Fellowship of the Zen Trees

Alright, lets go for a walk.

After three days of rain, the sun is out and waking the land with light. So I'm shifting from reading Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by the wood stove with tea, to mentally charting the infinite backyard of this cabin. (Infinite meaning this: if you walked west without stopping, you would traverse Alaska all the way to the bering sea without crossing a single road or seeing a town.)  After a meal of rice, lentils and bread I throw a plant and mushroom identification guide into my pack and head out the door. The three days of rain has swelled the mushrooms to sizes larger than my head.  I affectionately name one with a crater-like wart, Moonshroom, imagining what invisible creatures would inhabit that fleshy planet.

Like Annie Dillard, and the bear who went over the mountain, I'm going out to see what I can see.  As I go to turn on to an animal path I notice my mind has been wandering, "should I wear pants or shorts? Should I bring my iPod touch? It does have the bird and tree identification apps, but it also has time, and I don't want to bring that deceptive concept with me.  Did I bring enough water?" Then on to my injured back and on to the very fact that my mind is wandering.  It's an awareness-sucking spiral.  I turn onto the animal trail, and the water hanging on the plants soaks into my socks.  I consider going barefoot, and I feel something within me long for that freedom.  As if it was an epiphany, I realize, hey, I could actually do that.  So I set my shoes and socks by the trail and step on. My foot sinks into the moist moss, and instantly I'm plugged in, like I finally got this forest's wifi password right, and I'm connected.  All the places my mind had been wandering vanish and I enter the forest like a flame.   

I think psychologists would go broke if we all walked barefoot in the woods.  Maybe there are a few reasons for this shift.  First of all, every step becomes more important with vulnerable feet, your awareness must pool to this step and the next. And second, you feel everything.  If an object is defined in terms of how our senses experience it-what it looks like, how it feels, etc.- then going barefoot gives me another access point to understanding the world I'm walking on, like a bug's antenna.  

With every step the moss bows and holds my feet in the air like little personalized hammocks.  I'm walking through a spruce forest, and noticing the trees are stunted from the arctic winters.  The entire forest floor is carpeted in deep green moss, and an occasional patch of white, reindeer lichen.  I stoop to get a closer look at the lichen. Intricate, tiny branches-resembling the bony structure of antlers growing upon antlers-warp into a deep visual.  At my eye level are three brown mushrooms, their glistening caps perched high on a thin stalk, displaying their bellies proudly, from which hang thin, almost translucent gils like spokes on a bike wheel.  As I stand, I hear something and crouch back down again.  Then I stand, and crouch again.  No danger is lurking, I'm just noticing a phenomenon.  In addition to the sun, the wind has decided to put on a display of its power, and the spruce trees are bracing against it, creating a deep whooshing and whistling.  But when my head is at moss level the sound flattens out, as if the moss has swallowed it whole.  And so the ground dwellers of this forest live out their entire lives not knowing what wind sounds like.

I keep walking.  The space between the spruce grows, and my feet start sinking into cold water, occasionally stepping on a tower of grass that wobbles.  I enjoy a game of jumping from tower to tower without hitting the water, which has turned into hot lava in my mind.

The ground opens up before me, sloping into a valley.  The spruce have morphed into aspen, and instead of moss, I'm stepping on blueberry bushes.  Last summer the blueberries were so thick the bushes themselves were blue.  A sweep of the hand would yield 5 berries and a nice juicy mouthful.  We would collect them and make a few jars of jam every day.  But this summer the bushes are bare.  Joyce told me its because there were a few late freezes that killed them all.  But every once in a while I see blue, and I hold the berry up to the sun, between my fingers, turning it like a diamond.  I must enjoy each berry this year with the fervor of a whole jar of jam last year. 

In the valley below me runs Little Panguine creek, but I cant see it yet.  Running my eyes along the apposing ridge, I guess the location of the lake Diana and I happened upon after an entire day of hunting and hoping for a lake.  What joy filled that moment.  Maybe I'll hike there today.  

I start to hear the rush of a creek, my feet quicken, down a steep hillside, it's contagious. I find a tributary to Panguine, and stop at the intersecting point where another tributary joins it.  The resulting crests and troughs of the green land around me would make for a lot of tightly packed squiggly lines on a topographical map.  

Sitting on the slope I realize I haven't seen any animals yet.  The forest seems empty, void of life, and I strain, hoping to catch sight of something living.  Then I start to realize my blindness.  There is life all around me! The trees are alive, the grass is alive. I feel ashamed for my lack of vision, and look at the trees with an expression I hope they'll understand is an apology. 

At that moment a flicker in the corner of my eye turns into a butterfly, small and brown. It lands on my shorts, tonguing the strange blue cloth.  It's aliveness is a lot easier for my beginner forest mind to pick up, and I get that feeling you get when you've been in a foreign country for a week and finally come across someone who speaks English.  Friends instantly, no questions asked, you thirst for connection.  I ask the butterfly for help, for guidance, to see the world truly, in its naked aliveness, there's something in the way, I want to be one with the forest, for my veins to grow into its heart, but I don't think the butterfly understands what I'm asking, it has probably never had this problem before.  It looks at me in a way that comforts me a little, and then flutters off.  I walk downstream, still feeling unrest about my inner landscape. 

Then I stop among a grouping of tall pines, I look up at them.  I sense a wise presence, and realize these are my teachers.  I feel like a new student on the first day at a school of zen, and for some reason, I'm lucky enough to get a student-to-teacher ratio of 1:100.  I feel the old sages gazing down on me; long, thin beards of moss whisping from their chins.  I feel inadequate, foolish, ignorant, small. I think of the long life they've lived to get here, and realize I AM going to need 100 of them because I have less than 80 years to learn what they have learned in hundreds.  We get right to it. They remain silent, knowing that words would only get in the way...what we are going for is something deeper.  A realization comes to me...I'm not the one creating this inner landscape, I'm just the one watching it, but I've been trying to control it.  Instantly my experience changes, there's no burden, just an eagerness to see what happens. So, who I get to be is the witness of the intersection of whatever creates my inner landscape and whatever creates the external. An infinite, ever-changing crossroads of wild randomness and perfection.  Or like a wave going through the ocean. Ah, some of you see what just happened.

I hear a distant train whistle, it reminds me that the trees and I are not the only ones on this planet.

When I get to the Panguine, I sit on a log to watch the rush. Some purple flowers catch my eye and I pull out a book to identify them-monkshoods-"a fitting name," I think.  I try to memorize mushroom names, interested in the edible ones.  My favorite is the bright red Fly Amanita, with white spots on it, though it's not edible.  I leave the river to head back to the cabin.

When you walk in a straight line here it is uncommon not to find an animal trail within a few minutes. It's interesting how animals drift towards the same hoof and paw paths.  One can conclude that this is because, after a while it clears the brush and makes the stroll easier.  But maybe there is some heart in animals, and they realize if they walk anywhere they would be killing more plants, so they walk on the same paths to let the largest amount of plants live. The later is the reason I walk the animal trails, at least when convenient. And something in me likes the prospect that it increases my chances of seeing a moose or bear.  

I hear the flap of wings, and from the stillness float three grey jays. Frisking the tops of spruce for food, perhaps beetles, or bugs, or seeds.  I turn to them ready to be friends, and they stay for a bit, but apparently they have no need for a flightless forth member to their crew, and they continue spruce hopping upwind.

My inner compass served me well, as I came out only 100 yards off from the path that I left.  And now I sit, back in the cabin, water heating on the stove, feet tingling with the memory of a thousand steps. And those zen trees still stand, wondering if i got it, and that moth has fluttered somewhere else, still trying to figure out what I was stuck up on, and the river still flows past the log where I sat, still gushes forth, following the call to return to its mother, and that train might be to fairbanks by now,  and the jays are frisking other spruces, and the wind blows north, pushing air, always coming, always going. But there is always the air right here, and that is the air I breath.

The Little Cabin

 July 31

Friends,

Parallel flames walking this great plain,

Maybe to the horizon

Or maybe to join the sun.

How do YOU see your fellow human?

I'm looking out a cherished window, soaking in a cherished view, from a cherished little cabin.  The steam is rising from my jasmine green tea, the chicken on this mug is still sitting on her nest, the same place I left her last year.  I found the purple fireweed we pressed last summer, and I laid them by the lantern on the table in front of the window. 

Last summer the universe led me to this place through Darren, a Canadian I hitch hiked with. Because of him, we hiked out the the bus that Chris McCandless (Into the Wild) stayed in, and on that hike I met Diana, a Connecticut English major. She was up here on a writing grant focusing on the bus.  She was living in this cabin for the summer.  We became best of friends and explored endlessly for weeks and the cabin gave us shelter.  Jon and Joyce-the couple who homesteaded this land years ago and have a bed and breakfast on another part of the property-sort of adopted us.  

That's a short non-significant way to tell a long, significant story, but that's for another time, and now you have the context.  

So this summer Jon and Joyce kept the little cabin open in case Diana or I wanted it.  I wanted it, and thats how I'm here now, just 20 miles north of the entrance to Denali national park. 

I have mixed emotions being here.  On one hand, it is one of my favorite places, I feel safe, I feel clarity, I feel a sigh of relief, I feel alive. On the other hand, I've never been here alone. It's strange. It's quiet, I can only hear the walls, and the rain, and the leaves, and my breath.  And I think that's what I need.

Everything here carries a magical essence, even the smell, like sweet, cooked cabbage, and wood.  Out the window, the familiar birch and aspen weathered the winter well, and through them, I can see for miles to the east, across the lush valley, way into the snow capped mountains beyond.

I've been painting the trim on the B and B cabins blue. Jon and Joyce say this is their last year. What characters they are. I didn't tell them when I was coming and they found me looking at their garden and came out with smiles and hugs. We sat with the tv on, talking about Jon's medical problems of the last year, and their times in Michigan-how all the old men there carry little dogs-and their experiences hosting the campground at Myrtle Beach in South Carolina.  

Our relationship is progressing. I can tell because they told me I should charge devices and get Internet from their sun room in the house, instead of the guest area.  And when I was filling my bottle with hose water Jon told me to come fill it up at the sink.  Then they told me I could take a shower tonight in their house.  Maybe it's because they're starting to smell me, but it still means something, you know? 

Yesterday I went to Rosie's cafe with them.  I watched their small town jive with all the other locals that they've known for years. Miners and guys that Jon worked with at the power plant.  They told me about whispering John who lived out behind the mine, no one knew where he came from, he was seldom seen and had a quiet raspy voice.  Joyce remembers one day when he gave her a heart-shaped candy.  When he died in his cabin, no one claimed him, so they just buried him there. No one claimed him.

I watched an inchworm today, and every time it flung its head frantically into the air I heard, "What! No further?" It never got old.  There was a small blur of brown fur in front of the cabin. A little mouse. It flew over the ground faster than a squirrel. I tried to imagine what that meant the legs were doing.  I watched it, leaning forward, the edges of my lips turned slightly up.  The Js have seen a moose and a calf around, and a few days ago there was bear poop by one of the cabins. I look forward to sharing space with these larger animals.  Why do I feel the sacredness of creatures in proportion to their size?  Flies bug me, mice entertain me, at eagles I stare in wonder, at moose or bear I stop still, my whole being floods with presence.  Is it in relation to the threat they pose? Does it have to do with the frequency with which I see them? Or is it something else? Does their larger body somehow channel a bigger energy field or spirit that resonates deep within me?  Why do I not stop with this thunderous awe every time I see a fellow human?

Escape from Anchorage

July 30

It was Friday, I had made up my mind to leave the airport the next day wether it rained or not.  After listening to two kids jam, and watching natives dance, I turned on my iPod and started listening to the new Trevor hall album, which has, over the course of the last week become a pinnacle album for me.  I noticed a girl my age, with a backpackers backpack, and curly blonde hair. I had seen her pass through before and now she stood reading Alaskan destination magazines.  I picked up a magazine next to her, I don't know why I did, because I wasn't interested in the magazine.  I asked her if she had been to Alaska before, she said this was her first time.  We started talking, I told her about all the adventures I had up here last summer, and she told me about Minnesota where she went to college. She said she rented a car, but it wouldn't be ready for a few hours, so we sat down and kept talking.  She was scouting Alaska because she wanted something different, because a new place always opens your eyes, and she thought maybe she wanted to move here.  Her name was Abby, I found out an hour into the conversation. She was short, wore no make-up and smiled frequently. About that time she told me her friend wasn't coming to join her for a few days and she has this car, she asked me if I wanted to adventure with her for a few days.  That was the start of it.  The end of it was getting a massive fever in the talkeetna mountains a few days later and getting dropped off at FredMeyer to start my hitch north, but that was more of a transcendental experience than it sounds, and I'm getting ahead of myself.

The first night we stayed in town to explore a bit, and we were let down.  The first thing you need to do when you get to alaska is get out of Anchorage. The best part of the night was climbing to the top of a school gym to watch the sunset.  Every direction we turned seemed like a different world. Toward the mountains, great remnant thunderclouds loomed, but the sun striped them of their normal gloom and instead clothed them with a marvelous salmon pink, contrasted sharply by the dark clouds behind who managed escape the public wardrobe change.  The other side of the sky was open except for thin strips of clouds, the sun caught them in a way you would think they had a light shining from within them. But they faded, and we moved on. The whole time talking about life (which is an easy way to say we discovered where our souls aligned.)  The next day we high tailed it out of town after a quick REI stop-the one redeeming factor of anchorage.  We drove southeast along the ocean, with the steady steam of tourists. We kept having to resist the urge to stop because we knew soon we would move out of the land of tourists. We went to Whittier which claims to have the longest tunnel in the country, and you feel like you're in a mine because it's one lane wide, surrounded closely by jagged rock.  Whittier was confusing, with a cruise ship three times the size of the whole town.  But the view was awesome.  The bay looked like an alpine lake with steep pined slopes rising on each side, we were shocked to remember this was the ocean.  Walking through the docks I loved seeing how the sailboats are built differently up here for the northern seas.  I was admiring one and a guy jumped in to tell me about it, he'd been here for 15 years and never seen the owner. He was a crab fisher, and showed us the inside of his boat, he was eager to be heard and dove right into the whole thing.  I'm sure he's seen some burgeoning storms.

We continued to drive south, stopping once, to hike up a valley; we were lured by a glacier. I sat for a while watching a marmot while Abby kept on to get the perfect photo.  Everything about the place makes you feel small because the mountains shoot up right above you.  I found a picture in a magazine Abby brought of a lake we were at. It was taken 100 years ago. Almost the entire lake was covered with a towering glacier that blocked even the view of the mountains. Today, the only remains can be seen high in the mountains.  I made a comment to some one about the glaciers, and they replied, "ya, gotta enjoy them while they're here."  Woah.

We drove through the rain, listening to music, looking out the window, and beaming from ear to ear.  We couldn't help it.  Further south we stopped at a small lodge at the edge of an expansive emerald blue lake. We ordered a plate of hummus, pita, olives, peppers, cauliflower and other veggies.  Abby asked if we could be seated outside in the rain, and we were.  If you ever get a chance to eat hummus in the rain by a lake, do it!  I saw a cabin across the lake with a sailboat tied to a small dock.  I wonder if that guy knows how lucky he is.  We played a quick game of ping-pong and kept driving.

Way down a dirt road we stopped and hiked for a few hours.  Abby told me about a trip she took to Africa.  While she was there she saw an exorcism, she was in the room, shaking walls, flying objects and all.  After that conversation I said, "ok, I'm intrigued with life once again."  What mysteries life is full of!  That, in particular is one most prefer to avoid thinking about.  We made it to a lookout with the most stunning 360 degree view.  A lake the size of south america from space wrapped around us, we could see up to the inner ice field.  To the north, the ocean glistened and beyond that Mt. McKinley.

The next day we met up with some friends of her friends who live in anchorage. Two brothers, who apparently have an Instagram page about Alaskan adventures that went viral. Our goal for the day was to find the crash site of a World War Two bomber.  Their dad had been there and said we'd never make it.  We hiked up Hatchers Pass, to the Reed lakes, which is where REI has shot a lot of their adds (I found out the next day because I hitch hiked with the wife of the guy who flies the planes for those shoots.This woman had also seen me on Facebook before in a picture from when I. Flew into Denali on a helicopter. With PBS because her friend was the helicopter pilot.))  Needless to say it was gorgeous, Abby said that this blew Banff, Canada out of the water.  We stood at the edge of a big waterfall and looked down on lower Reed lake.  The fingers of snow stood out against the dark rock and reflected like ribs in the crystal blue water.  When the trail stopped, we kept hiking.  It started to rain, and the boulders we were climbing on became slippery.  It got steeper and steeper until we finally got to the pass and looked over the other side. We could see deep into the Talkeetna range. And the whole thing was snow, including the rest of the hike.  We finally made it to the plane and a plaque read that three men died upon impact and the captain, despite his own injuries, drug the other three men through the snow to a shelter, and wrapped them in parachutes and sleeping bags until rescue came.  The plane is now a huge pile of metal, you can make out the wings, but not the cabin.  When we got back on the other side of the ridge, we were completely socked in by fog.  That's when the fever started.  When I laid down to rest and closed my eyes, I saw the flowers from the trail, spinning, and changing colors.  Then my focus would zoom out to see a certain scene and back to the flower, but each time it went back out, the scene would be something completely different.  I tried to describe the good sides of having a fever to the group, but I don't think they got it.  Everything slowed way down for me and I started talking about Plato and Jesus, and what it would be like to be a fly, or a person with a seven-second memory.  I wonder if a fever is natures way of giving you a natural high, plus a few side effects, but I know most don't share my point of view.

Abby dropped me off at fredmeyer, we hugged and i went inside. I asked Starbucks for a cup of hot water, and sunk into a $999 couch on sale for $599 and stared wide-eyed at a painting of an orange tree for who knows how long, jerking up in amazement when a woman's voice echoed from the ceiling in all directions, "make sure you pick up grapes on the way out." What a strange environment superstores are, especially with a fever.  Imagine what a baby's experience of the store would be like.

So I slept, I laid in my sleeping bag and slept forever. And the next day I would catch rides with fascinating people and walk up a hill to the blessed expanse of land in which I now dwell. 

Mukluks to the Inner Passage

This is structured from an email I wrote last week.

July 21

There's burning in here too. I want to hear the beat of a drum that pervades everything, I want to be taken over by it, to become rhythmic waves. 

 I'm in the anchorage airport. I've been here for a few days, it's been raining outside, so I'm making this basecamp as I get caught up with the Internet before hitch hiking north.  A few hours ago I followed the sound of loud guitars and singing voices.  I sat at the source across from two guys around 19, jamming without a care.  One sang a song he wrote, singing from his soul, opening his chest wide open, lifting up his head and closing his eyes...the sound echoed through the entire airport.  There were some uncomfortable glances, but no one stopped him.  As I sat there, I wished I had what he had, so in line with a deep fire and creative force, being a vessel for it to break through this boundary of silence...of distance.

Upstairs there was an unveiling of a new Native American exhibit.  I watched as natives beat drums and sang native chants and girls danced in sync, with animal skin boots, and fans made of fur. I was overtaken for a moment, imagining them and me, in the woods at night, around a big fire, dancing, in it for real, not this recreation for the white folk in the airport. Tears came to my eyes.  I long for so much.  I long for so much.  I feel so alone sometimes and I think I've been trying to avoid that feeling.  But in my most honest hour I feel far from others souls.  I long to be found, but so few are looking.  And I long to find, but so many are inaccessible.  Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that "souls never reach their objects. An innavigable sea washes with silent waves between us and the things we aim at and converse with."  I feel him, but yet something in me sails on through these silent waves.  Something in me feels that, though this sea remains uncrossed, maybe if I keep sailing deeper I'll find that inner passage. And soul will touch object.  

Most of the dancing girls were half-native and in their late teens, but one was full native and maybe 13.  She was the one I watched, she was fully submerged in it, fully undivided, she moved like the ocean, the waves from the drum moved her soul like seaweed in the surf. She seemed completely at peace, not a thought, effortless.  Something tells me that I was seeing a glimpse of the truth, right there, in this girl's movement, so simple.  

Very few people watched, most rushed by, nervously trying to make their flight. 

What do we do when the beauty that has been tucked away in corners is pulled out for once, and most rush by unaware?

I don't know, but I'll keep looking in corners.