Not far beyond The Scribe, before rounding the local apex of the ridge, just above the conglomerate formations that have cropped out of the earth to navigate the ridgeline trail, glimpses of open forest solicit your attention. At first you respond with only a series of unconscious glances, but a spacious presence has been gathering with your approach. It reaches a sufficient threshold to halt your trajectory at precisely the moment that you pass an informal opening into a mixed forest of tall trees. From the trail, it is not the trees themselves that provide the calling, but the spaces that intervene between straight, slender trunks, viewed from the distance of nondescript existence. The space is occupied with the growing luminance of dawn. New shoots and expansive ferns will later be revealed as the worthy recipients of the fertile soil at the base of the open space, but initially it is simply the presence of an intriguing openness that invites your body. Moving off trail, you follow the invitation, dropping down a couple of meters, and rapidly transition into a mixed forest of widely spaced trees. Completely burned stumps are scattered on the ground near patches of exposed earth. Tall crispy remnants of sacrificed trees rise out of lush ferns, along with many charred trunks. Spared, but now sparse oaks and other hardwood species provide testament to the direction and intensity of the burn at their base. The evidence suggests that a wide expanse of herbaceous shrubs provided rapid kindling in this region, but fortunately for the survivors, the fire efficiently burned the debris in a burst too quick to ignite the mature trees. Many of their neighbors were not so lucky, however, thus reinforcing the transitory beauty of the open expanse so newly revealed. Here, as elsewhere, life is active in its own burst, rebuilding its many-tiered and intertwined dimensions— but the feeling, strangely, and very powerfully, is one of static peace. It is the combination of straight forms in sparse numbers and intervening spatial depth that provides the stasis, which in turn relaxes the senses into a calm acquisition of the territory. But the depth, though peaceful, is filled with grace and enticing beauty. It is not a stationary external witness that is solicited by the aesthetic character of the place; it is, instead, a meandering occupation that is enticed. It is very easy to drift off into the expanse of ferns and trees— and indeed, there are abundant features in the landscape to move the body in every direction. But movement remains gently and calmly enticed, not energetically incited by the strange and spectacular, as is the case only a few meters up on the ridge.

Wrapped in this stasis, it is all the more appropriate that the dawn discloses one of its most profound and secret subtleties here. Just before the sunlight reaches forth with streaming feelers, casting them throughout the forest to bless the chosen forms it touches first, a pervasive and delicate mist rapidly congeals. The mysterious mist enters, and then dissipates out of existence within minutes. The temporary apparition is nothing short of sacred, as depth gains a new progenitor during its appearance. You look and feel, and in the same breath you utter outload, and to absolutely no one, your professed emotion. The emotive utterance and the unspoken beauty catch you off guard, simultaneously snapping you back into everyday thoughts. These momentarily taint the experience, because you know that there is no way to convey such a feeling: the expression that was outwardly proclaimed but addressed to no one. Somehow, even out here, where not a soul resides, the self-chatter of thought makes it mandatory that a retrospective misapplication be now invoked, in order to justify the utterance. By rehearsal, as if an antagonistic dialogue ensued addressing those who might take literally such utterances, a defense is marshaled. Distance now intervenes— thought has congealed— the everyday witness has arisen. But luckily, beautifully, the pull of the mysterious atmosphere is still too great a gathering, even for thought. You enter again, and allow yourself to be swallowed. Following the allure, you wade knee-deep into the expansive ferns before determining that a plan of navigation is required through the turbulent growth piled up and splashing about. Like white water rafting upon a makeshift raft of burnt tree trunks, you ride tentatively into deeper waters, your raft splitting apart in the journey, providing additional fodder for the roiling abundance that you are immersed in. All the while the land throws up Zen-like islands of forest and rock above the sea of ferns. Mindfulness is not simply a methodology to partake of here. It is a clear and bold environment in which you now swim. Minding is indeed your own business, but it appears to be a communal activity in this ecosystem.

Painted rocks catch your attention even before the strokes are followed back to the sun, now clearly visible amidst the  base of distant trees. Streaming long, the long streamers target sparse, slender trees at their base, just above their dirty knees, marking the height of the burn. For many trees, a black stocking gives way to sun-painted artistry before transitioning to rough textured bark that has been enhanced by speckled lichen. The trunks rise straight to pierce the treetops, now bottom-lit by the sun’s yellow glow. Abundant leaves sway in the light, but only half of the tree’s crown glitters in gold. The other half, ironically, has now the more potent capacity to draw sight— pointing, by the suggestion of graceful movement, to the unlit and mysterious expanses that are still hidden from full disclosure. This show began with grey-white conglomerate formations illuminating sun-sourced natural graffiti. It remained throughout so as to nudge a reminder that time is not static. Paying heed, you move back toward the ridge and the trail. You are here, after all, to see the burned ridge landscape during the day’s first light.

The trail turns toward massive sloping platforms of exposed conglomerate rock— but you already know the Gunks, you know that there cannot be another rock more alive and present to experience than Shawangunk conglomerate. After only two months of recovery, you want to know what the heart of the burn zone will look like. In one great expanse offering fully round views, you are provided the answer. The offer is dizzying. You turn round in every direction without stability, not because the view is open to sky-level views as if at the apex of a great mountain, but because strange features exist in each of the four quarters of your body-centered compass. You don’t know whether to settle in on the distant views that appear within reach, or the standing population of leafless, burned pines, all curving in the same direction. The simultaneity of each creates an ambiguity that seems to define this region. Near and far combine in utter strangeness, and it takes you a moment to decipher the code.

Looking north, Sam’s Point is to your right, while a heavy bedding of morning fog blankets the slowly stirring town of Ellenville to the left. Rolling mountains move forward to greet you from the distance. Despite the temporary openness that allows for a greater presentation of distant views— views that will not be available very shortly as vegetative growth matures— it is still the local environment that presents the distant features as part of its interiority. Distance is only another robust feature quite at hand. And it is still that local environment which calls forth the greatest participation from you, as you engage in a sense-based dialogue through proximity. Yours is a perceiving body, and you lend to the space the silence of your sense apparatus until it is now your space, the space that you inhabit. You have friends, acquaintances, oddities and curiosities to attend to in your space. You have confrontations, expectations, indications and even reincarnations to address. But you must commit. You must anchor yourself into a single perceptual momentum, amidst a compilation of dizzying choices. You can, as often happens, succumb to the nondescript— to the functional and only partially manifest, as you necessarily do when movement is a priority. But you are here to see, in the deeper sense of the term, so you do commit. This, after all, is an aesthetic experience. You hoped for it as a possibility, but it delivered beyond expectation, because the weight of reality smashed to pieces the flimsy content of imagination. And now that weight bears your own being as its gravitational core. The rock, with its subtle hues and glistening presence in the morning light, has organized its fractured form to uphold you, in the manner that is similar to the way one of Braque’s early cubist works hovers just in front and just behind the canvas at the same time, until you anchor it into the palpable and gritty physicality of a surface. Its materiality and thing-like quality prevails, and that is its magic, beyond anything that a representation can muster. Seeking that quality, you feel your way to the appropriate places— places that comprise a collective unity, despite the gathering of proximal and distal forms. It is all proximal now, all of intimate, even the distant mountains are drawn into this interiority.

ROOM WITH A VIEW

Your personal suite is organized by fractured slabs of gritty rock, with the occasional large stone or erratic bolder presented in groups of two or three. These are positioned like well-placed furniture so as to divide a large space into multiple living spaces, each section with its own personality and invitational quality, though sharing a common style. The theme is eclectic, offering Oriental notes upon a bold, rustic base. There are many sections of similar character, each with interesting surfaces to place your beverage of choice. The sections are anchored with a unique sculptural form of ‘interpreted pine trunk’, made by the same artist, with a twisting, industrial-like character, and roots that spider out of the fractured rock in every direction. The sculptures are topped with a flamboyant rust-orange headdress made out of pre-stressed bushy pine clusters. Area rugs of seemingly Cajun design provide appropriate centering and comfort. Behind your personal seating, a bright sunrise may be viewed, but you have the option of attending to the massive, slightly curved horizontal screen in front of you. The scene is illuminated with a mountain setting tilted toward you, just behind open curtains with skirting that bear a stark, calligraphic print. 

To your left, an extended series of massive canvases hang in panels just off the floor. They could be collectively interpreted as orchard scenes in early spring, or perhaps late fall; it is hard to say. The depiction is one that Van Gogh would find intensely expressive, but the works are technically handled with a paired down lyrical quality reminiscent of Mondrian’s The Gray Tree, or The Flowering Apple Tree.

The archway to your right leads to a carpeted hallway employing a contemporary fabric with a coarse weave and natural pigments. The spacious hallway is smartly lit for both function and mood, providing easy access back to the parking lot below. It is currently occupied with a number of faithful party affiliates dispersed among a sparse crowd, each proudly donned in black and presenting their large blue pins upon their torso. It is nearly the 4th of July, so you surmise that there must be a convention on the premises.

FIREWORKS

You’ve made your way up the long trail to an explosion of movement emanating from a central cluster of activity. In contrast to the early darkness, light has burst forth in all directions. The morning show is in full glory. In this episode of natural fireworks, contrast is not only a necessary background for the vibrant display, it is an intrinsic attribute of every aspect of existence. It defines not only the features of that which solicits your attention, but underneath the show, it is the root of the necessary coupling— the dialogue that your senses engage. Moreover, the experience has unveiled another source of hidden bearing— the positive manifestation of blackness. In this region, blackness is not simply the absence of light. It is not the negative space at the fringe of obscure objects— it is the region’s strongest presence, harboring the greatest potential for positive bearing. When it asserts itself as a thing, nothing exists so forcefully. At such times, it is the light that bears the negative space, and the depth-providing aspect. At those times, the light is also capable of the greatest obscurity, as the shadows are normally. And just as we celebrate fireworks as both the culmination and the onset of significant events, the works that you have witnessed are both the culmination of the dawn upon the ridge, and the early onset of a bright new day.

Your experience was aesthetic in character, but the mental clarity that moves in to replace it had already been anticipated in its latent trajectory. Now, you want to know more about the things that you have thus far experienced without much reflection. Much of your inquiry is addressed to the relationship between the sign of the charred trees, and that to which they refer as their proxy— namely, the original fire, and what it must have been like during the height of its rage. “What it must have been like”, oddly enough, has two poles of inquiry: one regarding the human perspective of the resilient firefighters addressing the onslaught; but strangely also, a twin wonderment addressed to the forest of charred trunks. What was that like? It’s an odd but overwhelming feeling, though literal projections of emotions granted to the trees does not enter. These budding inquiries find fruition not in the rich stratum of sense presentation, which set them ablaze, but in its natural fruition, when sensation transforms into a functional representation for everyday thought. In a similar way, the dawn has transformed itself into the day without being replaced by it. So it is also with the transforming flow of sentience and its ever-maturing momentum. Still, we may remember that both the dawn and the day arose from a mysterious and undisclosed horizon. Perhaps it is that which drives forth the impetus toward expression— to feelings made manifest in aesthetic works that are really just the taking up of the original momentum, and not mere copies of the experience— as if that were truly possible. Is that not also the lesson of The Scribe— discovering and expressing its own articulate language in the wake of the onslaught?

C.H.Carver from Philosopher's Stone. Accompanying images below