Undiscovered

 

August 2, 2021

 

Greetings from the expedition,

“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”  T.S. Eliot

 In the time humans have roamed the world, it has only been the last several hundred years where we intentionally explored just for the sake of discovery.  In the millennia before that we just wandered around, picking up food.

 But we have been an ambitious lot: it is hard to find a place on earth where people have not already been before you.  I have a decent history of wandering around, and exploring intentionally, and is unlikely in my wide travels that I have ever been in a place first.  I doubt I have ever stood in a place never seen by people before.

 So, it was a little thrill to have that experience this week.

 Humans are just touching the deepest spaces of the ocean, for some the last frontier on the planet.  There are few jungles we have not mapped.  We have already planted flags on the tips of the highest mountains, spelunked into vast caves, fought our way into the frigid reaches of the two poles.  And when the limits to search slowly ran out, we sought beyond the bounds of gravity.

 Several weeks ago, I was sitting on my brother’s deck in southern California, chatting in the dim light just after sunset.  In mid-sentence Douglas pointed into the sky and we stood in awe and watched a string of sixty satellites make their way into the east.  It was an impressive site, low orbit commuters starting their first day’s journey around the planet.  This was just one glimmer of the already crowded search of the next unexplored places.

 When I see others finding the edge of what is known it fills me with an excitement and a curiosity, and a little envy.  I am not a thrill seeker, not addicted to adrenaline or the need for whatever the next new horizon holds.  But I feel the same call they feel. 

 I have felt it on a path in the woods, or my hands on a giant boulder, made before all of us, or coming into a clearing to find a lake.  I have also felt it calling to me as I run down an empty ribbon of road heading over the horizon that holds something else.  So, I recognized it this week, when I had a glimpse of the uncharted, untouched, unknown place in front of me.

 I ran a few miles from where my family stayed, went up a path to the water’s edge, a secluded stretch of beach.  Not pristine; my footprints were not the first.  It was just far enough away from the busy world for me to settle down and see.  I crouched at the water’s edge with no plan, and waited.

 I watched the small waves give out in the shallows and ebb toward me, and then lap at the firm sand.  I saw the water surround the small stones that had settled there, a wet caress, and then retreat to pass the next wave taking its place.  The water glistened, polished each pebble, played among the paths in the sand, then slipped away, taking time with it.  This had gone on for all of the world’s forgotten history, and now I was in it too.

 Hidden in that moment I felt the undiscovered, the new, the never seen.  I had a glimpse of eternity, of a new world, the thrill of seeing the birth of a star or the edge of an unclimbed peak.

 I didn’t think of what time had passed, just held on to what I witnessed, held by explorer’s awe.  Later, as I ran back up the trail, I remembered what Heraclitus said: “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” 

 It may be in the edge of a candle’s flame, or in the glimmer in your granddaughter’s eye, or in the first light of a burgeoning day, or the feel of earth on your hands as you press the plant into the cool soil.  These are unexplored places, as unique as each of us, woven in a moment that has never been experienced, and won’t be repeated.

 It is there in the magic you trade with another person, the first time you learn of them, or you tell them about you, maybe surprising yourself.  It is in the roots of friendship and love that become wound together.  It is amazing and breathtaking, and no one but you has seen it before.

The beauty in this, you already see, is that this adventure is in every day.  And, in its wake we get to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

 

Hope this finds you seeking,

 

David

 

 

 

Copyright © 2021 David Smith