"When you get to the top of a mountain, keep climbing."

Saturday's hike was Gobbler's Knob via Alexander Basin in Millcreek Canyon--also known as The Steepest Hike In Millcreek, or Remind Me Why I Wanted To Challenge Myself?, or Oh God Oh God Thirty Percent Grade On A Scree Field.

The Knob is at the top right of this picture, I believe. The infamous scree field is below it, and I recommend finding the trail that goes through the patch of trees in the center of the picture rather than trying to scramble up the bare rocks. You may have a Kerouac moment on the slope: 

I looked back and like Lot's wife that did it... Supposing I'd start to slip back for good, these screes might start sliding any time anyway [...] Finally I came to a kind of ledge where I could sit at a level angle instead of having to cling not to slip, and I nudged my whole body inside the ledge just to hold me there tight, so the wind would not dislodge me, and I looked down and around and I had had it. 

It's hard to convey how steep this is, but here's the view back down from the saddle. (I didn't make the top of the Knob. My legs still had to get back down everything and I was proud enough about getting to this point.)

On the saddle facing the other way, still looking a little freaked out.

Looking into Big Cottonwood Canyon. 

This view inspired me to start singing hits from The Sound of Music. My hiking companion was not amused.

 

 A moose! On the loose! Seen on the way back down.

Re-Reading The Dharma Bums

I'm not doing so well on my goal to read a new book a month, but I'm hoping to catch up by the pool when it's full summer. In the meantime, there's The Dharma Bums to re-read. This is from their backpacking trip to the Sierra Nevadas: 

Now the mountains were getting that pink tinge, I mean the rocks, they were just solid rock covered with the atoms of dust accumulated there since beginningless time. In fact I was afraid of those jagged monstrosities all around and over our heads. 

"They're so silent!" I said. 

"Yeah man, you know to me a mountain is a Buddha. Think of the patience, hundreds of thousands of years just sittin there bein perfectly perfectly silent and like praying for all living creatures in that silence and just waitin for us to stop all our frettin and foolin."

Happy Birthday, Ti-Jean

It's Jack Kerouac's birthday today, in 1922 (his parents were French Canadian, so "Ti Jean" was the family nickname for him).

I blame Kerouac (and Salinger) for nurturing my hippie tendencies--open any page of The Dharma Bums at an impressionable age, read about hitchhiking and backpacking and mountain climbing, and then throw in something like this? No surprise there.

There were now early spring mornings with the happy dogs, me forgetting the Path of Buddhism and just being glad; looking around at new little birds not yet summer fat; the dogs yawning and almost swallowing my Dharma; the grass waving, hens chuckling. Spring nights, practicing Dhyana under the cloudy moon, I'd see the truth: "Here, this, is It. The world as it is, is Heaven, I'm looking for a Heaven outside what there is, it's only this poor pitiful world that's Heaven."

Speaking Of Trains

I think the opening sentence of The Dharma Bums is a really good opening sentence:

Hopping a freight out of Los Angeles at high noon one day in late September 1955 I got on a gondola and lay down with my duffel bag under my head and my knees crossed and contemplated the clouds as we rolled north to Santa Barbara.