The first set of photos seem to be from a solo canoe trip. The serene depths Timm finds here were reflected in the opening paragraphs of the unpublished novella "Aire Borne," which Timm worked on in late 2006.
To embark on waters into the wild is the beginning of a journey into an other realm which was as much toward fantastical realms as it was somehow inward, toward his God. His images and words sew together seamlessly, I think. The following text comes from that work.
It was a beautiful summer morning when I put my canoe into Spirit Lake high in the Oregon Cascades. The mist that had covered the surface at first light had now receded to the shadows that only inhabited the edges. I had waited a long time for this moment, building elaborate visions that I would visit most nights while I lay in bed waiting for sleep to come. So quiet--so serene.
Rising around the lake were four peaks-–mostly at its Northern end that reached up and touched the deep alpine blue sky. The ever-present clouds that punctuated the morning air just seemed to add to the mystique of the area. I first read about this lake in one of the many travel magazines that litter the breakroom at my office. The author spoke of an almost otherworldly, spiritual quality to the area that had drawn him year after year for the past two decades. Gazing at the photographs that graced the pages I felt strangely drawn to the area and knew I needed to go.
The canoe cut a soundless wake through the placid waters with the only noise coming from my paddle as I dipped it in and propelled my way across the lake. It didn’t take long to make it to the end of the little inlet that I had launched into, turning into the main body of the lake that continued on for another two miles.
Rising out of the water a little ways to my right was a surreal rock formation that was oddly distinct from those that surrounded it. According to a guidebook I had found in a nearby bookstore, the lake was the product of the alternating volcanic and glacial forces of the past 20 million years. Volcanic eruptions that spewed both lava and rock were common in this region only to have their offerings redistributed by the migration of the many graciers that marched down from the surrounding peaks. Rock would fill in the area – glaciers would push it down the valley. Sometime after the last glacier receded water began to collect in the concave valley that was left. Around it’s edges the porous gray rock were piled in jumbled heaps waiting to be redistributed by the next eruption.
All that is but this single outcropping. As I drew closer I was amazed at the thirty-odd foot high length of rock that rose almost perpendicular to the water – with just a slight curve towards the shore. As I ran my hand along its side the rock was cold but smooth unlike many of the other jagged rocks in the region. I pulled my boat back to take in its 200-foot length that seemed to snake through the water barely fifty feet from the shore.
Reaching into my rucksack that lay at my feet I pulled out the guidebook again, flipping it open to the section specific to the lake. “On the eastern side of the lake rises perhaps the greatest enigma of the area – a 200-foot long rock out-cropping that early Native Americans referred to as the Dragon’s Backbone due to the slight curve that left it looking like one half of a leviathan's rib cage.
Looking up I could see why they thought this. Slowly I began to turn my canoe away and continued the journey further down the lake. Off to my right a mountain peak rose high to the sky and laid perfectly reflected in the lake. At one time I could see how it probably had come to a point but it now looked like a giant had taken a knife and cut off the top third, leaving what appeared to be a flat plateau on top. It wasn’t more than a couple minutes later that the first breeze of the day ruffled the surface of the water shattering the mirror like quality and scattering mountain’s reflection …
- from the first chapter of “Aire Born,” December 2006
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In another piece titled “The Other,” also written in late 2006, Timm wrote more about the sense he got from his journeys into the wild. Something about connecting with the spirit of deep nature was quieting for Timm, quelling his turbulence, allowing him to be at peace and at one with his God.
In the story the protagonist is alone, but happily in the photos which follow Timm is with Christie. I think they speak to the same reflection. Maybe Timm was able to take the trip with Christie into the woods having found that his connection with the Other in nature should be shared with another human, and happily, heart to heart walking in the great heart of God’s nature.
The Other is not out there, I believe, but deeply in here, in the human heart. Our welcome of the world bridges us at last to the kingdom within. And the Beloved who resides there allows us to marry the world.
* * *
I was reading from Emerson's journals yesterday morning, and came across a passage after Emerson's brother Charles died suddenly in May 1836. Emerson's grief is deep and real; he'd already lost his brother Edward two years before, and his first wife Ellen three years before that. His son Waldo would soon be born to his second wife, only to die six years later. All that mortality could have silenced Emerson, yet in some way it sharpened and clarified his voice.
"His senses were those of a Greek", Emerson writes in memory of Charles. "I owe to them a thousand observations. To live with him was like living with a great painter. I used to say that I had no leave to see things till he pointed them out, and afterwards I never ceased to see them."
I'm ever grateful for the great store of images Timm left behind, and the few words he appended to them--for in them is revealed that beauty is a healer of pain, the grace of God in bounty for all who choose to see through the difficult world into the paradise which is still there. Having seen the world through Timm's eyes, I will forever gasp in wonder at it.
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I put these photos up today to celebrate Mom’s 82d birthday, that she may savor the enduring sweetness of her son Timm, and be reminded that the journey here on earth retains its nooks and crannies of Eden, if we are willing to see the world with His eyes – sighted with creation’s beauty.
Happy birthday, Mom!
* * *
“Okay, I’m here. Now what,” Jordan stated as he plopped into the camp chair he just pulled from his SUV. He was a little skeptical about taking off for the week, taking a break and trying to gain some perspective on his life. His career was at best a standstill – unfufilling and nowhere near where he had envisioned his life being when he dreamt of what his future would be like.
He wasn’t married and as far as he could see there wasn’t even a glimmer of change on the horizon. When he got honest with himself, he really couldn’t complain about his life, after all there were those who were far worse off then he. It’s just he expected there to be more. Something was missing. There was something else out there, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
Going camping was usually his way of sorting things out. “Disconnect from the world and get quiet,” is how he often explained it to his friends. There was something about walking in the woods, listening to the wind in the firs, smelling the sweet, pungent smell of the earth as it was touched by the sun, watching the sunset off the Pacific Northwest coast, painting the sky in golds, orchres, and violets. It touched him in ways he couldn’t quite explain – it whispered of a life other then the one he had. Not in the sense of career, marriage or the other aspects we often attribute to our seventy-plus years on this globe, but of another kind of life.
“There’s a lot of God up in those hills,” a co-worker had often said of the sense she got when she and her husband went to their cabin high in the Colorado Rockies. “There’s just something there I don’t feel anywhere else. A presence, an other,” she’d relate as she struggled to put into words feelings that seemed beyond any other she had known. That was what Jordan tried to connect with – the “other” he felt when here. It seemed to never answer his questions he carried with him, instead it just put things in perspective.
It was late morning when he had pulled into the state park on the Southern Oregon coast. All of the hustle of getting here was no over, it was now time get down to the business of why he was here. Hence the question : Now what.
He looked around at his neighbors’ campground, overflowing with tents, Coleman lanterns, coolers, stacks of firewood, boxes of food products strewn across the picnic table that became the epicenter of their forested world.
“So much stuff,” he thought to himself, always amazed at how much people take with them when they are trying to get back to nature. He spent the next ten minutes unpacking his truck, erecting the tent, arranging the things around the site, then grabbing his knapsack he set off to explore one of the many trails.
It would take several days for Jordan to finally calm down enough to gear down and relax, a fact he was always well aware of when he went camping but always forgot. He’d take books that he’d planed on reading, but they would hardly be touched. No, most of his time was spent moving – riding his biking, hiking a little, but mostly driving around in his SUV, running back and forth to town to pick up more “necessities.”
By the fourth day a change began to steal over him. He lingered longer in the campsite that morning than usual, in no great hurry to go anywhere. When he finally did leave he spent all morning wandering aimlessly along a trail that skirted a ridge high about the crashing waves. There was a growing awareness of the “other” he had experienced so many times before.
At times he would try to put words to the feeling he had – a sense of peace, connectedness to something that was steady, permanent. Some called it God, others nature, but he just accepted as something that was just there. The longer he allowed himself to allow himself to be conncected, the stronger the sense became.
Life was vibrant, the wind seemed to sweep through his being in the same way it move tree branch that hung overhead. At one point, he glanced out on the ocean only to find a bald eagle floating a mere thirty feet away, gazing intently at him. He wasn’t sure why he was of such interest – just grateful that he was. It was as if they acknowledged each other and he was accepted as being apart of this place.
As the next few days passed his awareness of being a part of grew in ways he’d never known before. He’d walk through the old growth forest that lined the coast, oblivious to everything but that which was right there. Time was fading, in it’s place was something else. The “other” was growing. More than just a presence but a host of presence.
One evening he sat by a stream that ran into the ocean, a vantage point he enjoyed to watch the sun dip beyond the western rim. His attention was drawn to the sound of the creek to his left and he noticed a droplet of water hanging with anticipation from a blade of grass. It was slowly growing as the mist gathered and ran along the stem, swelling the growing bead. Finally, it let go of it’s perch and fell into the stream below.
Was that what he was sensing in the woods around him? A stream that was made up of so many individual drops – still individual, but melded together? Yes, that was the best way he could explain it. He too was a drop, but he couldn’t seem to become a part of. It was something other than he. Was it spiritual? Maybe. Native American cultures had developed tales to explain the same things he was feeling. In fact, indigenous cultures around the globe had wrestled with putting into words the same thing. Maybe it was dimensional, the old story of parallel universes that he’d heard as a boy. Could be, but it seemed to be more than that. That was it – it was more than all of this. The Other was beyond any feeble attempt he’d ever heard anyone use to explain it.
It just was there.
The morning of the sixth day dawned with a sky devoid of the clouds that tended to occupy the Oregon sky. There was an excitement that Jordan felt as he emerged from his tent, not knowing what it was but just feeling himself drawn by it. He took a familiar path through the woods, winding past the centuries old firs, spruce and redwoods that filled the wood. He climbed a hill that once crested revealed an sweeping panorama of ocean and sky. The presence was stronger today, it was almost as if he could see it. They were everywhere around him, but it wasn’t a crowd of people, no, it was something else. A stream, a fabric, a movement, that’s what it was, a movement. Submitting to the presence he realized it wasn’t jus a random movement, but more of a swaying dance. A rhythm that wound it’s way through the world.
Once again, it might be spiritual, but nothing like he was aware of. It was the droplets – each distinct but at the same time they were a single, larger whole. Much like the river he sat next to the other day.
They were calling out to him.
“Join us” was the invitation he sensed.
“How?” he thought out loud, painfully aware of why he referenced to the presence as “other”. It was something that he could sense, almost see at times, but not be a part of. The “other” was not confined by the walls of man, nor constrained by mortality.
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