can’t articulate for my now adult daughter. Dillard's words guide me now, as I remember how to fly and see:
"The secret of seeing is, then, the pearl of great price. If I thought he could teach me to find it and keep it forever I would stagger barefoot across a hundred deserts after any lunatic at all. But although the pearl may be found, it may not be sought. The literature of illumination reveals this above all: although it comes to those who wait for it, it is always, even to the most practiced and adept, a gift and a total surprise…
I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam. It is possible, in deep space, to sail on solar wind. Light, be it particle or wave, has force: you rig a giant sail and go. The secret of seeing is to sail on solar wind. Hone and spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail, whetted, translucent, broadside to the merest puff.”
I’ve been rigging my sail for years. Now for the solar wind.
New Paragraph
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