He woke up very early morning and felt that unique kind of chill that comes with sleeping in a tent all night. He resisted the urge to stay in his sleeping bag, gathered himself, and stepped outside into the cool autumn air. He wandered back down to the Colorado River and once again looked up to see what he had accomplished the day before. As he mediated on his journey, he thought about the book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” a book about another middle-aged man on a quest.
Specifically, he remembered a line that had always stuck with him, “You look at where you're going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you've been and a pattern seems to emerge.” His mission today was at once both complicated and very simple. He would wander far into the wilderness of the Grand Canyon, miles from the next living soul, and make his camp for the night. That part was as simple as following a map. The hard part came in trying to recapture a feeling he had the last time he was here, where he felt a kind of communion with something scared that he had never experienced since. It was a daunting task, and a part of him realized that, as the Buddhists said, “No man can walk into the same river twice. For he is not the same man, and it is not the same river.” He had changed a great deal since his last time at the bottom of the canyon, but his desire to experience some kind of truth was just as strong.
As he packed up his gear, he reminded himself to write down some of these thoughts he had been having, and took it as a good sign that a part of him wanted to share them with the world someday. It meant that he was at least contemplating the idea that he had some kind of vision for a productive future self, and that was something he hadn’t experienced in a while.
He took one last look at the Bright Angel campground, and the safety it represented. As he did he found himself thinking about Joseph Campbell, who talked about life as a heroic journey based on myths that dated back to the earliest history of man. John had drawn on Campbell’s work in a number of his writings, and thought now about what Campbell had setting about crossing thresholds between safety and danger. He remembered a passage, “The adventure is always and everywhere a passage beyond the veil of the known into the unknown; the powers that watch at the boundary are dangerous; to deal with them is risky; yet for anyone with competence and courage the danger fades.” It captured how he was feeling right now almost perfectly.
He started his walk into the backcountry, noticing as he did the birds circling the water of the Colorado River. They had found there way back to safety, and so could he. He thought about this as it related to the life force all human beings had inside of them, and vowed to at least give his a chance to reawaken.
He had walked a couple of hours when he decided to stop and take a break. As he found a rock to rest on, he noticed a small coyote in the distance that seemed to be watching him from afar. It was scraggly and thin, and looked like it was on the verge of starvation. They locked eyes for a moment, and John thought for a second how much they were both fighting for some kind of survival. Although he had plenty of food and water, he could empathize with the animal’s plight.
Eventually the coyote lost interest and scrambled off, and John wondered if he was actually in any kind of danger from the animal. He had purchased a large knife for his journey, but doubted his ability to fight off any kind of wild animal should the situation arise. He put the thoughts out of is mind, and began to walk again, thinking as he did about the mangy animal, and hoping he would find a way to survive the upcoming winter.
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