I am walking my three month old pup Eyowyn, on a circular concrete path, around the old haunted hospital, toward the capitol. A smoky fog is rising up the avenues. It’s late February and Salt Lake’s winter is starting to give ground to signs of spring. I see the green tip of a Crocus that has broken the surface and a Robin, standing tall on a branch, now out of hiding. Plenty of snow can still fly but the temperatures are coming off their lows and the day’s end in lengthy sundowns.
From up above the narrow dirt roads of City Creek Canyon, I see the road that runs down from Capitol Hill between the San Francisco-like hills of the Marmalade District and through the Eagle Pass to the downtown. West, past the Capitol, the Oquirrh Mountains, still white, rear up from the flatness of the Salt Lake standing out towards Tooele which sits on its Western reach. The fog fades the lines of the mountains and the lake, fades the clarity, or is it the obscurity, of separation.
It has been a long winter. I get up each day at five a.m., huddle into my car and drive to the meditation hall, the Zendo. I cruise down Eleventh Avenue past the cemetery and a large mausoleum. Stars are still out and the mausoleum and its grounds lit by floodlights, claim center stage, overshadowing the early lights of the city. The car’s heater starts to cut the cold. Early morning runners dressed in bright colors emerge from the dark, under the Wasatch peaks.
Growing up in the Bronx, my father would speak to me about “where I was going with my life.” When I was 16 years old he instituted a reading program for me. For the duration of one hour each day I would be situated on a chair, covered in plastic slipcovers, in plain view. The syllabus consisted of sturdy classic literature with a leaning toward the elaborate Russian dramas. I spent allot of time remembering which character with a many syllabled Russian name had done what to another character with a frustratingly similar name – and so he shot his brother? – his mother? a third cousin thought to be lost in the Crimean War? But then I found some books of Zen Buddhist writing and my father, a sometimes-liberal thinker, approved them.
I read those old books in my over-heated room, cramped in bed, in my parent’s Bronx apartment. I found the Heart Sutra, or the Hsin Hsin Ming, D.T Suzuki, The Mumonkan Koans at my local library. In the dark, I’d follow their pointers, try their truths on. They said listen to the sermon outside my window, the preaching of the insentient – and I did. I let my mind fill the empty lots outside my window, the street full of cans and rubble, flattened cigarette packs, illegible pages of newspaper – the landscape of the Great Way.
A Monk asked Joshu “What is the way to the capitol (The great Way)?” Josh said “East, West, North, South.”
The houses around the haunted hospital are ornate, exclamatory, built, to last, like it or not. An easy, drizzling snow is falling. The weather’s been like this for a while. As I round the turn on Penny Parade I see the whole of Salt Lake City below me. The lines of the streets and lamps unclear in the fog, turned black grey and white – like a brush painting.
Eyowyn and I go around the side of our house and I open the gate to our yard. She takes off. Caryn and I live in a nice old spacious place. It’s rustic and imperfect. Caryn says it’s a dream she is enjoying having. The parching Utah sun is affirming that by crumbling the houses paint and wood. But now the decks and the yard are covered in snow, will soon yield flowers, cherries, vegetables and plums and then they won’t.
The house is set high up. A friend called it an Eagle’s nest. The magpies and scrub jays are eating the orange berries daily now. More proof of my spring coming theory but then my spring theories begin in January.
Up on the hills near the our house we’ve seen moose, deer, skunk and once a family of Foxes migrating through a tennis court where they often find food then return to their home in the cemetery.
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The way goes in and out of view. At times it goes right by my house and over towards the old haunted hospital then up towards the capitol. A lazy wet snow falls on it. Spring never comes. Walking on the Way to the Capitol is the family of old sages, rootless poets, the laughing Han Shans up on Cold mountain – the rivers, rocks and foxes who have abided in it, for all time, walking in place, complete in their realization.
Beautiful essay. For a moment, it almost makes me want to wake up at 5:00 a.m.
I live in Salt Lake, in part, because of the weather. The changes. The snow and the stars. I hope you are enjoying the fog and the flowers of your new home. Thanks for your memories.
Thanks for connecting the Salt Lake and the San Francisco folk through this beautiful essay. It’s all about me and ME is very big – it includes all the Lost Coin people in Salt Lake. Hello to you!
This is a very good example of the power of poetic prose. Religions, Ways, Institutions always hark back to something “already past” and “fixed in stone” – a realization that cannot be surpassed by us – “mere mortals”.
Whereas, as they say in e.g. Judaism, each one of us is actually supposed to write his own Scripture embedded in our own daily reality with all of its vanishing beauty. If done right, this kind of writing illuminates the ordinary like a diamond in a dancehall and inspires others, to do the same.
The culmination of everything in a procession towards a centerless center drives the point home.
Hollering Cold Mountain Laughter from the Plains of berlin !
this blog is an oasis of sanity
André
I have only been twice there. And only during summer time. But I can imagine spring in SLC when I read the lines and I realise that I miss Salt Lake City, indeed! And in a way I feel returned to my childhood, spending my time with books and searching for truth. Where has it all lead me to?
Thank you for the beautiful essay. I’ve taken many winter walks in SLC and have often looked for the slightest signs of spring. Now, here in North Carolina, the winters don’t last as long, but we’re far from home and it will take time to build a new community. We’re enjoying our dream of a new house and unfinished landscape, and wonder where this path will lead.
Many many thanks for taking us with you on this wonderful morning walk. It’s making me try to listen more intensely to the beautiful songs sung by everything around me, the songs of life itself. It also brings to my mind some lines by Spanish poet Antonio Machado. Francisco Varela, neuroscientist and Tibetan Buddhist, translated them as follows:
Wanderer, the road is your
Footsteps, nothing else;
wanderer, there is no pain,
you lay down a path in walking.
In walking you lay down a path.
thank you for this beautiful essay. when the reading was conlete, i closed my eyes, listened to my breathe, my speedy thoughts stopped. I found peace, during a hectic time of my creation. The way is here regardless of how quickly I move about. Thank you.
I’ve been cursing the heat today — thank you for plunking me down into winter.
Thank you Sensei for this morning story. It is wonderful to see how the Salt Lake City you describe is everywhere.
How beautiful and peaceful your essay is. It inspires me to slow down and appreciate the wonder of life, nature and my experiences in life. Thank you for sharing yourself with us.
Thanks for this, Sensei. Reading this helped me slow down– realizing the way is here, with me right now. It is me. As fleeting as the seasons. Just a traveler on this path.
Thank you for this wonderful walk, Sensei!
What came into my mind (besides of a part of the already discussed things) was the question how Eyowyn would describe it, what adventures she experienced. Would she tell us about this exciting rabbit smell at the corner of your house? The flavour of the snow? How she loves to chase your bootlaces? The fear that came up when she saw this deer and how save it felt to stay behind your legs and watch it? Does she remember those things? Or is it more like she is experiencing it and then there is the next adventure? Could this be one of the differences between her and us?
“They said listen to the sermon outside my window, the preaching of the insentient – and I did. I let my mind fill the empty lots outside my window, the street full of cans and rubble, flattened cigarette packs, illegible pages of newspaper – the landscape of the Great Way.”
- I’ve had similar experiences. Emptying out in this way to ‘listen’ to the world actually does reveal many layers and a mutability.
Doen,
It was great to see this very familiar landscape through your eyes. It was satisfying to be on this walk with you – so simple, so present.
Love,
Joan