Henry and Gary, Duke and Monk

I was 16 years old when I read Walden and Thoreau became my hero. I was convinced I would follow his lead and live out in the woods somewhere, falling in love with shrub oaks. In college, Gary Snyder became my contemporary Thoreau, hiking the West Coast mountain ranges, working as a lookout for the Forest Service and building his own house in the foothills of the California Sierras. My wilderness experience up to that point mostly consisted of roaming around Warinanco Park a half-block from my New Jersey house and later, Watchung Reservation a short car ride away. I clearly felt a call from the natural world and was happy to respond. 

 

So in the years that followed, I camped and backpacked, went to Zen Retreats atop a mountain and taught in a music camp tucked into the California redwoods, worked at a school in rural Maine and another in the Black Mountains of North Carolina, took 60 kids camping at Calaveras Big Trees for some 20 years in a row, lived by a rice field while studying a drum in rural South India and spent a few weeks every summer waking up to Lake Michigan spread out before me in my wife’s parent’s (now hers and her brothers’) cottage in Northern Michigan. So yes to time spent in company with sand, sea, stars and sky, with lakes, streams and summer thunderstorms, with birds, bugs, deer and even occasional bears. Good companions all and a part of my true identity much more important than my personal pronoun, class or sexual preference. 

 

Yet here I’ve gone and lived 50 years in a city! Yes, like my childhood, a half-block from a park (Golden Gate Park, at that!), summers mostly away in places like nature-infused Salzburg, Carmel Valley and always Michigan and international teaching that sometimes lands me near Australian beaches or Ghana villages or Finnish lakes. But still, I’m a bonafide urban dweller. I like the buzz of cities, the enticing (but now oh-so-expensive) restaurants, the jazz clubs and movie theaters and colorful neighborhoods. And when I do walk through the park (almost daily), I’m often listening to an Audible book and am aware of my step-counter. I get a weird satisfaction from knowing I just walked 8.6 miles (as I did on Sunday) and enjoy the company of a good story while strolling through the dahlia garden (Ann Patchett's new book Tom Lake). Would Henry and Gary be disappointed in me?

 

Maybe. But then there’s Duke Ellington, who never ever took a walk in the woods and certainly never camped. He ate steak every day of his life, spent his time on trains, planes, on stage, in jazz clubs and the only flowers he stopped to smell were the ones fans would send post-concert. Same with Thelonious Monk living in the heart of Manhattan on San Juan Hill. The gardens they tended were filled with black and white dots on paper and trumpets that were a whole other animal from swans. And yet they touched the same kind of wonder you might find gazing up at a star-studded sky, a sense of being touched by magic, mystery and a sense of belonging. There are many paths to Spirit, be it a dirt one in a tree-filled forest or the steps down to the Village Vanguard in company with horns, drums and strings. I love them both. No need to choose.

 

But here I am back in the Michigan home, the lake beckoning me down to the beach and two books that will help remind me to stop counting my swim strokes and steps and just be more fully present. One by Frederic Gros titled A Philosophy of Walkingand another by Barry Lopez titled Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World. Maybe I’ll even re-read Walden and the poems in Earth Household. But first, a morning swim.