{"id":444,"date":"2012-06-27T17:28:02","date_gmt":"2012-06-27T17:28:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=444"},"modified":"2012-07-23T20:19:10","modified_gmt":"2012-07-23T20:19:10","slug":"444","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=444","title":{"rendered":"Culture Currents moves to the Grand Tetons"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Readers may have noticed the change in the theme image of Culture Currents, to a photograph of the Grand Tetons, taken on\u00a0March 11, 2012 by\u00a0Michael Melford\u00a0of\u00a0National Geographic. I feel it adds a bit more dimension to my thematics\u00a0even though the concept of “currents” is here a bit more subtle. However, the full,\u00a0uncropped photo above\u00a0includes much more of the Snake River undulating into the foreground. Here it is for your\u00a0delectation. Of course, the wind is a primary source of aquatic currents, so the wind that helps shape the waves also moves the clouds that engulfed the mighty peaks this day.<\/p>\n

This scene recalls my very first experience in the Tetons\u00a0when, with my friend Frank Stemper, I began a climb of Teewinot Mountain with no experience or equipment,\u00a0 back in my foolhardy youth. (Teewinot\u00a0 is the broad-faced snowy mountain above the last bend in the river in the background. The Grand Teton, situated\u00a0on Teewinot’s\u00a0left, is invisible in cloud cover here. But I chose Melford’s National Georgraphic<\/em> photo for its obvious beauty and complexity.)<\/p>\n

Below are photos of the day we climbed in late August in the early 70s.<\/p>\n

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Frank Stemper eyes the summit of Teewinot Mountain before our climb — Photo by Kevin Lynch<\/em><\/p>\n

Frank and I climbed a ways above Teewinot\u2019s tree line on the left face, and then retreated. But a dense cloud descended on the mountain, and we could hardly see a few feet in front of us — when we reached the edge of a steep cliff. We had no choice but to stop and plop down and wait for the clouds to clear. But night was falling and it began raining and the temperature hovered cruelly just above freezing. So we crawled into our cloth sleeping bags and lay shivering on the edge of the cliff, with our knees up in the air to try to keep our crotches dry. Frank offered me a cigarette for a bit of warmth, or one might say, cold comfort. I appreciated the puffs but it is the last cigarette I’ve ever smoked.<\/p>\n

Frank fell asleep at one point and dreamed of our third friend, John Kurzawa, driving up the mountain in my mother’s Ford station wagon, and saving us.<\/p>\n

It was only a dream and I don’t recall fallen asleep at all. The clouds finally abated sometime in the morning and were able to traverse along the cliff and find a path to descend. But that experience has certainly shaped my sense of the power of natural currents, thus wind and clouds serve as\u00a0metaphoric symbols of my blog \u201cCulture Currents\u201d as much as water does.<\/p>\n

By the way, I became a fairly enthusiastic climber and returned to the Tetons a number of times, and reached a handful of summits, including the Grand Teton. The Tetons taught me deep humilty, especially after I fell twice on one climb. I also began to sense how nature provides artistic form and texture, and dynamic challenges of energy, which feed perpetually into the human sense of creative possibility. Thus, landscape and seascape are timelessly fecund\u00a0artistic forms for me.<\/p>\n

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Kevin Lynch on Teewinot begins to sense how nature provides artistic form and texture and dynamic challenges of energy… Photo by Frank Stemper and Kevin Lynch (double exposure)<\/em><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Frank, though a very creative person as a composer,\u00a0seems to have sworn off heights since then, although he remains a courageous marathoner into middle age.<\/p>\n

“And we are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching\u00a0of the reality which surrounds us. The universe constantly, and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us spend our\u00a0lives in conceiving that. The poet or artist\u00a0never yet had so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish it.”<\/p>\n

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden; or, Life in the Woods<\/em> (1854)<\/p>\n

The human-centric transcendentalist notion that\u00a0the universe “obediently answers to our\u00a0conceptions” seems dubious today. However,\u00a0we can certainly interpret the universe through our creative and scientific\u00a0conceptions, although never truly possess it. Thoreau seems to acknowledge\u00a0that, while bullishly\u00a0articulating\u00a0an inlet to nature-reality through creative consciousness.<\/p>\n

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Readers may have noticed the change in the theme image of Culture Currents, to a photograph of the Grand Tetons, taken on\u00a0March 11, 2012 by\u00a0Michael Melford\u00a0of\u00a0National Geographic. I feel it adds a bit more dimension to my thematics\u00a0even though the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-www-kevernacular-com"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s2hJWE-444","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=444"}],"version-history":[{"count":43,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":459,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444\/revisions\/459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}