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Hey, I hope these words find you alive and kicking! As a society and species, we’ve had a rough go of it lately, and I feel it apt to offer some sage wisdom from the band Chumbawamba tonight: “I get knocked down, but I get up again! You’re never gonna keep me down!”
My apologies for the lateness of this letter. Going down the rabbit hole last night, I zigged when I should have zagged, and rather than write until the sun rose or send you into a dead-end burrow, I decided to push it back a night and give it another go. Anywho, I spent twelve days in my favorite mountain town this July and thought it might be interesting to more fully explore and digest my time there through the lens of a few of my favorite Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance quotes in this letter. For those who are new to these letters: I ran the Range Rider’s Lodge (the big building in the photo above with a green roof) in Silver Gate, Montana for three summertime seasons from 2016-2018. If you’re curious, you can read about that time here. What’s essential to this letter, though, is simply this: Silver Gate lies a mile outside Yellowstone National Park at the bottom of a glacially carved valley surrounded by huge, trail-less mountains on both sides that next to no one ever climbs… making it a just about perfect metaphorical mirror of the quote atop this letter. I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for a second time on the drive up my first season, and from the perspective of that quote was a way in which I initially saw the place. Everyone was there. Most who “stand in sight of the spiritual mountains but never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships.” Those who “accompanied by experienced guides who know the best and least dangerous routes by which they arrive at their destination.” And I, who “inexperienced and untrusting, attempt[ed] to make [my] own routes” to find out firsthand about myself and the world in those great spiritual mountains. Losing my way in those thick forests, wholly outside the safety net of cell service and society as the local grizzles and mountain lions stalked my thoughts, I learned to breathe into fear, take my time, and trust myself. Scrambling up above the treeline to the top of every mountain surrounding the valley that first summer (even once hazarding the cliff faces of the mountain centered in the above photo), the boy long afraid to ride all roller coasters with loop-de-loops grew to feel a bit more like a man. Sitting in the blazing, clear, mid-morning sun on mountain summits, feeling the utter, yet fleeting bliss of being on top, I began to better see the ever-changing whole of the hike as the great treat. Those solo adventures trying to find my way to the tops of the mountains around town became a great teacher. In the same way we learn might from a relationship, psychedelic trip, or any other journey outside our comfort zones, those experiences changed me and helped me grow. However, I sensed something extra in those trail-less trips. In direct, uninterpreted conference with nature, there was a particular purity and truth to those experiences. I could really trust what was taught out there, for the mountains and trees and sky do not lie, and as nature just is, it rarely confuses or gets confused. Back in Silver Gate this July, as I relished in twelve days of mountain climbing, mountain biking, late night saunas, community softball games, tossing nesting feathers to seventy swirling swallows at sunset, and catching up with a few of my favorite humans, another Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance quote kept arising up in my noggin’: “To discover a metaphysical relationship between Quality and the Buddha at some mountaintop of personal experience is very spectacular. And very unimportant. If that were all this Chautauqua was about I should be dismissed. What’s important is the relevance of such a discovery to all the valleys of this world, and all the dull, dreary jobs and monotonous years that await all of us in them.”
While those are perhaps harsh words for the valleys of this world, the gist of that quote kept rising up in me: what of this peak experience can I bring back to the valleys of my life? What — apart from inviting folks up and out there — can I offer of the experience of this place to others? I got hung up on this last night. But meditating on it again tonight, it became clear that Silver Gate is the best example from my experience of how books and life go together. Reading books written by others incites things and help us notice. But in the same way eating the menu isn’t as nourishing as the food it represents, books point to things, but are not in fact them. “To listen to others who have been there” is not enough. Life is in the action, and as long as we’re alive and kicking, we have to go there too. With love & stoke, Ethan
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