FLUSH

What are we here for? "To care about one another." Or is it, "I’ve got mine. What do I care about the others."?
Not interested in being “The Others” in the “I’ve got mine” version of the world? Time to flip versions. Boy! Did Eisenhower ever get it right. But in his day, Capital did not have the hydrogen bomb - - buying elections with impunity. How to remedy this is not addressed here but how intense the force will have to be to make it happen is. Run thousand foot ridges long enough and you start to notice that really large ravines have peak flows, torrents, so strong that, from time to time, all manner of logs, fallen trees, loose boulders and debris are flushed out entirely. What is left is a grand spectacle of sheer ravine sides plunging down to near distant scoured stream bottoms, grown back with delicate whorls of leafy lattices. Through this order you can easily decend animal trails to the very bottom and see more grace than you came for.
On the same ridge, you come upon another ravine. First it looks about the same, but as you look closer you see its bottom is piled high with logs, fallen trees, boulders and debris in all different stages of decay. Instead of being flushed away, this stagnant compilation rots on. No use trying to get any closer, repulsed by tangles of substance and chaos. Oh, if there were only a storm powerful enough to wash it all away! In nature, reduced scenic wonder is offset by more abundant habitat. In culture, this rotting trash pile is our Congress, there also only for the lack of means to flush it out.

Supernatural

In the nature world, strength is the only measure, but even the lowliest flourish; born, mature, peak, fade, die; subject only to natural forces.
In the conscious world too, strength again is the only measure. Again the lowliest flourish; born, mature, peak, fade, die, not due to natural forces of greed and grudge with the supernatura force of America’s covenent to seek:
The Greatest good for the greatest many.
[Priestly, Smith, Bentham, Jefferson, Kennedy, Clinton]
Though the cut of the strongest is proportionately smaller,
The market grows so fast, their future winnings dwarf their old.
[Smith, Reich]

Gorgeous

When he sees how gorgeous the ridge is just beyond, the runner’s reluctance to go forward turns to zeal to push through the brush choked swale at the bottom. The foliage resists his progress, intensifying the runner’s engagement with the natural world. The branches tear at his clothes and the foliage blocks his vision. Pushing his face deeper into existence than ever before, he notices for the first time that God and gorgeous start with the same two letters. GO.

Ridge Runner Protocol One

Wilderness running can be done anywhere in publicly owned natural areas, preserves or other permanent open spaces that have not been farmed, logged, mined, grazed or otherwise disturbed for at least 100 years. Within these areas, avoid seeing jeep trails, roads, fences, signs, houses or other manmade features. Yes. Flat is good. All engagement with nature is good. Terrain is better, ridges are best. Bodily stress of hiking/running up and down steep ridge sides and rolling valleys intensifies engagement. Start when conditions are wet (not snow-covered). Find wooded or meadow hillsides offering least obstacle to your decent. Run faster and faster until you stumble. Do not slow down or your upper body will take you down like a stone. Just think about your upper body in space, your center of gravity perched above where your legs are, think about getting that steady and control will return, while your feet flail about with a life of their own. A seasoned ridge runner can go over a year without a fall. When skill sets are high enough, knowing what caused the fall allows corrective action.
Real falls are always the same. The runner is airborne with no part of the body in contact with the ground. If it’s a really good fall, you start off looking at the sky. First thought is, “If I live to a billion, I will never know what tripped me up.” The second thought is, “This is really going to hurt!” And it does, typically scrapes, bruises here and there, all the way up to broken fingers, hands, ribs and this and that, but you are always able to get back to the car, very likely running.

A Summary of Why Nature is Remedy

The runner becomes ever more certain that truth cannot be found in a town - too many distorted contradictory shrill messages competing for attention. Now nature. That's different. Nature has but one voice, the unwarped primal world before culture, the world as the world truly is, full of grace. Contradiction? Of what? Go there. Could be that undisturbed swale at the bottom of the hill. Get alone. Get where you only see undisturbed nature. Hang out. Go out again (as John Muir would say, 'going out is going in') and start noticing that nature is looking back at you. You witness nature and nature witnesses you. Come back again to find that nature is on your side. Discover you have a new friend that eternally wants you to win. Start to notice that the flip side of nature's beauty is truth. The greater the beauty the greater the understanding of why nature is truth. Now, take the truth in the hills down into the town. Do this enough and when it comes to pushing back the absolutism, you will have become something you were not before ... Useful!
 
Running puts this teaching on steroids, starting with the addition of a Ridgeland muse insistence on going as fast as you can all of the time, like an explorer out to discover that razor thin line between how fast s/he can run down this mountain and the fall. As for the uphill, the greater you push the more stress on your body, discomfort as a basis for redemption. Coercion, exertion, redemption, perfection. Every step and breadth a prayer, learning how to love the pant. The pages that follow are but commentary.
All this material is born out of a rapport of a downhill runner with the Marin Headlands that stretch from the Golden Gate Bridge to the northern shoulder of Mt Tam, towering some 2,700 feet out of the sea, plunging down to this runner's Mill Valley bedroom window. Arriving so often at places never visited by humans since before time, he could not help being noticed by a pesky ridgeland muse. One day while descending down a very steep ravine, the muse just jumped on board and has not let go since. The faster the runner goes, the harder the muse grabs on, making his running a meditation and his life a blessing. For years, the runner packed post-it-notes and when transferring his latest along-the-way scribbling to his journal, most times they proved useless drivel, and sometimes not. Even then, the runner did not do the writing, only the typing.
Who is Ridgeland Muse?
The one who is having its way with the frequent runner.
Is it a talent in the runner, there all the time, triggered by wilderness beauty? Fughedabadat!
No. This muse is an agent of the absolute, universally combined consciousness of everyone/everything that exists right now, waiting to pounce on the next passerby ready to receive its message …
See? Existence is not only gorgeous,
It’s on your side.

An Introduction

The Civil Society User Manual is about cause and effect. The cause is the American People emerging from a deep complacency it lulled itself into ironically by the vast comfort and security that was their reward for earlier successes. The intended effect is lots of people wanting to add two lines to the Pledge of Allegiance to the United States of America in back of their heads:
… The greatest good to the greatest many By just saying no to absolutism.