<\/p>\n
I just finished reading for the fourth time Peter Matthiessen\u2019s National Book Award-winning 1978 Buddhist-tinged classic, The Snow Leopard<\/em>.<\/p>\n The book recounts his journey into the Himalayan Mountains during a period of extreme personal crisis. He is trekking with a biological expedition in hope of seeing the elusive snow leopard. He never sees it and in that not seeing he sees everything. He was even happy in not seeing it.<\/p>\n Outside of Jim Harrison\u2019s Dalva<\/em>, The Snow Leopard<\/em> is the most influential book of my life.<\/p>\n If you are burning up in crisis or happily content, this is the book for you.<\/p>\n I read The Snow Leopard<\/em> in 1994, 2009, 2012 and 2017. I\u2019ve read the same paperback copy and my annotations from each reading provide me a scrawled map of where I thought I was going that particular year.<\/p>\n In light of recent tumultuous events, the book has fortified me with new supernatural energy and wisdom. I wield it almost as a weapon against the forces arrayed against me, chief among them, my own doubts.<\/p>\n What follows are my comments and salient quotations from the book. There is no order to them. This is a flow. This is a trek.<\/p>\n Here we go:<\/p>\n I always encouraged students to go on a pilgrimage and write about it. It occurs to me that my old writing lessons and prompts are teaching me new better ways of thinking. When a student is ready, a teacher appears, the Buddhist tradition says. Have I appeared to myself? Is that possible?<\/p>\n Doing matters more than the attainment or reward.<\/p>\n \u201cIn most cases it is impossible to explain to the others what has happened, for an understanding is walled off by impenetrable prejudices.\u201d Very, very, very true.<\/p>\n How you do things in everyday life is your religion, that\u2019s your practice.<\/p>\n \u201cOne must go one\u2019s self to know the truth.\u201d I am going by myself and I am discovering truth. It is a lonely but necessary journey.<\/p>\n The industrial revolution created a new barbarian in the West and we\u2019ve been vandalizing the planet ever since. I think about that former girlfriend who flew to Antarctica to run a marathon so she could say she ran a marathon on all the continents.<\/p>\n The ability to cultivate stillness in one\u2019s life is important. I have redefined the meaning of stillness in my life. Try watching three deer in your back yard for three hours, you\u2019ll find stillness.<\/p>\n Notice small things.<\/p>\n \u201cI long to let go, drift free of things, to accumulate less, depend on less, to move more simply.\u201d<\/p>\n The scene on the trail at 15,000 feet where Matthiessen competes with a goldfinch for wild Cannabis seeds.<\/p>\n Expect nothing.<\/p>\n I have experienced a great death\u2026the rebirth is underway, but I am still wearing corduroy.<\/p>\n \u201cChildhood is full of mystery and promise.\u201d I think this is why I am writing so much about Oregon City these days. There is something in this exploration of my hometown that inspires me. The way out of this story I am living is through story. Tennis will be involved as well. With wooden rackets.<\/p>\n Matthiessen\u2019s writing on a beautiful river in Nepal reminded me of a journey to see the remote awesome old growth stand of Sitka spruce called the Valley of Giants. It was on this journey to the Coast Range near Siletz with a very special hard core Oregonian that I saw the upper reaches of the Siletz River and it was the most beautiful river I had ever seen, despite the massacre of clear cuts all around.<\/p>\n Get back to the land! Start a farm or co-op!<\/p>\n Matthiessen writes about the terrific struggle between clinging to something and letting it go. Clinging is not a great verb, I think. What am I still clinging to? What must I finally let go of? Is there anything left to release?<\/p>\n List of Let Go, Gone:<\/p>\n Reputation<\/p>\n Teaching career<\/p>\n Great collaborator<\/p>\n Most friends<\/p>\n Gigging<\/p>\n Ego<\/p>\n Planning for future<\/p>\n Viable employment<\/p>\n All my musical instruments and amps<\/p>\n Stewardship of Vortex I and the legacy of Oregon\u2019s publicly-owned beaches<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Matthiessen writes: \u201cIf given the chance to turn back, I would not take it.\u201d<\/p>\n Ask myself this: \u201cGiven the chance to turn back, would I take it?\u201d<\/p>\n No, not as I write this on April 24, 2017. I wouldn\u2019t have learned anything. Look what I have learned? Look what the learning exposed. Look at the evanescence of my accomplishments and immature notions of friendship. I say this despite knowing the hell I\u2019ve put my family through. We are closer than we have ever have been. We are growing stronger together.<\/p>\n I could change my mind on this as life unfolds.<\/p>\n The scene where Matthiessen writes about a, \u201clake that has never seen a boat.\u201d What an image that is!<\/p>\n \u201cCrystal Blue Persuasion\u201d by Tommy James and the Shondells is one of the great metaphysical rock songs of all time. It popped into my mind when reading this book. Listen to it!<\/p>\n I need a journey of enlightenment, a physical one into the deep woods or misty mountains. Maybe not alone, however. Who would go with me? I\u2019m tainted. Dogs don\u2019t care.<\/p>\n Matthiessen rushes to judgment many times with his native porters and is deeply ashamed when he recognizes his errors. How many rushed to judge me? Do they regret this?<\/p>\n Koan: All<\/em> these things happen to people, why did this happen to me?<\/em> The very nature of a Koan, a Zen riddle, makes it unresolvable, of course, but I try to resolve it nonetheless by not even trying.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve got to write my book with a crispness of a haiku. Is that possible with prose on the subject of The Registry of Sexual Offense? Let me try here: brown rubber boots, quality green rain gear, a skateboard with a Swastika , rain moving in a phalanx, a city bus, a bike seat wrapped with a plastic bag, cigarettes and hoodies in the cover of hemlocks, an errant goose flies by the empty probation office.<\/p>\n Getting there.<\/p>\n\n I just finished reading for the fourth time Peter Matthiessen\u2019s National Book Award-winning 1978 Buddhist-tinged classic, The Snow Leopard. The book recounts his journey into the Himalayan Mountains during a period of extreme personal crisis. He is trekking with a biological expedition in hope of seeing the elusive snow leopard. He never sees it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2706,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,28],"tags":[137,19,6,52,13,138,56,135,136,87],"class_list":["post-2705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-writing","tag-coast-range","tag-deer","tag-matt-love","tag-oregon","tag-oregon-coast","tag-siletz-river","tag-teaching","tag-the-snow-leopard","tag-valley-of-the-giants","tag-zen","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2705"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2707,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2705\/revisions\/2707"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}