I have been reading the archives at Fragments From Floyd and came across Fred’s “Secret Places” observations.
Fragments From Floyd: November 19, 2004 Archives: “This remote and unearthly quiet place above and below me was a hidden shrine, the rose that blooms unseen–a neighborhood secret. And I felt blessed.”
I too have stumbled into places of this type. I felt this way as I climbed the hollow above the cabin we rented in 2004. I would work my way about half way up and just stand in awe. The extreme diversity of nature in that one spot, the church like silence, it all led to that sense of the sacred. When I read Fred’s account of his trip to the fall’s, that is the impression I get, more sacred than secret.
Wendell Berry said something along these lines in his poem “How To Be a Poet” from Given New Poems:
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
There are only sacred places
And desecrated places.
There is a place up the road and around a bend from this place I call home that once was a home of others long gone. It is my secret place in this home space. I do not own it and know not who does. Only the sheltering oaks still proclaim that this old and desecrated grove was once sacred. But there is a feeling amongst those old and weather battered oaks of what once they covered. When I stand quietly and allow the trees to speak I can still feel the sacred words they once proclaimed so openly…I don’t go to the grove often anymore ’cause I feel the oaks need their peace and I don’t tread as lightly as once I did…