Month: September 2014

Great Basin National Park

Leslie and I took our first long trip in our Toyota Tacoma camper last week, a trip full of some nice and some not-so-nice surprises. I’d been told a couple of years ago that Great Basin National Park in Nevada had some spectacular Bristlecone Pines and had wanted to go there ever since. Leslie read that they held a moonlight walk once a month and that appealed to her. So we decided to start our round trip at Great Basin.

I knew it would be a long drive through mostly high desert country, and it was. After nearly a thousand miles of driving I was more than ready to stop at the Pony Express Trail Memorial along US Highway 93 north of Ely.

PonyExpress

Of course, I’d long ago read about the Pony Express, but actually crossing the same ground they had to ride across gave me a deeper appreciation of their accomplishment.

Unfortunately, the closer we got to Great Basin National Park the worse the weather got. If I’d had any sense, and a better weather forecast, I would have taken a lot more pictures on the way up the mountain, because the weather kept getting worse and worse as the day wore on.

Our campsite, though, was quite beautiful. The birch trees had already started changing color at 10, 000 feet and even the meadows seemed a golden-green.

CampingMeadow

Unfortunately, as the hour for the moon walk grew near, the skies were an ominous grey-black. We figured the walk would be canceled since there was little chance of seeing the moon, and we were right. The ranger told us that it was the highest percentage of rain they had ever gotten in the park.

MoonlightMeeting

As it turned out, I was very glad that we hadn’t started out on the trail. Within an hour we were surrounded by lightning and pounded by the hardest rain I can ever remember experiencing. Of course, the aluminum roof on our pickup probably amplified the sounds of the rain. It turned out the storm was the result of their customary monsoons and the Hurricane that hit LA and Phoenix the day before. I think they nearly matched their annual rainfall in two hours.

I must admit that for the half hour or so I enjoyed seeing the sky light up and immediately hearing the thunder shake the pickup. By the end, of the storm, though I was more than ready to go to sleep, but the storm kept me awake. It wouldn’t have been so disappointing if it had only rained that night, but the skies looked equally ominous the next morning when we drove down the mountain to visit the Lehman caves.

NextMorning

Despite having driven nearly a 1,000 miles to see the Bristlecone Pines and the moon, I didn’t want to spend another day of our limited vacation sitting around waiting for the rain to clear. I figured if the trees had managed to last 4 to 5 thousand years, they would still be there when I got back the next time.

Luckily, the trip wasn’t a total loss as the Lehman caves, which I’d never heard of before, turned out to be one of the highlights of our trip.

Sky Above, Great Wind: The Life and Poetry of Zen Master Ryokan

Recently I had to drive to Portland to get a special rear bumper put on my Toyota pickup. I figured that I would get a poetry book to read since I was told that I would have to wait at least three hours to have the old bumper taken off and the new one installed. Considering how many partially read poetry books I have laying around my den, I decided I would buy the Kindle version of Kazuaki Tanahashi’s Sky Above, Great Wind: The Life and Poetry of Zen Master Ryokan.

It turned out installing the bumper took nearly 6 hours, not three, so I managed to finish the book in one sitting. It was hard to ignore the irony in waiting to have a $4, 000 bumper installed while reader Ryokan’s poetry extolling the virtues of the simple life. It is indeed a strange world when camping out in a small pickup with a small camper can be considered “living the simple life.” After a lifetime of backpacking, I’m amazed at how spacious my camper seems. But every time I pull into a KOA campground and hook up to water and electricity next to a huge motor home I’m reminded that everything is relative.

Despite owning far too many things, including poetry books, I still identify with the spirit of Ryokan’s Zen poetry. This is the second book of his poetry I’ve purchased, but it has been so long between works that I really can’t compare them, though I’m sure that Tanahashi’s collection contained several new insights and a larger selection of Ryokan’s poems.

In the introduction Tanahashi contrasts Ryokan with the two other great figures in Zen Buddhism in Japan:

Unlike Dogen and Hakuin, Ryokan did not engage in the training of monks in monasteries. Instead, he practiced alone in extreme austerity without producing any dharma heir. He dropped out of society as well as the Zen community and could therefore be seen as a failure as a Zen teacher. Having no possessions may not have been the most effective way to attain freedom. It was nevertheless Ryokan’s way of life. Creative thinking and mystical encounters often unfold in silent solitude. The more intricately engaged in society we are, the more we may need to be in retreat. Humility is the highest means to selflessness, clarity, and compassion. Through his utterly modest and unaffected life, Ryokan unfolds a vast realm of serenity that can inspire us all.

Poems like

I don’t regard my life
as insufficient.
Inside the brushwood gate
there is a moon;
there are flowers.

while advocating the simple life seem to suggest that Ryokan also knew that many people saw his way of life as a failure.

Part of Ryokan’s appeal to me is precisely that he left his practicing community and practiced the dharma alone:

I don’t tell the murky world
to turn pure.
I purify myself
and check my reflection
in the water of the valley brook.

Withdrawing from the practicing community, he walked alone through mountains and villages, ringing a belled staff and chanting a verse of a sutra at each house. He treated everyone with respect and loving-kindness. Whether people offered him food, ignored him, or harshly drove him away, he was determined to remain true to his path as a monk.

Never a great follower, I’ve discovered many of my own truths while hiking or camping in Washington and Oregon’s wilderness, far away from the classroom and the books that I’ve devoted much of my life to.

Tanahashi’s commentary is often as concise as the poems themselves, but it adds another dimension to Ryokan’s poems.

One of Ryokan’s death poems summarizes his lifelong loneliness, openness, and reconciliation with transiency:

Showing its back
and showing its front,
a falling maple leaf.

Though I’m not quite sure how the poem conveys “his lifelong loneliness, Tanahashi’s comment made me think more longer about the poem than I otherwise might have.

Many of Ryokan’s poems don’t need any commentary at all.

See and realize
that this world
is not permanent.
Neither late nor early flowers
will remain.

My recent travels have clearly shown that Fall is nearly upon us. I’ll be out enjoying our recent sunshine because Fall and Winter rains can’t be far behind.

Feels Like Home

Thankfully, September has finally arrived. August has been a challenging month for me. We’ve had considerable work done on the house, and even though I didn’t do much of the work myself I’ve had to be here while house-painters, window-installers and yard-workers have done their work. In other words, I haven’t been able to hit the road like I’d hoped, though I have managed to get out at least weekly, walking Theler Wetlands in Belfair most of the month.That should end shortly.

Summer birding around here isn’t nearly as exciting as Fall, Spring, or even Winter birding, but I do enjoy Theler every time I’m there and would probably make it a daily walk if it wasn’t a 45 minute drive away. I enjoy the four mile plus walk along the creek, through the woods, and next to the Sound whether alone or walking with a group of fellow birders.

Summer is the greenest month of all,

Green

and there’s no place better to revel in the greenness of it all than in the mixed forests at the beginning and the end of the walk where small trees and shrubs crowd the feet of cedars and firs.

I generally see the same birds visit after visit, though occasionally there’s a surprise passer-by. Luckily, I never tire of hearing the warning cry of Killdeer as I walk by,

kldeer

never tire of the golden flash of American Goldfinch,

GldfnchinGrass

never tire of walking through a flock of diving swallows, whether Tree Swallows, Cliff Swallows, or Barn Swallows like this waiting to feed its young until I pass.

SwlwWFly

It may not be exciting, but it feels comfortable, like home. I’m always thankful Theler Wetlands doesn’t belong to an individual owner and hope fellow visitors feel, like I do, that they belong here.