February 13th, 2015 Aiako Harria yesterday, first time this year; overtaken by the beauty. It is at about this time along the hillsides and in the thickets that the brown of the end of winter starts mixing with the green of the beginning of spring. But an outing like this, though refreshing, can do nothing for the interior state of mind when one is tired and helpless; it only offers a slight reprieve, but we are back again, missing it: the sights, the sounds, the smell of the forest--somehow it only adds to the misfortune. It is difficult to wander along the thin trails because we have built up a reason and an inspiration for our coming; there is a goal, a new plant to find; something to be attained, a new path to take. All the expectation dies with each step, and yet it is still beautiful, still appealing, still the key to some secret meaning we have created for ourselves; and when we stop and look at it all, we realize we are merely the sum of our attainments, the sum that keeps
January 26th, 2015
For more than a week now I have set my mind on hiking, but have found some reason or other to deter me. The chance of rain, cold weather, transportation, even the tiniest detail as what to take, have turned this self-inflicted obligation in to an inexpressible joy, not because they allowed me to go, but because the circumstances seemed viable enough to prevent me. It is often the idea of expectation that is so frightening, but those of the physical world are so much easier to confront; for it is the imagination of what we expect, and what we think it will be like, that is the most damaging to our state of mind. All of our actions are simple and clear-cut, but it is only when we reflect on how to deal with them that they become confusing; our problem arises in believing there is a standard to be attained, that there is something that we must figure out how to use. Of course it is hard to deny this standard, or any standard, because it is reproduced countless times by countless people over countless days until the moment it comes and finally takes hold of us, of which moment we could hardly say is not true. But there is something also beyond this, which has brought us in and will take us out of existence without our knowing how, or needing to know how, to deal with it. It is this that makes the standard inherent, and therefore removes our need to attain the standard, or to do anything about it. We do it or we don't; we go hiking or we don't, but whatever it is, we do it without the idea of escaping something or improving it; it is merely the movement of our interior selves into the physical world, which perhaps, if we look hard enough, is neither one nor the other.
Douglas Thornton
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