THE FIRST MEDITATION
"Walking is the great adventure, the first meditation, a practice of heartiness and soul primary to humankind. Walking is the exact balance between spirit and humility."--Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1990)
Ever since I first understood the word “peripatetic” to mean walking and thinking and getting a deep understanding of the thing you were thinking about in the course of a long walk, I’ve associated walking with the creative act. Limited now by the pandemic to daily walks in Riverside Park, I daydream about thoughtful strolls with Socrates in Athens, treks across the Alps with Shelley, hikes around the Lakes District with Wordsworth and Coleridge. (Really!) Anticipating the Fourth of July weekend, I’m thinking of a mountain climb with Gary Snyder I could have never made in reality but did make in the following poem, “The Mysterious Further Higher Peak,” from In Praise of Manhattan, my most recent book, when I found that we had the same birthday. Since reading books of Snyder’s like The Back Country and Earth House Hold in my youth, I’ve thrilled to the physical, outdoors vigor of his journal-like verse and been calmed by the Zen equanimity of his vision. A version of this poet’s ebullience springs to life in the form of the character of Japhy Ryder in Jack Kerouac’s novel The Dharma Bums. Let’s take a walk together this weekend.
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David M. Katz
“THE MYSTERIOUS FURTHER HIGHER PEAK”
From the dedication to Earth House Hold, by Gary Snyder
Your master Roshi called the mountain that.
The cover of another of your books,
The Back Country, is black and white, with a big
Burst of light through pines up toward the right.
Looking at that light, I know I’d climb
That peak with you forever, Gary Snyder,
Capable and balanced as you rise
As well as when you cross the great plateaus.
Yet you are 86 today, and I
Am 68, and it could well be said
I am the awkward side of you, scrambling
Up the mountainside behind your sure
Ascent, without your pitons, mallet, and
The proper climbing boots. We’ve never climbed
Through any mist or mystery together,
Though now we venture further toward the peak.
—May 9, 2016