This I Know to be True

“The closer you get to real matter, rock air fire and wood, boy, the more spiritual the world is.” – Japhy Ryder

For those of you who don’t know him, Japhy Ryder is a real character. No really, he’s a character in a book called The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac, first published in 1957, and the character is based upon a real person (a poet) by the name of Gary Snyder (more info at http://www.litkicks.com/GarySnyder/).

The truth in this statement became abundantly clear to me last weekend when I spent three days on a solo trip climbing up Mount Wood, the second highest peak in Montana. Admittedly it had been a long time since I’d done a solo overnight trip and I was going somewhere I’d never been before and which was miles beyond the end of the established trails I’d use to access the backcountry, so I had reservations. Yet, somewhere deep down inside my consciousness the lesson this trip had to offer was calling me like temptation calls an addict. “You know you want it, boy”. I knew I wanted it.

It was no big deal really. Start at 6,500 feet. Climb a trail for 6 miles to 7,600 feet, past an often visited lake, leave the trail, cross the outlet of the next lake up the drainage on a 200 foot long serpentine log jam, climb 2,000 more vertical feet and find a level place to camp at the edge of the forest where the trees reluctantly yield their hold on the ground to rock.. The next day climb a quarter mile long 45 degree slope of loose scree and retreating ground cover to the top of an unnamed plateau, and then just keep climbing slope to shelf to slope to bench for another 2,600 vertical feet and almost three miles until atop the second highest mountain in Montana. Even in theory and on the maps, it certainly didn’t look like a walk in the park, but as I said before I wanted it. So that was that.

This was for me, what Joseph Campbell might have called The Hero’s Journey. This of course is a long standing historical, even biblical, metaphor for the journey a young, troubled, or seeking soul takes to find themselves - seeking answers, experiencing trials, and then returning to the home and family a different, more evolved and mature soul.

Ok, Maybe The Hero’s Journey is a bit of an exaggeration. I wasn’t going on a ten year crusade, in fact I wasn’t even going into a subterranean cave on Dagobah to face my Vader voiced father, although some in my family have inferred something to that effect. All the same, the challenges of this trip were enough to set me on edge. Little did I know that I’d come home from the trip with no sharp edges at all.

Continue to follow if you are inquisitive - and have the time. Don’t if neither exists.

Regards,
JR