At this time of the year, the water is running, working its magic of renewal, energy and life. What a privilege it is for me to sit in the Valley and witness its power. The water goes through the ritual that it has performed for thousands of years -- melting from the snow in the high country, running down the channels through the waterfalls into the valley, and flowing into the Central Valley giving life to the world below. There used to be a large lake, I am told, in the Central Valley. The lake teemed with fish and wildlife until agriculture drained all that and converted it into what we know today as our food basket.
I grew up downstream, all the way down in the Bay Area, where I used to take all this for granted. Water would flow from the Sierras through enormous pipes into the Crystal Springs Reservoir. I would drink this water, eat the food produced by the valley, and wonder the mysteries of the mountains. I fortunately committed to the life of a climber early in life, and have enjoyed the privilege of witnessing the seasons as I explored the vertical world. I do not take this privilege for granted.
To express my feelings about water, I am sharing some pictures I have been taking this past month of that wonderful force that runs through my life. It gushes through in the late spring and early summer, tapers off in the late summer. Winter brings a beautiful ice show, and then the spring starts it all over again. I am so amazed as I ponder the pulse of the water. The rock sits there, carved by the ice and washed by the water, caressed by the wind, baked by the sun. Right now, the water is gushing, expressing the force of the snow up above, already responding to the warmth of the sun.
These pictures are for you. They serve as my inspiration, and this is what I want to impart to the youth who come up to visit us at Sacred Rok.
Ron
P.S. As I was taking them, my friend Kenji was flying 30,000 feet above on his way back from Denver to San Francisco and took the aerial pictures that show the power of the snow up there, and the flow of the water.
