Does anyone else have a tendency to get depressed when look at our world’s wasteful ways, our seeming inability to divorce ourselves from destroying this lush, green and beautiful planet as we dedicate our lives to creation, consumption and procreation?

As Vonnegut puts it, we’ve just about permanently damaged the planet with “100 years of transportation whoopee”

There are however, small lights among all this darkness.  I have been listening to the new lightning dust album on npr’s first listen.  It is unabashedly beautiful.  The notes about their album on the label’s website mention that, “what makes the mountains so very very dark is a distant light somewhere on the other side.

I’d like to think we can apply that thought to some of our dark days.  And often time, among all this blackness, we can find light all around us.

Here’s some light I’ve been seeing lately.

Music.  Is it not our species finest contribution to, well, ourselves and our personal well being? Go over to npr.org/music, go to kexp.org to explore, ride over to a local show, ride to the CD store to lose yourself in the forgotten art of browsing for a CD, going home and excitedly unwrapping it, and doing nothing but letting your ears succumb to sounds of beauty that you’ve never heard before as your eyes wander the words and art that these musicians, painters, and poets have brought us.

Trails. Sacred are the paths of men within god’s country.  This is, to me, the allure of the outdoors and trails in general.  Churches, Mosques, Temples are all built by man as a testament to god.  The headlands were built by god as a testament to no one.  Trails are the least invasive way us humans will ever see these lands.  These sacred lands get more scarce every day.   Trails allow us access to the mountaintop, forest, and valley floor.    Yes – I enjoy them most by bicycle.  For it is by bicycle that I can soak in 40 miles of land in a day.  It is by bicycle that I can pretend I have wings and float, fly, and sail around trees and feel the cool air carress my face, as visions of ocean, mountain, and natural land fill my view and my soul.  And I don’t think about darkness at all during these times.

Friends and Loved ones.  We come accross so many people in our lives.  The more people I see in a big city, the more I lose faith in humanity’s overall ability to save themselves…and then I meet with friends.  Wonderful people.  People who are sensitive and kind, and cook amazing meals, and love to laugh, cringe, and cry at the same things I do.  And I realize that all these people I don’t understand, or who frustrate me, they have friends too.  They are someone’s friend.  And it is in that capacity of friendship and love that we shine a little light on the darkness.  Now if we can only learn to be a friend, and not a virus to our planet.  Unfortunately, to truly do that requires a complete departure from every single habit and routine we have developed in this modern, urban life.

So do I have solutions to light up the darkness? No, no sunshine here – but I do have a few maglights.  I recommend finding some friends that you can love and that love you, finding some music that moves you, and moving yourself on your feet, on a bicycle, and without a motor into god’s testament to nothing.  And by God I mean earth.  The natural creation of the world that surrounds us, and lies so strangely separate from us humans is perhaps the best reason to be alive.  That’s why, at SFUR, I’m going to try to keep building, keep moving, and save some hillsides by building proper trail.  Save some souls by building trails through McLaren so some city folk can get the sort of inspiration that moves me to ramble upon a post like this.  Maybe if everyone carries a maglight and points it in the right direction, we might find our way to the light on the other side.