John Muir and Grief

The death of someone we love changes our life and unveils the frailty of existence. When we sit down with grief and look back, we realize that change has been continuous over the years. We are not who we were ten years ago or who we were as a teenager.

John Muir said, “Creation was not an act, it is a process, and it is going on today as much as it ever was.” Grief reminds us of this.

Everything in nature is continually changing. 

When we return to places like Yosemite (or Joshua Tree, the Boundary Waters, the Maine coast), it looks like it hasn’t changed. Yet if we pay attention to the details, we notice that everything is a little different than it was the last time we were here. 

In Yosemite, Mirror Lake has gradually filled in with the sediment brought down by the river and become a meadow. Flakes of rock the size of houses have broken off Yosemite’s massive valley walls, leaving white spots behind on the gray, weathered granite. The meadow in the west end of the valley that was completely open now has a forest of trees. The massive flood in the winter of 1997 carved a new path through the valley and shifted the Merced River 500 feet to the left.

Life and death are ongoing in nature.

Although Muir understood the ways of nature and accepted its cycles of life and death, he was still devastated by his wife’s death. He spent a year wandering around the desert Southwest as he worked to reassemble his heart. He was my companion as I hiked in Yosemite to deal with Evelyn’s death.

When a loved one dies, the world we knew ends and a new one begins.

We try to find meaning in our loved one’s death. Sometimes we can’t. They just died, and our lives change direction without them in it. 

Because of the trauma of grief, our hearts have deepened. Although we don’t like it, we now understand that suffering is going to be part of everyone’s life, and that we have the strength to endure the onslaught. Our hearts have also been stretched wider because people came when we were in need and helped us. We now know how important compassion is when others are struggling. 

Death is a forest fire that sweeps through the forest, burning up the oak and pine trees and clearing the forest floor of accumulated duff. It takes the trauma of the fire before the cones of the giant sequoias will open. Grief plants the seeds in the ground and raises up new life where death once lived.