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"He was the first lookout to go up, I got him on my radio first off and he welcomed
me to the community of lookouts. Later I contacted other mountains, see they give
you a two-way radio, it's almost a ritual all the lookouts chat and talk about bears
they've seen or sometimes ask instructions for how to bake muffins on a woodstove
and so on, and there we all were in a high world talking on a net of wireless across hun-
dreds of miles of wilderness. It's a primitive area, where you're going boy. From my cabin I
could see the lamps of Desolation after dark, Jack Joseph reading his geology books
and in the day we flashed by mirror to align our firefinder transits, accurate to the
compass."
"Gee, how'll I ever learn all that, I'm just a simple poet bum."
"Oh you'll learn, the magnetic pole, the pole star and the northern lights. Every night
Jack Joseph and I talked: one day he got a swarm of ladybugs on the lookout that
covered the roof and filled up his water cistern, another day he went for a walk along
the ridge and stepped right on a sleeping bear."
"Oho, I thought this place was wild."
"This is nothin . . . and when the lightning storm came by, closer and closer, he called
to finally say he was going off the air because the storm was too close to leave his
radio on, he disappeared from sound and then sight as the black clouds
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swept over and the lightning danced on his hill. But as the summer passed Desolation
got dry and flowery and Blakey lambs and he wandered the cliffs and I was on Crater
Mountain in my jockstrap and boots hunting out ptarmigan nests out of curiosity,
climbing and pooking about, gettin bit by bees. . . . Desolation's way up there, Ray, six
thousand feet or so up looking into Canada and the Chelan highlands, the wilds of the
Pickett range, and mountains like Challenger, Terror, Fury, Despair and the name of your
own ridge is Starvation Ridge and the upcountry of the Boston Peak and Buckner Peak
range to the south thousands of miles of mountains, deer, bear, conies, hawks, trout,
chipmunks. It'll be great for you Ray." "I look forward to it okay. I bet no bee bites me."
Then he took out his books and read awhile, and I read too, both of us with separate oil
lamps banked low, a quiet evening at home as the foggy wind roared in the trees
outside and across the valley a mournful mule heehawed in one of the most
tremendously heartbroken cries I've ever heard. "When that mule weeps like that,"
says Japhy, "I feel like praying for all sentient beings." Then for a while he meditated
motionless in the full lotus position on his mat and then said "Well, time for bed." But
now I wanted to tell him all the things I'd discovered that winter meditating in the
woods. "Ah, it's just a lot of words," he said, sadly, surprising me. "I don't wanta hear
all your word descriptions of words words words you made up all winter, man I wanta be
enlightened by actions." Japhy had changed since the year before, too. He no longer had
his goatee, which had removed the funny merry little look of his face but left him looking
gaunt and rocky faced. Also he'd cut his hair in a close crew cut and looked Germanic
and stern and above all sad. There seemed to be some kind of
all right forever and forever and forever. Suddenly he said "I'm gonna get married,
soon, I think, I'm gettin tired of battin around like this."
"But I thought you'd discovered the Zen ideal of poverty and freedom."
"Aw maybe I'm gettin tired of all that. After I come back from the monastery in
Japan I'll probably have my fill of it anyhow. Maybe I'll be rich and work and make a lot of
money and live in a big house." But a minute later: "And who wants to enslave himself
to a lot of all that, though? I dunno, Smith, I'm just depressed and everything you're
saying just depresses me further. My sister's back in town you know."
"Who's that?"
"That's Rhoda, my sister, I grew up with her in the woods in Oregon. She's gonna
marry this rich jerk from Chicago, a real square. My father's having trouble with his
sister, too, my Aunt Noss. She's an old bitch from way back."
"You shouldn't have cut off your goatee, you used to look like a happy little sage."
"Well I ain't happy little sage no mo' and I'm tired." He was exhausted from a long
hard day's work. We decided to go to sleep and forget it. In fact we were a bit sad and
sore at each other. During the day I had discovered a spot by a wild rosebush in the
yard where I planned to lay out my sleeping bag. I'd covered it a foot deep with fresh
pulled grass. Now, with my flashlight and my bottle of cold water from the sink tap, I
went out there and rolled into a beautiful night's rest under the sighing trees,
meditating awhile first. I couldn't meditate indoors any more like Japhy had just done,
after all that winter
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in the woods of night I had to hear the little sounds of animals and birds and feel the
cold sighing earth under me before I could rightly get to feel a kinship with all living
things as being empty and awake and saved already. I prayed for Japhy: it
looked like he was changing for the worse. At dawn a little fain pattered on my sleeping
bag and I put my poncho over me instead of under me, cursing, and slept on. At seven
in the morning the sun was out and the butterflies were in the roses
by my head and a hummingbird did a jet dive right down at me, whistling, and darted
away happily. But I was mistaken about Japhy changing. It was one of the greatest
mornings in our lives. There he was standing in the doorway of the shack with a big
frying pan in his hand banging on it and chanting "Buddham saranam gocchami . . .
Dhammam saranam gocchami . . . Sangham saranam gocchami" and yelling "Come on,
boy, your pancakes are ready! Come and get it! Bang bang bang" and the orange sun
was pouring in through the pines and everything was fine again, in fact Japhy had
contemplated that night and decided I was right about hewing to the good old Dharma.
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Japhy had cooked up some good buckwheat pancakes and we had Log Cabin
syrup to go with them and a little butter. I asked him what the "Gocchami" chant meant.
"That's [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]