By Ethan Maurice | May 30, 2022
“Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it’s a feather bed.”
Last fall, I was struck by understanding in an old, crowded diner in Nevada City, California. I was seated in a booth across from Ed Buryn, author of the 1971 travel classic Vagabonding in Europe and North Africa. It was an important moment in which golden wisdom was grasped.
I want to tell you about it, but first some backstory:
Two years before the epiphanous moment, I had picked up a copy of Vagabonding while researching similar works to a book I was working on. In the same way Ed had, I aimed to write about travel not just for travel’s sake, but as one of the best means available for understanding oneself, the world, and the opportunity of a lifetime. His travel guide was a travel guide, but also, and more importantly, a brilliant, undercover guide to having experiences that help us discover for ourselves who we are and how we want to spend our lives. In short: I really dug it.
A year later, I happened upon an interview with Ed on Rolf Potts’ Deviate podcast (Rolf is the author of the 1990s version of a shoestring travel book with the same Vagabonding title). Towards the end of a grand conversation, Ed mentioned he sometimes hosts travelers at his place through Couchsurfing.
At this point, Ed was a near-mythic, author-hero in my mind. I had never met any of my author-heroes before and I thought it might be damn amazing to meet him. Already planning to visit a friend’s place in nearby Napa, California, I thought, “Screw it, why not? I’m going to write Ed and see if he might want to host me and hangout for a few days?”
This felt audacious. I mean, imagine out-of-the-blue asking one of your heroes — someone who has so brilliantly done whatever you most love to do — if you could come hangout and sleep at their house.
I found Ed’s Couchsurfing profile, but it hadn’t been logged into for a couple of years (perhaps not so surprising with the pandemic). So I dug a little more. There was no contact form on his website either, but I managed to find one on his online bookstore. I shot him a few paragraphs of gratitude, explained I was working on a book similar to Vagabonding, and asked: would he want to hang out and host me for a few days on the far side of my upcoming trip to Napa?
Three days later, I received a short, warm response. He was quite busy, but would love to meet and perhaps grab a bite to eat. This sounded surreal and great: I was to dine with one of my greatest author-heroes. We settled on time and place — that old, crowded diner I mentioned above.
The day arrived. I showed up a few minutes early. With great anticipation, I sat out front of the diner digging the swaying pines and petting another patron’s golden retriever.
Then, Ed Buryn appeared. Now eighty-seven, the first thing I noticed was he was in fact eighty-seven and no longer the stylishly mustachioed young man pictured in his book in the sixties. However, the second thing I noticed and became increasingly hung up upon was what I can only describe as “youth.” The man was radiant. He was so there. Possessing a degree of presence and interest in the moment before him most people can no longer muster by their late-twenties. By this, I was both perplexed and awestruck.
I soon found myself in the most surreal position: seated in a booth with two orders of fish and chips, a pitcher of beer, and Ed Buryn seated across from me. We cheersed beers and ate heartily.
Perhaps twenty minutes in, Ed was explaining how he believed the magic of travel lay simply in showing up for the experience. I responded in agreement with the rough recall of one of my all-time favorite lines, that Terence McKenna quote about the shamanic dance in the waterfall.
“Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it’s a feather bed.”
Ed stopped. He looked me in the eyes, squinted and smiled, and then said the most miraculous thing: “Ethan, I don’t know if you partake in such substances, but would you like to go hang at my place and smoke some weed?”
It was at this precise point that idea and experience met, aligned, and blew me away.
In audaciously reaching out and showing up to meet one of my greatest author-heroes, I most definitely underwent the inner-experience “hurling myself into the abyss.” Then, with the literal utterance of the shamanic dance of the waterfall quote, I “discovered the abyss a feather bed.”
Dumbstruck by the incredible congruence of the moment, I pause for what felt like many seconds. Finally, I replied. “Yes Ed, I would love to smoke weed with you.”
I spent the following two nights hanging at Ed’s place with him and a witty, wise, eccentric friend of his that reminded me of Hunter S. Thompson. It was a surreal dream. We got stoned, talked philosophy, read poetry, dug through his life’s work of photography — tears streaked my face at the sense of the gift of a lifetime radiated by this set to music, vagabonding photograph slideshow put together a few years ago and played for me. We went on walks, listened to Terence McKenna lectures, and watched this mind-blowing documentary about the size of atoms and the universe called Everything and Nothing. I was showered in the wisdom and mystic awe of one of my greatest heroes. I’m unsure I have ever felt so understood. After a good five or so hour session each night, I’d retreat tired and verging on euphoric to the bunkhouse in the attic of Ed’s barn full of books in the chilly, fresh night air of the surrounding mountain forest and drift into the deepest sleep.
I left two days later with a boatload of new ideas, five borrowed books, and a signed postcard of Ed and his trusty 1960’s Volkswagen Beetle parked in the middle of White Sands National Monument.
I also had this scrap of paper with a line Ed dropped scrawled upon it that my stoned-self clearly did not want to forget. I then proceeded to get real busy and forget about it. That is, until I found the scrap of paper a few days ago at the bottom of one of my bags:
The first night we hung out, Ed explained he had long wanted to write a book about one simple idea: if you want the experience to happen to you, you have to show up.
If you show up — present, open, and willing — it all happens from there.
With hindsight, I saw this was exactly what I had done. I showed up. I “hurled myself into the abyss and discovered it a feather bed.”
When I dropped Terence McKenna’s shamanic dance in the waterfall quote, of course Ed invited me back to his place to get stoned and engage in two nights of philoso-artistic vibe and idea swap. With nearly nine decades of rad experience, with many years of perpetually showing up place after place as a vagabond, Ed probably knows better than just about anyone else:
This is how magic is done.
