Day 70: Meditations on Muir Revisited: Part 2

(Mile 959 to 976, Seavey Pass = 17 miles)

Rapids on Muir Pass.

I had written the other day about my quest for self-assuredness and part of the need for it.  That was about the internal battles I have between opposing sides of myself.  Today, will be about the other part, an endless restlessness.  I had given a friend a quote one day, I do not remember how it went exactly, but it started out with something along the lines of, "We are not content, but neither are we unhappy ..." and it goes on to say something about the call of the waves.  And that pretty much sums it up for he and me.  Not content, but not unhappy.  A constant restlessness that lives inside of us, making us uneasy, wondering why we can never find peace.

About a day before Muir Pass, Kindergarten Cop and I were hiking together and stopped to admire a rapids.  We had been talking about paddling earlier in the day, and I told him at our second stop of my love of canoeing rapids and my theory on how running rapids is much like living life.  I explained that when running rapids, you have to go either faster or slower than the current to have any control.  If you are coasting along with the current of the river, when you dip your paddle in to steer, you have nothing to push against.  You'll go where the river is going, which is usually straight into the next hazard.  Same goes with the river of life.  If you just sit there in your boat, sometimes you can just coast, but eventually you will wind up crashed, smashed, and gasping for breath having lost your boat, your paddle, and all of your gear.  This can (and will) happen to everyone at some point.  But much more often for those who do nothing. 

I approached the summit of Muir as peaceful, content, and
happy as I had been in ages.

"A man sits as many risks as he runs," Thoreau said in Walden.  I believe we risk more when sitting.  That we have richer lives when we are active in them.  And that being an active participant is like running rapids.  You can actively choose to go faster than the current -- planning ahead, choosing which challenge to tackle next, deciding where you want to wind up.  And you can actively choose to go slower than the current -- taking time to meditate, reflect, leave the work-a-day world to walk for five months.  Both are active decisions and both necessary at different times.  In running rapids, sometimes an obstacle is best dodged with speed and sometimes the strike is inevitable and so is best met with back paddling.  Same goes with life.  I ended, satisfied with my explanation.  "Huh," said Kindergarten Cop.  "But what if you are the water?"  "Huh," I thought, "What if we are the water?"  We turned and walked on.

I thought about what Kindergarten Cop had said the rest of that day and part of the next.  Was he right?  Was my favorite rapid analogy wrong?  It was part way up Muir Pass that I smiled and breathed a peaceful sigh.  KC was right.  And so was I.  Kindergarten Cop is coming off twenty-six years with the LA police force; he is reading the Tao te Ching; he is looking for peace in the last third of his life.  I am still figuring out what to do with the next two-thirds of my life.  I am supposed to be brushing up against the canyon walls of life, dodging the pinning rocks, and being surprised to find those hazardous pillows just beneath the surface.  I am meant to be testing my skills, learning my limits, and perfecting that graceful river dance of speeding up and pulling back at just the right moments.  It is not my time to be the water, it is my time to play in it.

Meditative lakes are yours for the taking in the Sierras.

So, the endless restlessness, the discontentedness, it is really just the constant movement it takes to navigate the rapids in the river of my life.  And while such work could make one unhappy -- surely it does in our teens and early twenties -- one can also be quite happy here.  I like hiking.  I like running.  I like cycling.  But I love paddling more than all of those combined.  And I love taking an active role in the dance of life just as much.  So it is that I can be not content yet not be unhappy. 

As for how this fits into resolving my quest for self-assuredness, I can now let that feeling of unease about my endless restlessness rest.  I have found peace in knowing that the restlessness is just movement, and it is what I am supposed to be doing right now.  My time for being the water is coming; she is the wise eighty-year-old woman inside me.  She stands on the banks of the river and smiles with a twinkle in her eye as I fly by dodging rocks.  I'll meet her one day on the shore around the bend.  We'll embrace, and then I, too, will learn the ways of the water.  But not until I have mastered the dance with the river.

...

I found the quote ...

Headstands help by sending blood to
the brain. And making you smile.

"I am one of the searchers. There are, I believe, millions of us. We are not unhappy, but neither are we really content. We continue to explore life, hoping to uncover its ultimate secret. We continue to explore ourselves, hoping to understand. We like to walk along the beach, we are drawn by the ocean, taken by its power, its unceasing motion, its mystery and unspeakable beauty. We like forests and mountains,, deserts and hidden rivers, and the lonely cities as well. Our sadness is as much a part of our lives as is our laughter. To share our sadness with one we love is perhaps as great a joy as we can know -unless it be to share our laughter. We searchers are ambitious only for life itself, for everything beautiful it can provide. Most of all we love and want to be loved. We want to live in a relationship that will not impede our wandering, nor prevent our search, nor lock us in prison walls; that will take us for what little we have to give. We do not want to prove ourselves to another or compete for love.

For wanderers, dreamers, and lovers, for lonely men and women who dare to ask of life everything good and beautiful. It is for those who are too gentle to live among wolves.”

― James Kavanaugh, There Are Men Too Gentle to Live Among Wolves