Lane: Landscapes

Liminality. A word that sounds complex and confusing; because it is. It means, almost literally, the place or space of limit. It is neither here, nor there. It is completely separating one's self from what you know and continuing to step into this marginal stage of being. Lane compares it to being in the womb or the wilderness or even death. It is just such a strange, limiting, open space of time. Outcasted. Indistinguishable. Words that pull on the heartstrings of the reality in this term. People the endure this together, he refers to, are neofights. Ones that do this together and endure such limits gives them great bondage and opportunity for a stronger communitas. No society is without a form of communitas; therefore no society is without a bond or intensity such as this. Just as there is no high without a low, or low without a high. The way the cookie crumbles, they say? Lane mentions a lot about the mountains being this space; this liminal place of being. They makeup the backbone of the journey you are on and the backbone of the community that it belongs to. Most people think of mountains as the closest they can be to God; a sort of touching link between Mountain and God. The mountains allow for a smoother, simpler transformation. They allow your mind to open to the transformation that is becoming of you while partaking in a spiritual hike or journey around the mountain. Lane states that a rite of passage gives the feeling of climbing this mythical mountain; the mountain of the undiscovered self, peak of divine love, Tahoma- the Mountain that was God. The mountain functions as a distinguishing force that forms and even transforms you and molds you along the way, without you even noticing. For example, the glaciers melting on the sides of mountains. They make such large roars of power, like thunder, showing the intensity and complexity of what they are doing and proving to the mountain. Tahoma is, in just a few words, magical, spiritual, indescribably ghostly and carries the eeriness of two personalities about it; power and strength versus its grace and majesty. There was a quote read in class from the Native saying even though it was too cold and too powerful and had too many perils to overcome and was all around terrifyingly daring, it was still beautiful and creative and amazing and all that was good in this land. This mountain gave the light, Lane says, and therefore the people followed.