My life fades. The vision dims. All that remains are memories.
I remember a time of chaos, ruined dreams, this wasted land.
But most of all, I remember the road warrior, the man we called Max.
To understand who he was we have to go back to the other time,
when the world was powered by the black fuel and the desert sprouted great cities of pipe and steel — gone now, swept away. For reasons long forgotten two mighty warrior tribes went to war and touched off a blaze which engulfed them all. Without fuel they were nothing. They'd built a house of straw. The thundering machines sputtered and stopped. Their leaders talked and talked and talked, but nothing could stem the avalanche. Their world crumbled. Cities exploded — a whirlwind of looting, a firestorm of fear. Men began to feed on men.
On the roads it was a white-line nightmare. Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage would survive. The gangs took over the highways, ready to wage war for a tank of juice, and in this maelstrom of decay ordinary men were battered and smashed — men like Max, the warrior Max. In the roar of an engine, he lost everything and became a shell of a man, a burnt-out desolate man, a man haunted by the demons of his past, a man who wandered out into the wasteland. And it was here, in this blighted place, that he learned to live again.
--The Road Warrior opening narration
Jackson Browne: For Everyman
This you know: the years travel fast, and time after time I done the tell. But this ain't onebody's tell. It's the tell of us all, and you've gotta listen and to 'member, 'cause what you hears today you gotta tell the newborn tomorrow. I's lookin' behind us now into history back. I sees those of us who got the luck and started the haul for home, and I 'members how it led us here and how we was heartful 'cause we seen what there once was. One look and we knewed we'd got it straight. Those what had gone before had the knowin' and the doin' of things beyond our reckonin' — even beyond our dreamin'. Time counts and keeps countin', and we knows now: finding the trick of what's been and lost ain't no easy ride, but that's our trek. We gotta travel it, and there ain't nobody knows where it's gonna lead. Still in all, every night we does the tell so that we 'member who we was and where we came from. But most of all we 'members the man who finded us, him that came a-salvage. And we lights the city, not just for him, but for all of them that are still out there. 'Cause we knows there'll come a night when they sees the distant light and they'll be comin' home.
--Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
What can I tell them?
Sealed in their metallic shells like mollusk on wheels, how can I pry the people free? The auto as tin can, the park ranger as opener. Look here, I want to say, for godsake folks get out of them there machines, take off those fucking sunglasses and unpeel both eyeballs, look around; throw away those goddamned idiotic cameras! For chrissake folks what is this life if full of care we have no time to stand and stare? eh? Take off your shoes for a while, unzip your fly, piss hearty, dig your toes in the hot sand, feel that raw and rugged earth, split a couple of big toenails, draw blood! Why not? Jesus Christ, lady, roll that window down! You can’t see the desert if you can’t smell it. Dusty? Of course it’s dusty – this is Utah! But it’s good dust, good red Utahn dust, rich in iron, rich in irony. Turn that motor off. Get out of that piece of iron and stretch your varicose veins, take off your brassiere and get some hot sun on your old wrinkled dugs! You sir, squinting at the map with your radiator boiling over and your fuel pump vapor-locked, crawl out of that shiny hunk of GM junk and take a walk – yes, leave the old lady and those squawling brats behind for a while, turn your back on them and take a long quiet walk straight into the canyons, get lost for a while, come back when you damn well feel like it, it’ll do you and her and them a world of good. Give the kids a break too, let them out of the car, let them go scrambling over the rocks hunting for rattlesnakes and scorpions and anthills – yes sir, let them out, turn them loose; how dare you imprison little children in your goddamned upholstered horseless hearse? Yes sir, yes madam, I entreat you, get out of those motorized wheelchairs, get off your foam rubber backsides, stand up straight like men! like women! like human beings! and walk –
walk – WALK upon our sweet and blessed land!
--Edward Abbey Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness
VISHNU TEMPLE WITH PILGRIMS
MENCIUS AND CONFUCIUS TEMPLES WITH NOMADS
ELVIS SIGHTING WITH CHEOPS PYRAMID AND ISIS TEMPLE
OUTSIDE HANCE CANYON
Bruce Springsteen: This Land is Your Land...9/30/85
A storm was coming, that was why it was dark. The wind was blowing the fronds of the palm trees off. They were maples. I looked out the window across the big lawn. The house was huge, full of children and old people. The lion was loose. Either by the wind, or by malevolent human energy, which is the same thing, the cage had come open.
Suppose a child walked outside!
A child walked outside.
I knew that
I must protect him
from the lion.
I threw myself
on top of the child.
The lion roared over me.
In the branches
and the bushes
there was suddenly
a loud crackling.
The lion cringed.
I looked up
and saw that
the elephant was loose!
The elephant was taller than the redwoods. He was hairy like a mammoth. His tusks trailed vines. Parrots screeched around his head. His eyes rolled crazily. He trumpeted. The ice-cap was breaking up!
The lion backed off, whining. The boy ran for the house. I covered his retreat, locked all the doors and pulled the bars across them. An old lady tried to open a door to get a better look. I spoke sharply to her, she sat down grumbling and pulled a blanket over her knees.
Out of the window
I saw zebras
and rattlesnakes
and wildebeests
and cougars
and woodchucks
on the lawns
and in the tennis courts.
I worried how,
after the storm,
we would put the animals
back in their cages,
and get to the mainland.
FAINT RAINBOW OUTSIDE HANCE CANYON
HAUNTED CANYON COTTONWOODS
TAMARISK NEAR BOUCHER RAPID
CLEAR CREEK REFLECTION
PHANTOM CREEK WITH MONKEY FLOWERS
Frank Sinatra: The September of My Years
The secret of Zen masters
is discovering
the path of return
to such moments,
and knowing how
to pave the way
for such moments to arise.
The masters know how
to use the dazzling light
of those moments
to illuminate
the journey of return,
the journey that begins
from nowhere
and has no destination.
--Thích Nhất Hạnh Fragrant Palm Leaves:
Journals, 1962-1966
These days,
continually fuddled
with drink,
I fail to satisfy
the appetites
of my soul.
But seeing men
all behaing
like drunkards,
How can I alone
remain sober?
--Wang Chi On Going to a Tavern
No sport that I know of has spawned a literature as introspective, as probing, or ultimately as religious as mountaineering. The sport causes climbers to experience unimaginable hardships and then, at the ends of their ropes, to plumb their souls for meaning. They emerge from their excursions to the edge of unknowing with insights into their spiritual natures that transcend the possibility of mere sport. The literature is replete with tales of magic and mystery, of wild humor and terrible sadness and loss and then rebirth---all integral to the practice of climbing, all the result of protracted contact with the unseeable. A marvelous example of this class of writing is Hermann Buhl's stirring account of his 1953 solo ascent of Nanga Parbat, a 26,600-foot mountain in the Himalaya of Kashmir. In only nine pages Buhl manages to transport the reader from the depths of torment and despair to the heights of fantasy and ecstasy and, finally, to the triumph of the human spirit.
As dawn breaks over the mountains we see Buhl moving steadily upward, "an undulating sea of summits" on all sides, a fine mist in the valley below. Alone and determined, he ascends past 24,000 feet, climbing hard snow and "bare, bluish iridescent ice... How often had I dreamed of this moment!" he exults. At 25,000 feet he begins to slow. Because he carries no oxygen, his body seems paralyzed, his lungs unable to expand properly. He fears he has reached the limits of his endurance.Yet he goes on, moving slowly across Nanga Parbat's great Silver Plateau. There is no wind. The air is fearfully dry. A scorching sun beats down on him with Saharan fire and malice. The weight of his rucksack grows intolerable. He has no choice: after stuffing a few essential items into his pockets, he abandons his pack. Willpower alone now carries him upward. He gives no thought to the movement of his legs. He is lost in a vivid dream of home. Making the first ascent of perhaps the world's most treacherous mountain (Nanga Parbat had already claimed thirty-one lives), he believes he is climbing a friendly peak in his native Tyrol. Late in the day he surpasses 26,000 feet. Ahead rises a steep mass of boulders, the most technically difficult section of the climb. He surmounts these somehow, then, with one final effort, drops onto all fours and drags himself to the top. "I was not, I confess, fully conscious of the significance of that moment, nor did I have any feeling of elation at my victory. I simply felt relieved to be on top and to know that all the sweat and toil of the ascent were behind me."
Peter Rowan / Tony Rice: Cold Rain and Snow
As Buhl stands atop the peak, the highest creature on earth, he watches bemusedly as the sun sinks below the horizon in the west. Suddenly the air is bitterly cold. Unable to think clearly, he makes a terrible mistake: he leaves his ice axe on the summit. Now the problems compound. As he descends a steep ice slope in the murky dusk, a crampon drops from his foot. He is left "like a stork standing on the smooth hard surface." Buhl continues his harrowing descent with the aid of one crampon and a pair of ski poles. Darkness finds him marooned on a fifty-degree slope a few hundred feet below the summit. All his bivouac equipment lies far below in his abandoned rucksack. He crawls onto a rock, then pulls on a thin sweater, his only emergency clothing. Through the long night he stands atop the rock, dancing to keep his feet from freezing. At dawn his feet are numb, his boots glazed with ice. With surpassing care he moves down perilous slopes, unaware of the passage of time. He is not alone: throughout the day another descends with him. The two become a team. When Buhl misplaces a pair of gloves, it is his phantom companion who tells him they are lost. The sun is again a torment. The descending climber is plagued by hunger and thirst. His mouth bleeds. He hears voices but no one comes to save him. He finds his pack and falls onto it, only to discover that he is unable to swallow the dry food. He takes a small drink, then sees two distant figures approaching. Ah, the joy of it. Someone was coming! I heard voices too, calling my name."
He watches the two specks below but they come no closer. At last he understands the bitter truth: his saviours are rocks on the mountainside. Each step now requires a dozen breaths. He moves twenty or thirty yards, then collapses. His ordeal seems interminable. The sun is nearing the horizon. Buhl must reach safety soon, for he cannot survive another night in the open. And then it is over. He staggers into the arms of a friend who has come to meet him. "He looked aged by twenty years," writes another. "His face, desiccated and deeply lined, bore the imprint of intolerable suffering." Buhl manages to mutter eight words, a simple report of his visit to the edge: "Yesterday was the finest day of my life."
--Robert Leonard Reid Mountains Of The Great Blue Dream
Gillian Welch / David Rawlings: I'm Not Afraid to Die...12/29/16
Keep in mind
how fast things
pass by and are gone
--those that are now,
and those to come.
Existence flows past us
like a river:
the what
is in constant flux,
the why
has a thousand variations.
Nothing is stable,
not even what’s right here.
The infinity of past and future
gapes before us
--a chasm whose depths
we cannot see.
So it would take an idiot
to feel self-importance
or distress.
Or any indignation, either.
As if the things that irritate us lasted.
This morning the river takes a more southerly direction. The dip of the rocks is to the north, and we are rapidly running into lower formations. Unless our course changes, we shall soon run again into the granite. This gives us some anxiety. Now and then the river turns to the west, and excites hopes that are soon destroyed by another turn to the south. About nine o'clock we come to the dreaded rock. It is with no little misgiving that we see the river enter these black, hard walls. At its very entrance we have to make a portage; then we have to let down with lines past some ugly rocks.
Then we run a mile or two farther, and then the rapids below can be seen.
Emmylou Harris: Tulsa Queen
About eleven o'clock we come to a place in the river where it seems much worse than any we have yet met in all its course. A little creek comes down from the left. We land first on the right, and clamber up over the granite pinnacles for a mile or two, but cansee no way by which we can let down, and to run it would be sure destruction. After dinner we cross to examine it on the left. High above the river we can walk along on the top of the granite, which is broken off at the edge, and set with crags and pinnacles, so that it is very difficult to get a view of the river at all. In my eagerness to reach a point where I can see the roaring fall below, I go too far on the wall, and can neither advance nor retreat. I stand with one foot on a little projecting rock, and cling with my hand fixed in a tiny crevice. Finding I am caught here, suspended 400 feet above the river, into which I should fall if my footing fails, I call for help. The men come and pass me a line, but I cannot let go of the rock long enough to take hold of it. Then they bring two or three of the largest oars. All this takes time which seems very precious to me; but at last they arrive. The blade of one of the oars is pushed into a little crevice in the rock beyond me, in such a manner that they can hold me pressed against the wall. Then another is fixed in such a way that I can step on it, and thus
I am extricated.
Still another hour is spent in examining the river from this side, but no good view of it is obtained, so now we return to the side which was first examind, and the afternoon is spent in clambering among the crags and pinnacles, and carefully scanning the river again. We find that the lateral streams have washed boulders into the river, so as to forma dam, over which the water makes a broken fall of eighteen or twenty feet; then there is a rapid, beset with rocks, for two or three hundred yards, while, on the other side, points of the wall project into the river. Then there is a second fall below; how great, we cannot tell. Then there is a rapid, filled with huge rocks, for one or two hundred yards. At the bottom of it, from the right wall, a great rock projects quite halfway across the river. It has a sloping surface extending upstream, and the water, coming down with all the momentum gained in the falls and rapids above, rolls up this inclined plane may feet and tumbles over to the left. I decide that it is possible to let down over the first fall, then run near the right cliff to a point just above the second, where we can pull out into a little chute, and, having run over that in safety, we must pull with all our power across the stream, to avoid the great rock below. On my return to the boat, I announce to the men we are to run it in the morning. Then we cross the river, and go into camp for the night on some rocks, in the mouth of the little side canyon.
After supper, Captain Howland asks to have a talk with me. We walk up the little creek a short distance, and I soon find that his object is to remonstrate against my determination to proceed. He thinks that we had better abandon the river here. Talking with him, I learn that his brother, William Dunn, and himself have determined to go no farther in the boats. So we return to camp. Nothing is said to the other men.
For the last two days, our course has not been plotted. I sit down and do this now, for the purpose of finding where we are by dead reckoning. It is a clear night, and I take out the sextant for the purpose of making observations for latitude, and find that the astronomic determination agrees very nearly with that of the plot---quite as closely as might be expected, from a meridian observation on a planet. In a direct line, we must be about forty-five miles from the mouth of the Rio Virgen. If we can reach that point, we know that there are settlements up that river about twenty miles. This forty-five miles, in a direct line, will probably be eighty or ninety in the meandering line of the river. But then we know that there is comparatively open country for many miles above the mouth of the Virgen, which is our point of destination.
As soon as I determine all this, I spread my plot on the sand, and wake Howland, who is sleeping down by the river, and show him where I suppose we are, and where several Mormon settlements are situated.
We have another short talk about the morrow, and he lies down again; but for me there is no sleep. All night long, I pace up and down a little path, on a few yards of sand beach, along by the river. Is it wise to go on? I go to the boats again, to look at our rations. I feel satisfied that we can get over the danger immediately before us; what there may be below I know not. From our outlook yesterday, on the cliffs, the canyon seemed to make another great bend to the south, and this, from our experience heretofore, means more and higher granite walls. I am not sure that we can climb out of the canyon here, and, when at the top of the wall, I know enough of the country to be certain that it is a desert of rock and sand, between this and the nearest Mormon town, which, on the most direct line, must be seventy-five miles away. True, the late rains have been favorable to us, should we go out, for the probabilities are that we shall find water still standing in holes, and, at one time, I almost conclude to leave the river. But for years I have been contemplating the trip. To leave the exploration unfinished, to say that there is a part of the canyon which I cannot explore, having already almost accomplished it, is more than I am willing to acknowledge, and I determine to go on.
I wake my brother, and tell him of Howland's determination, and he promises to stay with me; then I call up Hawkins, the cook, and he makes a like promise; then Sumner, and Bradley, and Hall, and they all agree to go on.
--John Wesley Powell journal entry for August 27, 1869
This is perhaps why
Dante chooses the poet
Virgil to be his guide
in the Inferno;
in visiting a strange location,
it's always best to go
with someone who's
been there before,
and – most important of all
on a sightseeing tour of Hell
– who might also know
how to get you out again.
