The sounds of bliss: the gentle lapping of the lake against the gravely shore; stiff madrona leaves rustling as a breeze freshens; swallows chirping as they loop above the green water; mallards skimming the lake as they touch down, then a flutter of wings as they shake off water; the distant roar of a stronger wind rushing down the Olympic Mountains and spilling into the glacial cavern that embraces Lake Crescent.

Near the woods you can smell fir cones opening as the day warms, drawing pitch out of the woody blooms.

A tiny blue-violet butterfly circles me, round and round, fluttering pieces of sky to earth. The colors of this lake on a sunny day are mesmerizing: they range from chartreuse to the shimmery metallic greens of oxidized copper, to the perfect aquas of tropical seas, then farther from shore the blues deepen and turn cerulean. As if that weren’t enough dazzling beauty, the ever-moving water collects sunlight as if millions of diamonds were raining down into the lake, sprinkled by an unseen Sky Goddess.

I just watched a man skip a flat stone far out into the lake—it hopped eight or nine times before its final plink into the water. What fun it must be for that stone to be suddenly airborne! I don’t pretend to understand the physics of it, though I suppose the forward thrust must be greater than the resistance of the water in decreasing amounts. But what causes the stone to bounce up from the water over and over? Since I can’t explain it, I’ll settle for magic.

The rock faces that rise up from Lake Crescent have seen it all. They were witness to this place when it was all snow and ice. Then as the glacier retreated, these rocks warmed in the sun and began to split open to welcome plant life. While the second-growth fir trees that rim this lake now are but 50 or 60 years old at most, the rocks they cling to are as old as time.

There is one broad rock face that I love to sit across from, and I sense its density, its ability to absorb human emotions and pain. I can tell it nothing new. People have knelt on this shore for millennia and no doubt spilled the contents of their souls into the lake for purification and transmutation. This place was once a meeting ground, a crossroads where native peoples from the Pacific Coast met and traded with inland tribes. It still has that sense of accrued spiritual energy, of a healing ground. I add my whispers to the breeze and send them across flat water to merge with the ancient rock.

MEDITATION VIDEO

CONTEMPLATIONS

• Do you have a special healing ground?
• Do you need to find one?
• Have you tried confiding in a rock? (They’re very good listeners.)
• If you are troubled, try keeping a stone in your pocket for unseen conferences, to keep you grounded to the truth about yourself.

Take a walk around Lake Crescent here.