June 28, 2016 Mile 788.3-811.3 I pack up quietly in the early light; none of the nearby tents are stirring. As I hoist my pack, I hear Sprinkler rolling over, so I venture a guess that she’s at least partly awake. “Hey Sprinkler, I’m headed out.” “Wait.” She unzips her tent door and pokes her face out. She squints at me with bleary eyes. “You’re taking off?” “Yeah. I’ll miss hiking with you. I’ve enjoyed it,” I say. "I wish that there was some chance that I’d catch up to you later, but that seems pretty unlikely.” “Yeah, there’s pretty much no chance,” she chuckles. “Unless you decide to skip a bunch of the trail. You could always go back and do it afterward.” Part of me wants to consider it—hiking alone for so long was hard on me, and I don’t know how long it will be before I find another friend with a similar pace. “Tempting, but I want to finish knowing that I’ve hiked the whole trail.” “Yeah, I get that,” she says. “Let’s keep in touch, though.” “Yeah.” “Have a great hike.” “Thanks, you too.” I feel lonely almost immediately. Within a couple miles I have a spectacular view of Charlotte lake and no one to share it with. Friendship has always been difficult for me. I’ve found it easier with women than with men, but that’s fraught with its own risks. With men, there seems to be a constant striving for dominance. I don’t think it’s exclusively the domain of men, but it seems to play a much larger role in their self-esteem. I try not to do that myself, but the impulse for self-determination involves a natural resistance. Dominance compels submission, and to fight against submission puts me naturally at odds with anyone who plays at that game, no matter how subtly or skillfully. With women, the game of power is still present, but it has a different form. My own self-determination is rarely taken as a challenge to dominance, and friendship can proceed without a pecking order. This, of course, is a generalization, as I have several male friends who don’t view everything as a competition, and I also know many females who do. Generally speaking, though, it has always been easier for me to make friends with women, from as early as junior high. Of course, that leads to natural problems with cis-gendered, straight, opposite sex friends. Let’s catalogue those for a moment: There’s mutual attraction, which is no problem if both people are single. There’s one-sided attraction, which makes a friendship difficult in proportion to the strength of attraction and any expectations engendered. Finally, there’s a lack of attraction, which seems like it would be the easiest, except that neither party ever knows fully what the other is thinking, so both sides are trying to make it clear that they aren’t romantically interested without being rude or dismissive. Like I said, friendship is difficult. I think that both Sprinkler and I are in the last camp. I think it’s fair to say that she would be considered attractive by most men, but I was never interested, primarily because I’m very happily married but also because I just didn’t feel that attraction towards her. I never got the feeling that she was attracted to me, either, but I still felt as if I had to do and say certain things that made it clear that I was happily married and not interested romantically. As I climb up Glen Pass, I start to wonder if maybe I had been overstating the obvious, and had even been a little rude at times. I have a propensity to overanalyze every last word and action. Hiking with a friend is a distraction from that: perhaps that’s one of the things that I liked best about it. I reach a small frozen pond in an enclosed basin on my way up to Glen Pass, and the next few switchbacks are excruciating. I am completely out of energy. I stop and make breakfast as a few other hikers pass me. .I continue the climb after breakfast, which is made more difficult by patches of snow and ice covering the trail. Eventually I reach the top of Glen Pass and look out over a rocky basin filled with snow and lakes. Two groups of hikers are here; one is a group of three guys who are just departing. The other, of three girls smoking a bowl. I sit a short distance away from both of them and eat some snacks. I can see around 20 different specks of people dispersed along the approaching trail. Their smallness puts the largeness of the basin in perspective. An older man comes up the trail from behind us, gazes out at the lakes below and says, with genuine admiration “Wow, look at that port-a-potty blue!” Everyone on the pass bursts out laughing. The descent is a little scary due to soft, slippery snow and steep slopes. My trail-runners are soaked in minutes, but the weather is warm and I’m not too concerned. As I descend further, the snow turns to slush, then to water. It runs across and over the trail with aplomb. Occasionally, a well-constructed section of trail funnels the water and becomes a creek itself; at least in those places I can walk on the large rocks on the sides. Nonetheless, where the water has receded, magnificent wildflowers and meadows have sprung up in its place. .The descent is fast, and I am level with the Rae Lakes before I realize it. People are everywhere, and I skim along their edges with a quick “hello” or “excuse me”, depending on their direction. I find myself aching for conversation but giving little effort at beginning it. The Rae Lakes are a particularly stunning section of the Sierra, and I am overawed, but I can’t quite sink all the way in. It’s like I’m stuck on the surface, or seeing them through a picture frame. Onwards, alongside Arrowhead lake, then Dollar lake, where Brian and I camped many years ago, and still down. Occasionally I come out of my trance to take in the surroundings, but mostly I am lost in thought, analyzing past wrongs and misunderstandings. Finally I reach the Woods Creek bridge—a large, bouncing suspension bridge—and the end of the downhill. I stop for lunch at a large open area before crossing, grab a bucket of water and launder some of my clothes. A group of high-school aged girls show up with a mom, and I’m suddenly self-conscious about sitting here in my underwear while my clothes dry. There’s nothing to be done for it, though, so I just read my book and finish my lunch. Eventually, they move on. After lunch, the trail turns right to follow Woods Creek uphill. Water is spilling all over the trail, and it becomes pointless to try to keep my shoes dry. I just plod on through creek after creek, and hope my blisters don’t get any more infected. A couple hours later, I emerge from the main valley to dryer, flatter trail, and the rain begins. Thunder rumbles occasionally, but mostly it’s just a light sprinkle of rain. I pull out my umbrella and rain pants and keep hiking. The thunder abates in the early evening, and I eventually cross up over Pinchot Pass. That’s two passes in one day! But I’m feeling it. I am completely exhausted. I set a goal of making it to the King’s River, for which King’s Canyon is named, just a few more miles away. About a mile from my goal, I come across a deep, powerful creek, rushing hard through a narrow passage. I head a ways downstream, but there is no crossing. I try upstream, but there’s still no crossing. I stop for a while and consider where I could camp. The last acceptable spot was about a half mile back, and I’m not eager to turn around. I look at the pounding creek again. God I’m tired.
There is a path that looks like it’s probably possible, but it will require a pretty big leap on some wet rocks, from a higher one to a lower one where the stream narrows slightly. I’d prefer to toss my pack across first, but I don’t think I can toss it that far, as tired as I am. Even if I were fresh, throwing my pack that far would be just as likely to break it as not. I decide, despite my better judgment, to go for it. I make my way across the first few wet rocks, carefully climb to the higher, drier rock, and scan the slightly lower rock for a good landing place. It doesn’t look that slippery, but that’s something I’ve learned not to depend on. How many times have I learned that lesson? At least the water isn’t flowing over it, it’s just wet from the spray. I stare at it for a full minute, still deciding whether it might not be better, safer, to turn around and hike the half-mile back. After all, the water will be lower in the morning, won’t it? In the end, I don’t know why I decide to take the risk, despite my own better judgment. I leap as hard as I can, and immediately I can tell it won’t be enough. My leg muscles are heavy like lead. I extend my forward leg as far as it can go, and it looks like it might barely catch the nearest, wettest corner of the rock. My mind flashes forward to a shattered shin bone as my foot slips and my entire body weight crushes my leg against the corner of the rock. Except, miraculously, it doesn’t. In fact, my foot doesn’t slip at all. It catches the corner and bears my weight, springing me forward onto the rock and across onto the grassy hill behind. I don’t even stumble, but I still pause to let the adrenaline die down and to reflect on my good fortune. That was stupid, I tell myself. What the fuck. Don’t pull that shit again. It seems like my better judgment has taken control again, albeit a little late in the game. I hike onward and camp just before the King’s River. One other hiker is camped nearby, but we both eat and camp alone.
0 Comments
June 27, 2016 Mile 770.3-788.3 The mosquitoes are still swarming when we pack up, so we forgo breakfast in the hope that the sun will beat them back into submission in an hour or two. Wallace creek is wide and there are few stepping stones to cross, so we hike the first mile with wet feet. I charge up the first short ascent with a piston-like pace and my lungs quickly bring me back into check. As I pause to catch my breath at the top, Sprinkler says “I don’t think I can keep that pace.” “Yeah, me neither,” I reply breathlessly. “I got a little ahead of myself.” I slow a bit, but we are still beating a quick rhythm up the trail. Wright creek is next, and we’re able to cross it without soaking our feet, but the sun is out and the mosquitoes have receded. “I don’t understand how you can hike without eating,” Sprinkler says. “You’re starving me!” “Oh, sorry. I don’t know, I guess I just like to get some miles in before I eat. We can stop.” And we do. Sprinkler has a pop tart and some snacks while I make my oatmeal. I’m pretty sick of oatmeal already, but at least it’s hot. We’re sitting in a clearing on the northern slope above the westward-running creek. Pine and fir trees fill the hillside above us and thorny brush hedges the clearing to the East and West. We have some small conversation while we eat, but mostly we listen to the creek After breakfast, Sprinkler is more talkative and tells me about her travels through South America. I’m surprised to find out that they were only a few months ago, immediately before she started the PCT. She describes dangerous cities in Columbia and impossibly tall mountains in Peru. She tells me about the “American tourist uniform” that she saw everywhere she went: earth-tone hiking pants with a color-coded puffy—earth-tones for men, jewel tones for women. The miles pass easily as we traipse between meadow and forest, meadow and forest. This is forest that would be easy to get lost in—few distinctive landmarks, limited visibility. The meadows, though, slope downhill to the Kern River valley with views of the Keawah mountains in the West. We dip briefly downward to Tyndall Creek, then climb up into a desolate granite garden as we turn northward toward Forrester Pass. We find ourselves in a basin defined by erosion and rocky detritus. Occasional rills cut across the trail, and meager grass spreads to either side like ink bleeding across vellum, but the grass is tenuous at best, and the edges fray like old carpet in the gravel. Looking northward, expansive fields of talus are dotted with scattered boulders and snow. Shattered ice-blue lakes and jagged spires that resemble broken teeth give the entire scene a violent, jarring feel. The twisted metal and shattered glass of a traffic accident would hardly seem out of place here. The basin floor slopes endlessly northward toward a slate wall. Forrester Pass is the small notch at the top; switchbacks, which I can’t yet see, have been blasted out of the wall. A camera crew is perched atop a high point on the basin floor. It tracks Sprinkler as she walks through a track in the snow ahead of me. I wonder what they’re filming for. I catch up to Sprinkler just before the switchbacks, which seem to be crawling with hikers. “Hey, um, nothing personal, but do you mind if we hike separate on this pass?” I can tell she’s been thinking about how best to ask this for a little while. “Yeah, no, that’s fine,” I say. I’m glad she’s worried about my feelings, but I’m not offended at all. Actually, I’m surprised she’s continued hiking with me in lockstep for so long. She’s obviously the stronger hiker, and I know from experience that it can be frustrating to constantly restrain your pace. “Okay, I’ll wait for you at the top,” she says with a relieved smile before she bolts up the switchbacks. By the time I hit the third switchback, I’ve already passed six hikers, but Sprinkler is three switchbacks ahead. It’s a display of sheer power and stamina, and I am in awe. Near the top of the switchbacks, the trail crosses a dangerous ice chute that often remains until late in the summer. That’s where I finally catch up, and only because she is stopped, waiting while a weathered hiker kicks the ice and snow with his crampons to create a track across. Sprinkler sees me walk up and exclaims “Did you follow the PCT email threads? That’s Ned Tibbits!” I didn’t follow the email threads, but I know of Ned through the PCT facebook page, where he often posted info about snow and ice skills, in part to advertise for his winter skills course. “He told me I have nice hiking form,” she says, grinning with pride. I have to smile. “Well, you did just demolish me on that uphill.” She laughs. While we’re waiting, she asks a couple questions of another hiker waiting to cross the chute, who is taking Ned’s winter skills course. He’s complimentary of the course, and of Ned, but he says the heat waves have made the snow really wet and soft, so he’s not sure if he’s getting the experience he was looking for. After Ned finishes carving a path, we finish the last few switchbacks and crest the pass. A dark canyon framed by improbably steep mountains curves north and west. I can hardly believe that this place exists. Dragons would not be out of place. We meet and chat with two other PCT hikers just before they depart: Frogman and Papa Squat. It’s one of the first times I’ve introduced myself with my trail name, and I feel a little self-conscious using it, but no one blinks an eye. In fact, Sprinkler seems proud to have named me. Dark clouds are moving in, and I have no desire to be on a pass in a lightning storm. We hurry down from Forrester pass, but it’s a long, exposed, snow-covered descent. A disembodied voice comes out of the mountain: “Glissade!” It’s Frogman, hidden in plain sight among the rocks below. It’s a short glissade into a snowy basin, so I give it a try. It’s a blast, sledding on my ass in the snow. Sprinkler follows suit, laughing as she bounces down the hill. “You want to stop for lunch soon?” Sprinkler asks.
“Sounds good.” I’m hungry too. Right then, thunder echos through the valley. “Let’s get a little further downhill first,” I say. “I don’t want to be up here in a thunderstorm.” Several years ago, my friend Brian and I got trapped below Donahue pass in Yosemite as sleet, hail, and lightning crashed around us for close to three hours. It was a frightening and miserably cold experience, and ever since, I have been especially cautious of storms in high places. Sprinkler agrees, and we take off almost running downhill. The trail is mostly fist-sized rocks, so it takes all my attention to step carefully. A light, cold rain begins to fall. After a half hour of this, Sprinkler calls to me “I can’t keep going that fast. I’m afraid I’m going to break an ankle. Go ahead, I’ll catch up.” “Okay, sounds good,” I reply. “I’ll stop as soon as I find a good place for lunch.” I continue my jog-hike for another twenty minutes, until I see a series of small campsites and trees perched above a small drop-off. The rain is still falling, but I haven’t heard thunder in a few minutes, so it seems a good time to stop for lunch. It’s nearly 2pm. Sprinkler shows up a few minutes later, and I can tell she’s a little grumpy. She tells me again that I’m starving her, and I chuckle and apologize. The rain stops and the sun comes out, and we’re both feeling a little better with some food. Shortly after lunch, we meet up with 2nd Breakfast again. It’s good to see him again, but he can’t keep up with our pace for long. Sprinkler and continue our long descent with a lot of conversation. After we pass Vidette Meadows, we find ourselves following a solo female hiker through a long flat section. She is working hard to stay ahead of us, but she is able to keep pace for a couple miles before she finally takes a break. She gives us a mildly dirty look as we pass, as if we have insulted her. Oh well. The trail suddenly turns sharply uphill, and the mosquitoes return. I’m running low on energy and have to take a break about halfway up the switchbacks. The mosquitoes attack Sprinkler while she waits for me. “Go ahead, I’ll meet you at camp,” I tell her. We’re almost there anyway. “Thanks,” she says. My break is fairly quick, though, and I catch up to her a few switchbacks later. We get to the Kearsarge Pass junction, where we planned to camp, and where we’ll part ways tomorrow morning when she goes into town to resupply and I continue on. There are already six or seven tents set up, but we’re able to find a clear space near the trail to pitch our tents end to end. We find a good spot for dinner a little ways from the junction. Sprinkler breaks out a flask of cinnamon whisky she’s been carrying since Kennedy Meadows. It seems fitting to celebrate our last meal together before we part ways. Conversation is light and easy, but occasionally one or the other of us will mention our regret that we won’t get to hike together anymore. By the time I finish the desert sections I have to make up, she’ll be far ahead, and she hikes far too fast for me to catch up. Regardless, we both promise to keep in touch. When we get back to camp, 2nd Breakfast has arrived and set up camp nearby. He tells us that he is planning on ending his PCT hike the next day. “Oh no, why?” I ask. “I’ve been having a lot of heel pain, and I just can’t keep up with the mileage,” he says. Sprinkler points out that he’s been keeping similar mileage to us, but he’s adamant. He wishes us both well and returns to his tent. Sprinkler and I climb into our tents and talk for a while into the evening. The alcohol has loosened my tongue and my brain a little, and at some point in the conversation I find myself passionately extolling the virtues of classical music and, later, drum and bugle corps. Halfway through the second subject, she cuts me off and tells me she needs to go to bed. I have to laugh—first at myself, for choosing subjects that few people are likely to care about, and second at the ironic parallel to our first night of camping together, when I was the one who cut off conversation to go to sleep. As I settle into my sleeping bag, three more hikers walk by, searching the dark for a place to camp. I feel sorry for them, because I know they won’t find one nearby. June 26, 2016 Mile 766-770.3 (plus 16.8 round trip to Whitney Summit) When the alarm goes off at 2am, I feel like I haven’t slept at all. Other hikers were up talking fairly late, and even after that I just didn’t sleep well. I have to fight myself a bit to keep from just turning off the alarm and rolling over. I trick myself into a little bit of wakefulness by imagining the sunrise from Whitney and mustering some excitement about the hike. This will be my second ascent to the peak; the first was eight years ago, so I am honestly excited to revisit some memories. I shake off my sleepiness and sit up in my bag. When I quietly whisper-call to Breanna “Hey, Sprinkler, you awake?” she gives a groaning “yeah…” and rustles a bit. I chuckle to myself at her reticence, because I feel it too; aren’t we supposed to be on vacation? A few minutes later, we’re both out of our tents, our headlamps emitting a faint glow. We’ll leave everything behind except for some snacks and water, so our backpacks are wrinkled and deflated like old balloons. A few other headlamps pierce the darkness of the campground as we set out. The hike starts with a balancing act: we negotiate several small, buoyant, and somewhat loose logs that have been placed across the creek. For the next hour or so, we listen to the creek as it moves farther and closer to the trail. The tunnel-blindness of our headlamps is a new experience: the constricted vision leads to an auditory openness that I don’t normally experience in daylight. Sprinkler wonders aloud at the volume and nearness of the invisible rushing creek when we stop to strip off sweaty layers. After a second hour of gradual but fast-paced climbing, she tells me to stop. “I have to eat something,” she says. She chuckles slightly as she says it, but it’s an annoyed chuckle, and I feel like it’s my fault that we haven’t stopped already. “Yeah, no problem," I reply. We’re farther away from the creek now, so the crinkle of her Pop-Tarts wrapper is amplified like a rustled lapel mic in an empty theater. Even so, it’s quiet compared to the gravelly crunches and pops I create as I chew on dry Grape-nuts. The trees disappear, and we pass the star-lit reflections of Timberline lake and Guitar lake. We start to climb in earnest. The trail is covered in thin sheets of running water. Short switchbacks and turns throw us off-trail for a moment, but we quickly recover. After the first of the long switchbacks, I request another break. I explain to Sprinkler: on my first ascent of Whitney, I ended up with severe altitude poisoning—confusion, nausea, hyperventilation, a complete loss of speech, and eventually vomiting—and I have no desire to repeat that experience. Every two or three switchbacks, we rest again as I catch my breath. The sky is starting to get lighter, and I’m not sure if we’ll make it to the top before sunrise, but there are other rewards for the early start: the milky criss-cut peaks opposite the trail are breathtaking in this light, and the lakes below are portals of scattered stars. At the end of one of the switchbacks, a lone camper bivvies in a flat patch beside the trail. I don’t see a sleeping pad or groundcloth; it looks like he’s put his sleeping bag directly in the dirt. Something seems off about it. He doesn’t stir at all when we pass him. Sprinkler says “I think that was Sherpa,” a hiker who I had met briefly a day or two prior. I remembered him because he was hiking in sandals. “I hope he’s okay,” she says, “he didn’t move at all.” I agree that it seemed kind of weird, but we decide we can check on him on the way back. The sun lights up “the windows,” the large gaps between the pyramid-like spires of the ridgeline, and we know that we’ve missed sunrise. Still, we get at least half the benefit of a sunrise summit as we watch the purple shadow of the earth recede across the Sierra skyline and give way to a radiant peach gilding. The final two miles from trail junction to Whitney Summit is harder than I remember, but we finish about an hour after sunrise. There are people and cell service here. Sprinkler calls her mom, I call Lindsey. I post a short summit video on facebook. We briefly take part in the machine of civilization and stare at our phones. We snack and enjoy the view for a cold, windy hour before we decide to head back down to reality. On the way down, Sherpa is still wrapped in his sleeping bag in the dirt. He has rolled over onto his side, but Sprinkler is still concerned and wakes him. He’s fine, he tells us, he just headed up here late last night, got tired, and decided to sleep in this morning. We’re both relieved that he’s okay. The downhill and daylight make the miles much faster, and we are back by Guitar lake in no time. We take a wrong turn down a side trail and end up near the lake’s outlet. Our options are to backtrack the trail or to head cross-country. I’m for a little cross-country, and though Sprinkler seems a little reticent, she agrees. We climb over rocky ground. It takes a little longer than I expected to find the trail, and I can tell Sprinkler is getting a little anxious. I’m not worried, though—the terrain is open and we’re contained in a valley, so it would be near-impossible to get too lost. A minute later I find the trail, only a little further over than I had expected. We race down the remaining miles to Crabtree Meadows. The afternoon is devoted to napping, but the trees provide scant shade with the sun so far overhead, and it keeps moving. It’s too hot to sleep. Sprinkler gets up and moves her tent several times, but I give up and read instead. A ranger comes by to check our Whitney permits, but allows Sprinkler to keep sleeping after I assure him that she has a permit. I finish “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” shortly before she wakes up.
We pack up and walk a couple miles to our planned stopping point, Wallace Creek. It’s a wide, burbling creek with several campsites next to a meadow. There are already 5 tents set up, and the air is dense with mosquitoes. We consider continuing on, but we’re both tired and hungry, and there are two open sites further down. Our fatigue wins out. The mosquitoes are horrendous, but they seem to prefer Sprinkler; I’m certainly not immune to their attention, but she’s completely swarmed as we set up our tents. I finish first and head up the hill with my bear canister and mess kit in a futile attempt to escape the buggy hell, but I quickly realize that I’ve forgotten my spoon, and return to my backpack just in time to see Sprinkler rubbing Deet on her bare ass. Timing. Dinner is complicated by headnets, gloves, and the careful extraction of rogue mosquitoes who have crash-landed in our food. At any given moment, I have 5-10 mosquitoes hovering near my face. Sprinkler has several dozen. Despite my relative immunity, I race to finish my dinner and retreat into my tent as it’s just getting dark. We both have to take a few minutes to kill the mosquitoes that followed us in before we can settle down to sleep. When I finish, I fall asleep almost immediately. Note: As of this writing, Kris Fowler, aka Sherpa, has been missing for over a year. He was last seen in Packwood and Matches, Washington on October 12th. I know that many aspiring PCT hikers read trail blogs before their trip, as I did. If you are getting ready for a hike in Washington on or near the PCT, please take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the search for Sherpa and help keep an eye out. You can read more about the search here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1841283189418601/about/ This morning, I’m contemplating the wilderness of the mind.
Wilderness can seem chaotic and dangerous. In reality, it’s highly organized, it’s just highly organized in a way that doesn’t necessarily favor us. So we look for affordances to deal with wilderness to our own advantage. In the external world, we deal with wilderness in a few different ways: -We push it out by creating walls and barriers, roofs and fences and doors. -We tame it by paving over landscapes, indoctrinating our tribe with standards and mores, and cultivating separateness (again, fences to keep the wolves away from the cattle, security guards to keep the riff-raff out of the country club, borders to keep out the other tribes). -We avoid it and stay only in those places that have already been tamed. Wilderness always encroaches. Barriers break, roofs leak, standards and mores disintegrate and shift, opposing tribes war, and on and on and on. As without, so within. I think we all struggle with our own wild places. We deal with them in some of the same ways. We push away the chaotic aspects of ourselves, tame them with productivity hacks and rules and commitments, and avoid those places that are left untamed. Now I’m not arguing that we should all just return to internal wilderness. Wilderness may not be chaotic, but it can definitely be dangerous. Walk through the desert just expecting to come upon water, and you may get a hard lesson. Free love, anarchy, and “do whatever you feel” have natural consequences. But I am arguing that we should stop avoiding our own wildernesses. We should explore them, let ourselves feel uncomfortable and even terrified from time to time, and find, when we have crossed the desert of our own psyche, that perhaps much of the terror was unjustified. Or if justified, at least we will know the shape and form of our fear, and be better prepared to deal with it next time. There is another side to this story. Namely, the fear of the constricting influences of the ‘tamed’ world. I find myself struggling with this at least as often. Having tasted one type of freedom, I find myself sometimes wanting to destroy all the fences and walls that I don’t feel should apply to me. I’d like meaningful work that makes an impact on the world, and I also want the freedom to go explore and experience whatever feels good that day. But I know that to do meaningful work, I need to show up with a consistency that precludes the freedom that I also desire. Chaos and danger are important to the psyche—without them, we’d never learn to generate the risks that lead to progress. But so are rules and commitments—without them, we’d never generate the progress itself. I am encouraged by this passage from Joseph Campbell: There is no escape from society. Hence it is, that although the Japanese and Chinese ideograms for the concept “freedom” are exactly the same in form, the Chinese by implication means liberation from the human nexus, but the Japanese, compliance with the same through willing devotion to secular activities: on one hand, freedom away from society, under the great vault of the skies, on the misty mountaintop, picking mushrooms; and on the other hand, freedom within the undeniable bonds of the given world, the social order in which, and to the ends of which, one has been raised. Remaining within that field, one yet experiences and achieves “freedom” by bringing to it the full consent and force of one’s good will: for, after all, the life that is found on the mountaintop lives within the heart of man when in society too. May we all find the life of the mountaintop and bring it into the heart of society. |
Author
Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
June 2020
Categories |