ornoth

When Inna and I visited Tiger Kingdom in Phuket, I mentioned to her that I’d never known that tigers have white spots on the back of their ears, and wondered what the heck that was about. I didn’t ask the keepers, and never learned the reason until a couple days ago, when I came across this photograph of a tiger bending low to get a drink of water.

Look carefully, and you’ll see something truly remarkable. Those white spots on her ears look remarkably like a pair of angry eyes. And if you extend that illusion, you will see the ladder of black stripes on top of her skull suddenly transform into the wrinkles along the muzzle of an angry beast, and the pointed white spots above her eyes become a fearsome set of bared fangs!

So while the real tiger is bending low in a vulnerable position, the pattern of coloring on her fur projects the illusion of a fierce and angry predator. It’s an amazing adaptation, made even more effective because the illusory tiger’s features are more pronounced—and therefore more prominent—than the real ones!

When I first saw this, I thought, “Wow, nature is pretty amazing to craft something that sophisticated from spontaneous natural selection. But then I took a step back, asking myself how could the mechanics of evolution possibly produce this? Tigers are an apex predator with little need for such camouflage; they have absolutely no predators except other tigers and man, and humans haven’t held mastery over tigers long enough to have that dramatic an impact on their evolution. So how could natural selection have produced such a coloring trait?

To be honest, I have no idea, which makes it that much more astonishing an illusion.

May featured two interesting events on strangely divergent ends of the spiritual spectrum.

The first was Vesak, which is the biggest holiday in the Buddhist calendar. Traditionally, the May full moon marks the date of the Buddha’s birth, the date of his enlightenment, and the date of the passing of his physical body.

For whatever reason, the American Buddhist groups I’ve associated with have never bothered to observe this occasion. However, the active Sri Lankan expatriate group here in Pittsburgh has organized an annual observance in accordance with their customs, and invited other local groups to contribute in their own ways.

So on the 15th of May I made my way down to the community park by the Pittsburgh Children’s Museum to join about a hundred others in my first observance of Vesak. Ironically, the downtown streets had been blocked off, so I had to hop off the bus and walk an extra half mile to get there. The reason: a big procession of Christians carrying idols and chanting the Lord’s Prayer. Very strange synchronicity.

One thing I have to say about Buddhists: their celebrations really suck. The observances included chanting, recitations from the dhamma, and a dhamma talk: all very stolid, head-y stuff. The most demonstrative display was by some beautifully elegant traditional dancers, who did an excellent job, though they too were pretty sedate.

When the talking was over, there was a procession down to the banks of the Allegheny for a peace ceremony that featured releasing rose petals and water into the river, to disperse throughout the world.

For me, the observance and opportunity for reflection were nice, but almost comically staid. Still, it was heartwarming to be able to participate in such an important community event, having had been offered no such observances by my American Buddhist communities.

A week later, at Inna’s prompting, I found myself driving into the remotest parts of the Berkshire hills of Western Massachusetts to attend a huge week-long pagan festival: the Rites of Spring.

I approached Rites with a twofold purpose. On one hand, nature—wood, wind, rock, and sun, and especially the solar holidays—are an important part of my spirituality. But I’ve always preferred to honor those in silence and solitude; so Rites was something of a test to see whether there is any room in my veneration of nature for community. And failing that, my fallback plan was to simply go my own way and treat it as my own five-day woodland meditation retreat.

In the end, I wound up balancing involvement with the community with solitary reflection and a good helping of meditation. I observed a few of the big community rituals, but felt more turned off by the people than spiritually moved. Inna and I did bring our drums to one of the fire circles, and that was fun. I summed up my feelings at one point: “Nature is majestic and mysterious and magical enough without all the dumb human inventions like magical energies and mythical beings and healing crystals and blah blah crap.”

My community experience was saved by a dear old friend who had coordinated the Sandwich Retreats back at the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center. Whispering Deer is an amazingly wise and lovable woman who shares the Buddhist teachings with a different audience at Rites, albeit translating it into their vernacular. Her series of workshops meditating on the four Brahmaviharas and mindfulness of the body gave me something familiar, trusted, and interesting to work with. It was really cool seeing Whispering Deer teaching the dhamma on her own, and I was delighted that Inna chose to join me in attending.

Of course, I also found time for about seven hours of solitary meditation practice, usually on a granite rock or dock on the shore of the pond. I spent those hours enjoying the opportunity to observe and integrate with the sun, woods, and lake around me, and contemplating why the veneration of nature is something I find so difficult to share with others.

But another important aspect of the trip was the opportunity to connect more deeply with my partner. The trip took Inna and I out of our daily routine, and we had a couple long, quiet conversations that brought us closer together. And that was way more valuable to me than all the silly neo-pagan hoopla.

It took me eight years to do it, but I’ve finally sat my first silent residential meditation retreat out at the Insight Meditation Society in rural Barre, Mass. Here’s a report from the front lines…

My first hard-won insights actually came before the retreat, when all my prospective rides bagged on me, and my postings on IMS’ ride board produced nothing. But two guys said they were planning on taking the commuter rail to Worcester and biking the remaining 25 miles to Barre, so that’s what I did.

Fortunately the weather was an un-April-like mid-70s, and the ride out went well. The route featured a very sharp 3-mile climb out of Worcester, 13 miles of gradual downhill through Paxton, Rutland, and Oakham, and ended with another steep 3-miler up to the meditation center. Here’s the GPS log. It was marred only by one of my companions flatting only a few miles in, and the heavy backpack I had to carry.

The weather had been one of my concerns, since April can still be below freezing in Central Mass, but four of my five days in Barre were in the 70s.

Contrary to some other fears, the accomodations were quite reasonable, and the vegetarian food was quite satisfactory. There was only one meal where I really couldn’t eat anything, which is quite surprising, given how finicky I am.

One of the things my friends rave about is the setting at IMS. It’s rural, so it’s a big old house surrounded by farms and woodlands. Apparently that’s a big deal to my friends, but having grown up in Maine, it didn’t strike me as anything special. Like any other rural place, it’s generally quiet except for the insects and the birds. I walked one of the woodland trails and the Gaston Pond loop, which were indeed pleasant, but nothing exceptional.

But the majority of the time (from 5:15am to 9:30pm each day) was spent in silent meditation, either sitting or walking. Although this was my first residential retreat, I’ve done many non-residential weekend retreats and five 9-day “sandwich” retreats at CIMC. On top of that, I’ve got a healthy daily sitting practice, and I’ve been meditating for eight years now. So I was pretty well prepared for this short 5-day retreat.

The first couple days went well; I find I can settle my mind into silence pretty quickly and can stay there for quite some time. It wasn’t until Friday—the third day—when I found my mind going off on its own. And for two days, that’s what it did, in a series of four half-day bouts of preoccupation with one topic.

The first topic started quite accidentally. After three days without it, Thursday night I figured that I should use my cellphone to check the weather to learn whether I’d be biking home in 75-degree sun or 45-degree rain.

While I read the weather, my phone downloaded my email. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a notification that I’d received an email from a friend with the subject line “gonna miss you…”. I didn’t think anything of it at the time and went off to bed.

The next morning’s meditation began like this: “She sent me a note saying she misses me while I’m on retreat! How sweet is that?” From there my mind continued making up stories. “I wonder what she wrote… She’s been friendly to me lately. Does she like me? What if she does? What would that be like? What would we tell our friends? And how?”

I let this train of thought hurtle along for a couple sitting periods before curiosity finally got the better of me and I checked to see what she’d written. That was how I learned that she hadn’t emailed me directly, but posted to a mailing list we were both on. What I’d embellished into a love note was really just an apology that she’d be unable to make an upcoming group event!

So that wound up being a very amusing and timely lesson in both humility and how much of a story the mind can make up out of nothing at all.

Friday’s other preoccupation was with a bit of land that had been cleared in preparation for IMS’ construction of a new dormatory building. They had felled a couple dozen mature trees, leaving dead stumps and branches, and three big piles of wood chips in a torn-up gravel area.

This didn’t sit well with me, partially because I view it as a violation of the Buddhist precept to “refrain from destroying living creatures”, one of the vows the center had asked us to take on the first day of our retreat.

I was also personally affronted by it, partially because of the reverence for nature that was instilled in me growing up in Maine, and partially because I view trees as embodying the Buddhist principles of non-harming, equanimity, and noble silence, as I discussed in a prior blogpost. I took two wood chips from the piles of remains and brought them home as mementos.

But this story has a more satisfying ending, because I later learned that IMS had showed respect by having some monks conduct a formal ceremony before killing the trees, and the wood will be used in the construction of the new dorm, as mentioned here. So at least it wasn’t done callously.

The next day—the last full day of the retreat—also featured two major preoccupations. The first was just a whole lot of repressed sexual energy. Spent half a day watching that.

The other half of the day was spent wrestling with work anxiety. Although that stress had a lot of energy and persistence, it was easy to set aside because it came up on my last precious day at IMS, a place I’ve wanted to visit for years. The importance of being “in the moment”—rather than lost in thought—was never clearer!

Then it was Sunday and time to go home. But not before the guy who flatted on the way out had another flat as we were leaving. The ride back to Worcester wasn’t as pleasant as the ride out: it was cold and it poured for the second half of the ride. We were very glad to get to the commuter rail station where we dried off and changed into dry clothes before the train ride back to Boston.

In addition to all that, there are a few brief observations I’d like to share…

When I was packing my bag, I initially pulled out 6 pairs of socks to bring, but having very limited space in my backpack, I decided to take only 3 pair and do double-duty. So as I was leaving, I left a pile with half my socks behind. Unfortunately, those were the ones that were left after I’d already put the other pairs away, so I only had one pair of socks for six days…

The highlight of the center’s short orientation tour was seeing the single-lane candlepin bowling alley in the basement underneath the meditation hall… where the Dalai Lama once bowled!

Surprisingly, none of my friends from my kalyana mitta group nor anyone that I know from CIMC attended this retreat. Actually, I think that was a good thing, in that it meant I could practice without thinking about that extra contact. I did, however, receive a very warm welcome from my friend Shea (who works in IMS’ kitchen) on the arrival day, before we entered into silent practice.

People do various forms of bowing at the start and/or end of sittings. But this was the first time I’d ever seen anyone bow toward the back of the hall. Or perhaps they were showing their butts to the Buddha statue? Very odd.

One of the most discomforting images you can witness is seeing a teacher or practice leader bobbing and weaving during a sitting, on the edge of falling asleep. If they do fall asleep, there’s no one to ring the bell and end the sitting!

It was kind of gratifying that one of the teachers lost her place while leading the first metta chanting.

It was really pleasant doing walking meditation on the Annex porch, especially around sunset or in the darkness after the sun had gone down.

I did two or three sessions of mindful movement (yoga). It was okay.

My “yogi job” was dinnertime pot-washer, which worked out well because it meant that I had the traditional 7:15am morning “work period” to myself. I also made friends with a woman named Margot from JP who shared my job.

Since the retreat is conducted in silence, people often leave notes with questions for the teachers. I left a note that read, “Thank you for introducing me to this group of people. –The Unconditioned”.

Sometimes people have to take a little time re-integrating with the pace and furor of the regular world. I had no such problems—and it’s a good thing, too, considering I had to bike through the city of Worcester—but I can see how it might happen to people on longer retreats.

Lessons learned: Bring cocoa mix. Bring a rag to open doors with to avoid getting germs from commonly-used surfaces.

Finally, I think Jon Kabat-Zinn’s book “Full Catastrophe Living” must be a reference to what happens in the bathroom when you eat vegetarian…

So overall I’d say it was a very positive experience. I don’t think it was qualitatively different from the non-residential retreats I’ve been on, but the amount of unbroken practice time does seem to have a profound effect in terms of one’s ability to quiet the mind enough to examine one’s stuff in the light of wisdom.

I do expect that I’ll do additional retreats, and I’m not particularly concerned about doing longer ones. I certainly think I am ready and capable of a 14-day retreat. Whether that’s a practical aspiration or not remains to be seen. It’d certainly be easier if I were working for myself or unemployed (although then I probably wouldn’t have the funds).

But, as ever, the practice continues and life unfolds as it does.

I must admit, I’ve always been kinda confused by vegetarians.

Many, if not most, vegetarians avoid meat out of compassion for other living beings. This is, of course, a laudable sentiment that I personally agree with and support. If I were a vegetarian, this would be my primary motivation.

On the other hand, vegetarianism that’s based on the sanctity of life doesn’t make much sense if you agree that plants are just as much “living beings” as animals. Is killing and eating a plant really any less violent than killing a cow or a lamb? Why? Is it because we feel more “kinship” with that cow than we do, say, a turnip?

The history of human ethical development can be viewed as a glacially slow progression of extending respect to other life forms. We began back in the caveman days, when Grog came up with the revolutionary idea that he shouldn’t cross the river and kill Kracken’s whole family, since they were kinda the same as his family.

Tens of thousands of years later, mankind is still struggling with the idea that people from the neighboring country are kinda the same as we are, even though they talk funny; that people are still people, even if they worship ridiculous pagan gods (or, heaven forbid, some blasphemous variation of our own); and that we are all one, even if our skin color isn’t.

Here’s where I give vegetarians credit: they’ve extended that idea of kinship, and the compassion that comes with it, to other mammals. You don’t eat cows and pigs and dogs and lambs because, dammit, there’s something about them that we can identify with and care about. We don’t want them to suffer and die just for our convenience. Well done, Captain Vegetable!

But that’s just one more incremental step along a long path of ethical development: one more case of us realizing that just because something is different doesn’t mean it isn’t worthy of our honor, respect, and compassion.

The next steps in our ethical development are obvious: extend that same degree of compassion to birds, fish, shellfish, and insects. Giving mammals preferential treatment over other members of the animal kingdom makes about as much sense as giving Jews preferential treatment over Muslims.

Oh. Right. We’re not quite there yet, are we? Maybe someday.

Objectively, fish and insects are life forms just like you and I, and the more we respect life, the more we must care about their suffering, too. There are already people who, instead of swatting them, escort their household bugs outside, being careful not to harm them.

Assuming we finally manage to extend our compassion beyond our fellow humans and other mammals, to fish and insects, it’s only a matter of time before we finally admit that plants are living beings, too.

And here is where I must ask of my vegetarian friends: why is the life of one stink bug more precious than our annual destruction of millions upon millions of tomato plants, or corn stalks, or Christmas trees?

The precedent has already been set of humans taking action to save an individual redwood or a swath of forest from being clear-cut. That action makes no sense unless the idea has begun to take root that all life—even vegetables!—is worthy of our respect and compassion.

Of course, I’m not arguing that vegetarians should stop eating vegetables, or ethically regress by resuming eating meat. It’s an unfortunate and unavoidable fact that right now, humans must eat formerly living beings in order to survive.

That’s an interesting realization, because it establishes an ethical dilemma for us: our survival requires us to kill living beings. Since most religions say that killing is one of the worst actions one can perform, doesn’t that mean that mankind is inherently evil?

That’s an interesting contrast to what we normally hear, which is that humans have a favored position in the universe. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all assert that man was created in God’s image, and Buddhism says that a human rebirth is a rare and precious opportunity to attain enlightenment. A good example is this quote, attributed to Anagarika Darmapala at the 1892 World Parliament of Religions:

To be born as a human being is a glorious privilege. Man’s dignity consists in his capability to reason and think and to live up to the highest ideal of pure life, of calm thought, of wisdom without extraneous intervention.

But how do we reconcile this self-congratulatory view of ourselves with the gory fact that every day of our lives we must kill and eat our fellow living beings?

Now let me set the question aside and take a bit of a side track, because that idea dovetails nicely with some of my own feelings concerning the sanctity of nature, and particularly trees.

Since childhood, when my summers were spent along wooded lakes in Maine, I’ve felt a deep spiritual respect for trees. In college, there was a particular pine tree deep in the woods behind campus that was “my tree”, where I’d go to commune with nature, and more recently I have similarly rooted myself to a particular spot near the Arnold Arboretum’s “Conifer Path”.

Combining this with my previous train of thought has given me a better reason to admire trees from a spiritual standpoint. Think about it: unlike us, trees don’t need to kill anything in order to survive. In fact, trees do zero harm at all, yet they have the longest lifespans of any complex living organism on our planet.

From a Buddhist perspective, trees are the epitome of equanimity, stoically accepting life as it is, with no need to control it or change it. They are equally connected to the air, the earth, and to water.

As a result, it is no surprise that euphemisms like “the Tree of Life” fill our language, and that trees play a central and symbolic role in all major religions, be it the bodhi tree that the Buddha reached enlightenment beneath, or the Judeo-Christian images of the olive branch and Tree of Knowledge.

I seem to be in implausibly diverse company in my respect for trees’ spiritual nature:

Willa Cather: I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.
George Bernard Shaw: Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.
Friedrich Nietzsche: The pine tree seems to listen, the fir tree to wait, and both without impatience. They give no thought to the little people beneath them devoured by their impatience and their curiosity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson: The wonder is that we can see these trees and not wonder more.
Mikhail Gorbachev: To me, nature is sacred; trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals.
Ronald Reagan: A tree is a tree—how many more do you need to look at?

Trees give us a model of simplicity, acceptance, and meditative silence. If you searched the world over for the best master meditation guru alive, you could do no better than to follow the example of a tall, strong tree, standing silently while the world flows and transpires all around him.

If I was to be reincarnated after this life is over, I think, contrary to most people’s belief, that coming back as a tree might well be the wisest choice one could make.

And if you were looking for evidence of divinity in our world, I think this is where you should look. Surely the pattern of growth rings in a tree are the literal fingerprints of whatever force—personified or otherwise—created us.

Click image for NASA photo info. Click here for Daily Kos article explaining how global warming is already 40 years ahead of predictions. Congrats and cujos to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

The following is my travelogue from the 2007 DargonZine Writers' Summit. The official project writeup and photos can be found here, while my favorites out of my own photos can be found here.

Wednesday, 21 March 2007

      Woke up to 20 degrees, but at least it was sunny. We'd had snow showers the day before, and a serious snowfall last weekend. I finished packing and swept the house, then left for the airport at 11am.
      We were about ten minutes late taking off, due to the outbound aircraft showing up late, which made me anxious because my connection in Denver was tight to begin with. Despite the fact that we wound up landing on time, by the end of my brisk walk the length of Denver's Terminal B my second flight was already boarding Seating Area 2, which meant me. No time to stretch out my back after a five-hour flight from Boston!
      The flight to Vegas added another couple hours onto that, continuing to stress my back, which has been painful since I stood in line for three hours waiting to tour the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy in Boston two weeks ago.
      The approach to Vegas was absolutely stunning from the air, the Earth a carpet of rugged mountains and etched canyons. After passing over one final high ridge, we approached the McCarran runway that runs parallel to the Strip, passing the Stratosphere, the Wynn, the Bellagio, New York New York, Paris, and the Luxor, among the sights. It was pretty impressive. On arrival at 6pm, it was 70 blessed degrees.
      I met up with two of my writers -- Rena and Dafydd -- at the luggage carousel, then we drove off in Daf's white Lincoln Town Car to meet Carlo -- another Dargon Project member -- in the lobby of the Green Valley Ranch Casino in Henderson.
      From there, we had supper at the Red Hawk Tavern, which was clearly a dive for the locals. The food was mundane, but at least it wasn't a chain, and the waitress was friendly. The highlight, however, was the quite busty other waitress, whom I eyed as she worked the booths. Very nice, I must say.
      After dinner and chat, we hit the Albertson's grocery next door for some supplies, then made our way back to the town house that Dafydd, this year's host, had rented. The nighttime view of the city was interesting: a huge grid of lights filling the valley, tightly bound by arid mountains, with the Strip in the middle.
      As for the house, called Cappellini, there's not much I can say about it but “Oh my gawd!” Okay, aside from the pool and hot tub, and the pool table, and the wireless Internet, the place was gigrontic. I think it had seven bedrooms, but I'm not sure. I wound up picking a nice little suite with -- of all things -- a very high sleigh bed. The place is a new development, and the accommodations were absolutely unsurpassed. Stupendous.
      I stayed up for a while, unpacking and getting ready for Thursday's planned bike ride. I finally hit the hay sometime around 1am, which would have been 3am Eastern. Long day!

Thursday, 22 March 2007

      Sadly, my internal clock was still on Eastern time, so I was awake at 5:45 am. After a casual breakfast, Dafydd and Rena dropped me at Las Vegas Cyclery, where I talked to a friendly dude and rented a 60cm Cannondale Synapse: the other bike I considered when I bought my Roubaix a year and a half ago.
      While the others headed off to tour the Luxor and Caesar's Palace, I started the westward ride out of town, which promised a steady four percent grade, gaining of 2500 feet over a dozen miles. After a few miles, I caught up with another cyclist at a stop light, and I chatted pleasantly with him for several miles, until the end of Alta, where he turned right to do some offroad riding, while I turned left to get back down to West Charleston and Route 159, which would take me out to Red Rock Canyon.

      I knew Las Vegas was in the Mojave Desert, but I had no idea it was surrounded by mountains. You can see the Spring Mountains and Red Rock Canyon from the Strip, and it only took me six miles to get outside of town and into very serious desert scenery.
      Within an hour I turned into the park's 17-mile scenic loop road, which began a more serious ascent, skirting the entire circumference of valley between the Calico Hills (huge thousand-foot cliffs of red sandstone) and the immense Spring Mountains. As I slowly made my way up to 4800 feet, I took a few sets of pictures, but absolutely no photos can do justice to the immense wall of rock on my right. Although it hadn’t taken long, I was very glad to see the sign for the highest point on the loop road, because my springtime legs had been pretty well used up.
      From there, the remaining two-thirds of my ride were all downhill or flat, starting with the descent from the canyon, which featured lots of switchbacks and speeds up to 40 mph. At 2pm I stopped at the end of the loop road and took another panorama of the canyon before hopping back onto Route 159 south toward the tiny village of Blue Diamond.
      Route 159 was great: smooth, wide, and all downhill. Despite a very stiff headwind, I was still making 25-35 mph before I turned onto Route 160, a busy road that led back into Vegas from the south, near where our house was. However, since Dafydd and Rena were touring the Strip, I skipped the house and turned left onto Jones, through an industrial area, where I found a penny in the road. I figured finding money in the streets of Vegas would be a good story, so I took the time to stop and pick it up.
      The last five miles of the 50-mile ride were tough, between the wind, my bad back, and my legs losing power on this first significant ride I've done in six or eight months. I finally pulled back into the bike shop and returned my ride, stretched, then plunked myself down in front of the store to wait for Dafydd and Rena to pick me up.
      When they did, we had to exchange the Lincoln Town Car for the behemoth van we'd use to transport the nine of us around town. That was a bit of an adventure, as we had to return the car in one place (after missing the rental car return exit twice), take a shuttle bus back to the airport terminal, then catch another shuttle to a different rental place. Then we drove the beast back to the house to again meet up with Carlo for dinner.
      After I took a quick shower, we headed out to where Daf thought an Ethiopian restaurant was. We found the strip mall, and even the sign, but the restaurant was gone. However, there was an Ethiopian grocery and a “club” next door with silvered windows that hid the interior. Eventually Daf stepped into the “club”, and we followed timorously.
      Inside looked like a VFW hall, with a bunch of tables, and a group of natives huddled at one. It took several minutes for Daf to get any attention from the residents, but eventually we sat down and were served. The staff seemed very surprised, and we soon found out that they were out of some dishes because it was an Ethiopian fasting holiday. We ordered anyways, but I have to say the food was singularly bad. I got lamb bones and bread, and that's about it, so I was pretty glad to leave that adventure behind.
      From there, we returned to the house. Both Liam and his wife (MaryEllen) and Jim and his wife (Naomi) showed up late that evening, and we played a game of Carcassonne, which I won, surprisingly. Eventually it was 2am, and I hit the hay.

Friday, 23 March 2007

      Friday was another 6am start, but it was a pretty casual morning. Eventually the group got together in the van and Dafydd drove us down to Hoover Dam, where we promptly parked and headed indoors for the tour.
      The tour really wasn't too much: a movie, an elevator ride down to the generator floor, then a walk past one of the huge bypass water pipes that feed the turbines. Somehow I find the dam both stupendously huge and yet thoroughly trivial at the same time. It's 780 feet high, and two football fields deep at the base. The lake behind it is absolutely huge. But ultimately it's just a simple waterwheel. It's kinda like having a 300-foot screwdriver.
      After the tour, we stepped out into the sunlight of the observation deck to take some pictures, then walked the length of the road atop the dam, across to the Arizona side of the Colorado River. The intake towers were kind of interesting, and we spotted a couple lizards lounging in the sun on one of the cement walls atop the dam. Although the wind was calm on both sides of the dam, it was brutally strong right in the middle, which was very odd. When we'd had our fill, we went through the gift shop, then into the cafe for lunch, where I had chicken fingers.
      Then it was back into the van up the arid no mans land along the edge of Lake Mead. The landscape became gradually more and more rugged, and it reminded me a great deal of Scotland: driving winding roads in a van through huge mountains, while half of the passengers slept.
      At about 4pm we finally found the entrance to the Valley of Fire, another immense outcropping of red sandstone. We took a short walk up to Elephant Rock, an odd stone formation on a hill overlooking the visitor center. I encouraged Liam and his wife to climb up to it for photos, while a mother nearby lectured her kids about not leaving the trail.
      After a short breather, Jim fetched the van and we drove on to another point called Seven Sisters. Getting out of the van, the weather had turned breezy and cool, and one could feel the occasional raindrop. The wind picked up to storm levels, kicking up eddies of sand and driving us back into the van.
      From there it was another short side trip to a place with the intriguing name of Mouse's Tank, which turned out to be absolutely fascinating. It was a very narrow box canyon, a third of a mile long, bordered by huge sandstone cliffs and boulders of all sizes and shapes, many of them covered with petroglyphs that could be one or two thousand years old. At the head of the canyon is a small hollow filled with water. The whole area defies description, and was one of the highlights of the trip.
      From there we went a little further to a place called Rainbow Vista, which offered an intriguing perspective: more huge red rocks in the foreground, but contrasting sharply with the verdant valley and higher mountains beyond. It was visually spectacular.
      We returned to the main road and stopped a final time at a place called the Beehives, which not only offered a similar overlook, but also a view of the rainbow promised in the title of the previous stop. By then we were getting pretty tired of spectacular scenery and big red rocks, so we hopped into the van and headed back into town for our next adventure: teppanyaki.

      We piled out at a Japanese beast row called Fukuda, met up with Carlo, and took up positions on the perimeter of a stainless steel grill. Not long after our order was taken, a Japanese chef showed up and starting in on his theatrics, flipping knives and spatulas and eggs and keeping up a lively banter as he began to prepare our food right before our eyes: shrimp, lo mein, fried rice, assorted veggies and meat, and a flaming tower of onions. The meal was very good, and very well presented, even if the chef did drop one knife and a plastic squeeze bottle of oil. I've always been skeptical of Japanese food, but the teppanyaki was a great show and an enjoyable meal.
      When dinner was over, half the group went straight home, and the rest of us went to the airport to pick up Jon, our final arrival. We snagged him, then made a grocery run before getting back to the house. Everyone was tired, and a bit frustrated when we couldn't figure out how to get the hot tub's heat to activate. After greetings were exchanged, we all retired.

Saturday, 24 March 2007

      Once again I was up at 6:30am Saturday. Jon and Liam managed to break one of the house's pottery cups by cooperating too hard. Then we kicked around and played a little pool while waiting for Liam to make a run to Office Depot to pick up an easel pad.
      When he returned, Daf presented us with some amazing gifts he had prepared: several decks of custom Las Vegas Summit playing cards, and a whole case full of ceramic poker chips bearing the DargonZine logo. That was quite an impressive item!
      At the same time, Liam mentioned two books to us. The first was a textbook called “Writing Fiction” by Janet Burroway, and Liam read to us a section about the importance of allowing yourself to write garbage first drafts. The other was the Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diana Wynne Jones, which is written like a tour guide but makes scathing fun of all the stock fantasy cliches like stew, ale, grand viziers, and so forth.
      With that out of the way, we got into the working sessions, which began with Liam facilitating a brainstorming session on where story ideas come from. The list included:

My philosophical ideas or inner demons
My ideas for inventions
My dreams or daydreams, especially the surreal ones
External requirements/expectations/motivators
Doing research, including maps (Dargon or otherwise)
Start writing about a character and just see where it goes
Take a visual impression and work it into a story
Rewrite/alter/extend/follow up on someone else's story
Getting struck by an idea (character, line, scene)
A story in an article/book/radio/television/song

      Next I took the floor for the only thing I had to present this year: a talk about how to take a simple basic plot and add complication upon complication until it becomes almost baroque in its ornateness, using the scriptwriting of Buckaroo Banzai as an example. It was a quick session, but hopefully people left with an appreciation of how little work it can be to make a fast-paced story if you pare everything down to just plot.
      After that, Dafydd and Liam talked a little bit about how the Doravin arc had changed under their current plan. I'm glad to see it moving forward, and even if it's not going in the original direction Daf intended for it, it's still a great addition to the milieu.
      By this time it was noon, so we broke for sandwiches. Carlo arrived in the middle, and walked us through some of the graphics work he's been doing, including revised maps.
      And the final item of the day was to go around and talk about the stories we'd each written in response to a writing challenge Dafydd had posted to the list several weeks earlier. My own story was originally written to fulfill the need for a “Dargon walking tour”, as expressed at our previous writers' Summit.

      That left us the balance of the day to go exploring, and Dafydd drove us west of the city to Mount Charleston, at 11,918 feet the eighth highest peak in Nevada. We stopped briefly at the visitor's center, where several people picked up sweatshirts, since they were unprepared for the cold air around 9000 feet. Between Las Vegas' dryness and the altitude, Jim's wife Naomi even suffered a couple inconvenient nosebleeds.
      From there, we drove a few miles to a short trail called Robbers' Roost. This footpath went up into the aromatic conifers that were the only real trees I saw in Nevada, and we were quickly trudging through wet snow among the boulders and pinecones. The mountain goats among us quickly shed followers, until it was just me, Jon, Liam, and his wife, having gone about as far as we could go without climbing gear. As we stood there, I looked up and noticed carabiners on hangers attached to an immense overhang above us, as Dafydd and Jim caught up.
      After a few minutes' rest, we tromped back down to the van, and rode on to the Desert View Overlook. Here we milled around a bit before piling back in the van for the ride back into town.
      The descent was interesting, and made moreso by the van's overheating brakes causing it to vibrate badly until Daf set the van into low gear. But eventually we got back to town, safe and sound.
      Having given up on trying to meet the (fondue) Melting Pot's dress code, our dinner stop was at a place called Thai Spice, which served passable Asian, including my Szechuan chicken. The highlight of the meal was the Summit toast, which was given by Liam and Jon, each alternating words in a hilarious impromptu improv routine. I tried to capture it on my camera phone, but it failed to record the audio, as I'd feared.
      We returned to the house at 8pm, where we again split into two groups. The two married couples -- Jim and Naomi, Liam and MaryEllen -- drove up to the Strip and toured the Paris hotel and casino. Liam came back and validated my impression that the Strip really wasn't worth my time, as I wouldn't have enjoyed it, although Jim did get some wonderful pictures of the Strip at night.
      Meanwhile, Dafydd, Jon, and I hung out in the hot tub, since we'd been told how to operate the thing earlier in the day. I took great pleasure in lounging in a hot tub while eating Haagen-Dazs and some of my $230 bottle Port Ellen.
      We finished the day with another game of Carcassonne, then crashed.

Sunday, 25 March 2007

      Sunday's working session began pretty promptly at 9am, with Jon's review of our financials, followed by voting for officers. One of the votes we took changed the Editor position so that it is appointed by the board, rather than a lifelong position. Another change was Dafydd's election as Vice President, which is a largely titular office, but it was still a great thing to see.
      Liam then led us through a discussion of the tasks that need to be performed in order to consider the DPWW ready. The DPWW -- Dargon Project Writers' Workshop -- was dreamt up last year to give new writers a way to get peer review of non-Dargon works as a way of ramping up on DargonZine and our processes. Five things came out of the discussion: instructions for mentors and mentees, a closer partnership with Carlo's Arcane Twilight, a reorganization of the writers' section of our web site, moving the DPWW mailing list to dargonzine.org, and a document defining the process for responding to new writer signup requests.
      We also were led through a brainstorming exercise on what the word “aspiring” means in our mission statement, since there'd been a debate on the list about its relevance. We came up with the following attributes of an “aspiring writer”:

Desires to (and does) write and improve, and explore the craft
Shares their writing with either the public or other writers
Values critiques, is willing to learn
Sees their work as not perfect yet

We ended the working sessions by once again going through our Summit challenge stories, deciding on points where our stories could refer to one another. After taking some time to hash that out, the writers went off to work on their stories, while I kinda milled around a bit.
We took something like two hours to figure out who wanted what kind of pizza, then trying to find a place to order from, then finding the right franchise to deliver to our area, then waiting for the pizza to show up. It finally did, and we scarfed it down in no time at all.

      After lunch I took a quick group photo, then we played another game of Carcassonne before we finally got the group together for a trip over to South Point, the nearest big casino. After four days, I was finally getting the opportunity to put some money on the tables at Las Vegas!
      We wandered around for a bit, with Dafydd, Liam, and Jon following me to the blackjack pit. I walked around the tables, looking at who was dealing shoe versus hand, who was winning and who was losing, which dealers were talkative, how fast each dealer was operating, where the players were, and the rules set. The rules weren't great: no surrender, and the dealer hit soft 17. As I walked around, Liam asked me what I was doing, and I explained the idea behind scoping the pit out a little before sitting down. Jon commented that I gambled like I write (so cautiously that it never happened).
      There was one table that we watched for a few minutes. The dealer seemed pleasant, and there were four open seats, since there were three people playing. But as we watched, hand after hand the dealer smashed the players, dealing himself improbable 21s and other outs. It was a massacre, so we moved on. A few minutes later, Liam pointed out to me that the table was now empty: the dealer had busted all three players and driven them off.
      What happened next would be termed a learning experience. Liam seemed eager to start playing, so he said he was going to go over to that very table and sit down. I was incredulous, and said as much, reminding him of the bloodbath he'd just witnessed. But he wasn't dissuaded, and Jon and Daf tagged along, so against my better judgment I sat down, as well, laying out a $500 buy-in and telling Jon that “No, I don't gamble like I write”.
      As I predicted, the dealer hammered us. I ate through my buy-in, despite playing solid basic strategy, and put another $500 on the table. From there, things were up and down a bit. Jon managed to get $100 clear and left for the roulette wheel. Daf had purchased a basic strategy card, but turned it over to Liam, who seemed to need it more. He soon joined Jon, with $50 in his pocket. Liam was a different story. Despite having the card on the table in front of him, he made a number of plays that contradicted basic strategy, which jarred my nerves. He blew through his ante, and I was left alone at the table for a while.
      Being so far down, I was in for a long, difficult climb back to even, but I didn't have the time, because we only had about 45 minutes before we had to meet to drive Rena to the airport. So I played it out as long as I could, and left the table still $265 in the hole. Technically, that's not bad, given that I was down about $700 at one point, but it's not what I could have done, given more time and a better table.
      So we gathered up in the parking lot, meeting up with our other group, who had gone bowling in the meantime. We drove through the Strip on the way to the airport, then came right back to the casino, where after some deliberation we backed our way into the inevitable Vegas buffet. It was about what you'd expect -- average food at average prices -- but it was okay to have a normal meal for a change, and the all-you-can-eat soft-serve was okay, too.
      From there, I made my way back to the blackjack table, experiencing yet another distinctly odd experience. I found a happy table and bought in for another $500, and settled in for a good long run. But within half an hour, the guys came by and told me they were done, and Daf was probably going to drive them home at some point. Okay, I said, and continued playing. I'd found a good table and was making hay.
      About 20 minutes later, they called from the house. They had immediately left, and had called to let me know that I should call them whenever I wanted a ride home.
      Well, as it was, I was pretty close to finishing, or at least taking a break. I was about $450 to the good, and I automatically step away from the table when I'm up $500. But I wasn't quite there yet, and it would have pissed Daf off to have to turn around and pick me up after just bringing the others home. So I told them I'd continue playing for a while and call when I was done. The night was still young; it wasn't even 9pm yet!
      So I continued playing, and you can imagine how things went from there: it was a mixed bag, but mostly downward. They called me again around 10pm, checking in just before they started a game of Carcassonne, but I decided to bail. I'd been struggling to keep ahead of the game, and the longer you play, the lower your chance is of winning. So I stood up, leaving the table with $100 more than I arrived with, for a net loss of $165. That's not too bad, considering how the evening started, but it’s also not the $250 gain that was near my maximum gain, either.
      Daf graciously picked me up, and when we got back to the house I started sorting and entering my 300 bills into Where's George, much to the amusement of my companions. At the cage, I'd picked up two straps of ones and $400 in fives, in addition to a fistful of Bens and some spare bills, and managed to give the casino about a dozen marked Grants and about the same number of Bens. Hopefully those'll go interesting places and garner interesting hits, since I've never had a hit on a bill larger than a $20. And now I've got about two months' worth of cash to distribute that was all entered in Las Vegas!
      After I finished all that, we played a couple games of Carcassonne while the others gradually nodded off. Jon and I decided we were going to stay up all night, since we had to leave the house at 5am to catch Jon’s 7am flight. Ugh. Ironically, my last all-nighter was a couple years ago, driving down to Philly and back for Jon's wedding.
      But 5am finally came, and we woke Liam up to drive us over to the airport. We got through ticketing, but security... Well, let's say that the line to go through security was five people wide and about 500 feet long. It was obscene. Fortunately, they were moving people through pretty well, and my flight wasn't until 8:30am. After eventually getting through security, I went to Jon's gate and saw him off, then hung out at my gate until we boarded. Thank you Las Vegas for being the only airport I've been to that had free wireless Internet!

      And that was it for my first trip ever to Las Vegas. The Strip really didn't seem like my cup of tea, and the rest of the town was basically just 1200 square miles of strip malls. And it definitely didn’t come close to living up to its “sin city” reputation at all.
      But the food was interesting, the accommodations were absolutely unmatched, and the landscape and outdoors activities were surprisingly breathtaking. Although I'd known Las Vegas was in the middle of a desert, I hadn't expected it to be surrounded by huge mountains, which were absolutely stunning.
      I'd expected it to be arid, but I was surprised by how that manifested itself. Specifically, my nose was constantly dried out and clogged, and the cuticles on my fingers painfully cracked and peeled. Not exactly the symptoms I'd expected!
      The bike ride was, of course, an absolute pleasure, and I'm very glad I took the time to enjoy that. I enjoyed the whole trip as a photographic opportunity, although I feel like I could have done better if I’d devoted more time and better composed my shots. And, of course, the gambling... Well, I'm pleased that we fit it in, even if I'm not entirely happy with the net result.
      The working sessions were reasonably productive, and the company was good, although I'm always disappointed when we have no new writers at the Summit. As for giving up control of DargonZine, every day convinces me more and more that I need to give up all responsibility and any sense of ownership I still have in it, because it will never be what I dreamed it would. But I still care about the people, and enjoy our annual get-togethers a great deal.
      And it hardly feels like a week has gone by. With the notable exception of our twelve days in Scotland, the Summit always feels too short, and I dread the beginning of the goodbyes and the unavoidable return to the working world. But the Summit itself... that was a wonderful experience, and I'm glad to have my fellow writers as friends to share these wonderful memories with.

The human organism has been designed with particularly good eyesight. We’re especially attuned to detect and focus on any movement in our field of vision, which was a significant evolutionary advantage for an opportunistic species that might equally find itself as predator or as prey. If something moves, we want to know about it, what it is, where it is, where it’s going, and whether it’s something to eat, run away from, or have sex with.

The counter side of that is that we’re exceptionally good at ignoring things that don’t move, because they don’t warrant our attention. In our daily lives, we don’t notice the sky, the grass, or rocks. They’re background, not foreground. It’s really hard to spend any time looking deeply at something that doesn’t move or change. Have you ever tried? We’ve even honored the phenomenon with a derogatory cliche: “about as exciting as watching paint dry”.

Media companies have known this for decades, as you can see from the ever-increasing pace of cuts and context switches. The sudden movements and changes of color capture your attention because we’re hardwired to give top priority to the most rapid movements we see. I’m sure everyone’s had the experience of eating at a restaurant or pub with someone who is constantly distracted by something on the television, even when they’re not interested in the content of the program. Or the experience of being that person!

The price of this evolutionary advantage is a very real kind of shallowness. No matter what we are doing, we are continually distracted by whatever’s moving around us. Our attention jumps from subject to subject with the rapidity of a hyperactive hummingbird.

I noticed this walking to work this morning. It was a wonderful day, and I began looking at the nature around me: granite boulders, gently swaying trees, green lawns, and a cloud-spotted blue sky. But I kept finding my eyes drawn away: to a splashing fountain in the middle of a pond; to the cars passing by; to the maintenance guy painting a fire hydrant; to the men playing golf at the course next door.

And, of course, I began to wonder.

As I looked at all those things, I was just letting my eyes dart around, never resting on any one thing for very long. I wasn’t deeply experiencing the cars or the golfers or the fountain; my eyes were just registering them and moving on. I may have seen a lot, but I didn’t see anything very deeply or with any sense of richness or connection.

So I decided to “see different”. I concentrated fully on looking at the things in my field of vision that didn’t move: the trees, those boulders, the grass, and the road beside me.

The first thing I noticed was that it was really difficult not to let my eyes dart away. We’re so used to the quick cut and context shift that our attention is always fragmented. People no longer have the ability to actually concentrate on one thing for more than a moment.

The second thing I noticed was that once I did look at the things that didn’t move, my experience of the world around me gained tremendous depth and richness. There’s more visual depth in a bare stone than there is in any fast-paced car chase scene. And a single tree has more elegance and a more complex story to tell than any feature film.

By looking at the things that don’t move, I literally began to see the world anew, with wonder and awe, and a very deep sense of being present in the moment I was living. There’s beauty all around us, even in the most decayed urban wasteland, if only we made better, conscious decisions about how to use the amazing gift of our vision.

So my challenge to you is to try it. Stop letting your eyes mindlessly jerk your attention around. Take the time to actually look at the things that aren’t moving, that have always been background but never received your full attention and appreciation.

Take a good, long look at the things that aren’t moving. See the world for what it is, not for what it is doing.

Among the books I got this Xmas were two with a common theme: bicycle racing. Having little else to do this week, I sat down and read them both on Saturday, and I found an interesting, if not totally unexpected, commonality.

First, I’d like to share a few citations with you. I’ve kept a larger part of the context, but I’ve bolded the particularly pertinent sections.

The first excerpt is from Tim Krabbé’s novel “The Rider”, his not-really-fictional telling of his participation in the 150k half-day Tour de Mont Aigoual race. It’s one of the few true classics of the genre:

In interviews with riders that I’ve read and in conversations I’ve had with them, the same thing always comes up: the best part was the suffering. […] How can that be: suffering is suffering, isn’t it? […] Because after the finish all the suffering turns to memories of pleasure, and the greater the suffering, the greater the pleasure. That is Nature’s payback to riders for the homage they pay her by suffering. Velvet pillows, safari parks, sunglasses: people have become woolly mice. They have bodies that can walk for five days and four nights through a desert of snow, without food, but they accept praise for having taken a one-hour bicycle ride. ‘Good for you.’ Instead of expressing their gratitude for the rain by getting wet, people walk around with umbrellas. Nature is an old lady with few suitors these days, and those who wish to make use of her charms she rewards passionately. That’s why there are riders. Suffering you need; literature is baloney.

The next two excepts are from Lance Armstrong’s new/second book, “Every Second Counts”:

I’d suffered more in winning the Tour a second time […] But in a way, suffering made it more gratifying. Suffering, I was beginning to think, was essential to a good life, and as inextricable from such a life as bliss. It’s a great enhancer. It might last a minute, or a month, but eventually it subsides, and when it does, something else takes its place, and maybe that thing is a greater space. For happiness. Each time I encountered suffering, I believed that I grew, and further defined my capacities—not just my physical ones, but my interior ones as well, for contentment, friendship, or any other human experience.

And he goes on to say:

The experience of suffering is like the experience of exploring, of finding something unexpected and revelatory. When you find the outermost thresholds of pain, or fear, or uncertainty, what you experience is an expansive feeling, a widening of your capabilities. Pain is good because it teaches your body and soul to improve.

Here’s one final example, from Paul Fournel’s Oulipo avant-garde classic “Need for the Bike”, wherein he talks about bonking, which he calls “blowing up”:

Why not give up the bike after a blowup? Because the blowup is a journey, and the cyclist is first and foremost a traveler. Then because, after a blowup, your organism is altered. There’s a kind of purification in falling flat, an impression of fasting. A threshold is crossed …

I find it interesting that suffering is such a universal thread in writing about cycling. The discussions go far beyond the more familiar “no pain, no gain” mantra and describe suffering as necessary, integral to happiness, and even transformational. The texts, especially Krabbé and Fournel, wax poetic when talking about the suffering of cyclists, reading more like Zen Buddhism or Existential philosophy than a description of riding a bike. Here’s more of Fournel’s treatise on bonking. Note the eloquence and panache that he uses to describe this most humbling of experiences.

There are warning signs of a blowup, but they aren’t appreciably different from from the signs of normal tiredness. Now that I think about it, metaphysical anxiety might be one hint. Riding is absurd—climbing to descend, going in circles, behind this mountain there’s another, why hurry? … Riding is absurd like peeling vegetables, skiing, thinking deeply, or living. The moment these questions come up, while you’re riding, you should take note. That’s when your quads are demanding more oxygen from your heart than your lungs can provide. That’s when it gets foggy. If you’re on a friend’s wheel, he’ll pull away by two bike-lengths without accelerating. You come back, dancing on your pedals, but then you lose the two lengths again. You do this rubber-band trick ten or so times, and then you let him go, telling yourself you’ll catch up soon. In fact, the next time you see him is when he turns around and comes back, worried, to find out what happened. At that point you won’t recognize him, or, better yet, you’ll recognize him, but only as someone who might buy your disgusting bike.

Well, if drugs make for more interesting novelists, and tortured lives make for better painters and composers, why shouldn’t the kind of cycling-induced mental impairment I talk about in this previous post (Defining the Natural High, 6/11/03) produce better philosophers? It does, however, make me wonder about my recent enquiries into Existentialism and Buddhism, though!

Although sometimes I post about cycling in general, I rarely talk about my own particular cycling experiences. When I have something interesting to report, it’ll usually find its way onto my Cycling Training Diary, but not here. This time, however, I’d like to share the details of a recent ride with you, because I have more to say about it than is appropriate for my Training Diary.

But first, of course, I have to tell you about my philosophy, the role cycling has in my life, my motivators, and so forth. How could it be any other way?

One of my primary philosophies of life is that an “adventure” is just doing something you’ve never done before. It can be as simple as going to a different grocery store; the key is that you’re taking risks, learning, and growing, and taking risks, in whatever increment. As an aside, I wrote a great deal about this personal belief as the primary theme in a two-part story I wrote for DargonZine back in 1994 called “Love an Adventure”.

One of the things I value most about cycling is that it fulfils this sense of adventure for me. One of my favorite ways to start a ride is to pick an place I’ve never been to that I’ve heard about or that looks interesting on the map, and just ride there. Cycling enables me to discover all kinds of fabulous new spots that I wouldn’t normally find or be motivated to drive to. I’ve found many such magical places in and around Boston, and finding them and visiting them are sure ways to improve my mood and help me re-center myself. Of course, it goes without saying that cycling also gives me a much better understanding of the region where I live.

With all that said, I want to tell you about the ride I took this past Tuesday. On one hand, it was really nothing special: just another weekday ride around the area. Yet at the same time, it had a very dramatic effect on my mood. I got explore several new spots, push my physical limits, get in touch with nature, enjoy a warm spring day, and most importantly have an adventure.

The weather report said that we were going to reach the high 60s, perhaps even 70, for the first time all year. After a brutal winter that saw two record-shattering snowfalls in February and snowfall on six of the first nine days of April, it was definitely a day to be out on the bike. It also was very windy, which makes cycling difficult, but is an element of nature that I have always enjoyed.

My cycling goal for the day was modest in terms of mileage: about 24 miles. However, it wasn’t all about miles; my goal was to climb 635-foot Great Blue Hill, the biggest hill in Massachusetts east of Mount Wachusett. Hills are more important than miles in a cyclist’s training regimen, and I’d already practiced many times on Arlington’s 350-foot Park Avenue hill and Brookline’s lower but steeper Summit Avenue. Having handled those, I posted to the MassBike list inquiring about other, more challenging hills, and Great Blue Hill was one those mentioned. So today was the day to scout it out, and I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect.

I left home a little after 9am, carving my way through Boston’s trendy Back Bay. Along the way, I passed the newly-opened Lindt chocolate store (where I’ve already dropped more than $40, not including about $15 worth of freebies) and the soon to open mega Shaws supermarket that will replace my crowded little Star Market underneath the Prudential Center. I also crossed over the last half-block of the route this week’s Boston Marathon will take. Every year the street is re-paved and the finish line re-painted for the marathon. Interesting developments all over the neighborhood!

At Mass Ave, I hopped the Pierre Lallemant path that goes down the Southwest Corridor parallel to the MBTA’s Orange Line and out of the city. For me, that path is like the gateway from the urban cluster of Back Bay to the parks and suburbs south and west of town. It’s an interesting mix of urban and rural. In most places it’s tree-lined and pleasant, running through broad grassy areas, but there are many cross-streets, and it also takes you through urban playgrounds, behind the police headquarters, through some projects, and along seven subway stops. But from my vantage point, it’s the segue from the city to the parks south of Boston.

The Lallemant path dumps you off right near the entrance to the Arnold Arboretum, which was my first stop. I have a particular white pine tree that I always sit by. It’s located just off the Conifer Path, and has a wonderful view, looking across a valley to Hemlock Hill. In the midst of the valley is a sparkling stream that is spanned by a couple gracefully-curved footbridges. On this particular morning, the scene was idyllic. The morning sun was starting to warm the air, giving bit of magic to everything around. Even the swampy poor-drainage area looked lush and alive; one of the copper tags that identified a distant tree’s species glinted in the sunshine. I sat there taking in the view and meditating for quite some time, appreciating the beauty of nature and letting my other worries fade into the background. The Arboretum is a wonderful place to ride, as well as rest. There are two respectable hills, both of which offer views of the now-distant Boston skyline.

Those were the more familiar, if not routine, parts of my ride. From there, I took off down the Claire Saltonstall Bikeway, which runs all the way from Boston to Provincetown, on the tip of Cape Cod. As I rode down the mostly-wooded Enneking Porkway through the Stony Brook Reservation, I noticed a dock jutting out into what I discovered to be Turtle Pond, my first interesting new place of the day. In no hurry, I swung about and rode out onto the dock, evicting three ducks and a goose from that sunny spot on the water. By now, the sun was really coming into its strength, and I could easily have hung out on the pond for an hour or two, enjoying it. It was great to find such a quiet little oasis in a place where most people would drive by and never stop. There are other routes through the Stony Brook Reservation, as well, and I will have to check those out on a future ride.

After a short stop, I continued on toward the Blue Hills. Along the way, I passed the entrance to the old Burma Road, which local cycling advocate Doug Mink had pointed out to us on his East Cost Greenway ride during last year’s Bike Week. I decided that if I had time on the way back, I’d explore it and see where it led.

Not far beyond that, I reached Route 138, which was where the access road up Great Blue Hill was located. I took a quick breather, jumped down to my lowest gear, and started up the narrow but well-paved mile-long road. It was a good, steep challenge, but well within my capabilities, and I accomplished my goal of riding it without stopping or turning away. However, it did force me to get out of the saddle and stand a few times, which is something I’m trying to do more of anyways, because it’s not something I’m very comfortable doing. There is a ski slope on the west side, and it was a little strange to look down on the upper end of the ski lift as I rode up the ascent. There was still quite a bit of snow lingering on the western slope, too, but overall the road was heavily wooded and very picturesque.

Great Blue Hill is not only the tallest peak in the Blue Hills, but it is also the highest point on the United States’ eastern coast south of Maine. At the summit, there are two facilities. There’s a weather station, which was closed when I got there, but I puttered around that for a bit, exploring. Down a side path is the more interesting observatory. It’s an odd little building made of mortared fieldstone, with a viewing tower that puts you (mostly) above the tree line. From there you can see the distant Boston skyline, the Harbor Islands, Houghtons and Ponkapaug ponds, and on a good day you can see Mount Wachusett. That was my second interesting discovery of the day, and both for the scenery as well as the challenging climb, I definitely plan to be back!

The descent was actually a little tricker than coming up, because the road was still covered with some of the gravel that had been put down to give park rangers’ trucks traction to get up to the weather station throughout the winter. That made it a little sketchy for me, but it was still fun to let the bike go as much as I dared. It definitely calls for good brakes and strong nerves, though!

Heading back home, I decided that I would indeed stop and check out the old Burma Road for the first time, my third adventure of the day. It is an unpaved but easily rideable path, and it soon became evident that it goes right through the center of a pretty extensive swamp. Still, the path was dry and it was too early in the season for the bugs to be out. There was, however, one place where a stream drained across the path. The only way across was a bridge made out of two two-by-six inch planks. I tiptoed my bike across, pretending that it was cyclocross portaging practice. I was enjoying the sun and had plenty of time, so I kept on going, stopping every few dozen yards to take a picture, because the swamp was actually quite visually interesting. It was also pretty well stocked with noisy frogs, and every so often I came across horseshoe prints in the path. But I only saw one human—a jogger—while I was there.

The path runs almost perfectly straight south for two miles, where it ends right on the margin of Route 128, the eight-lane superhighway that encircles Boston. Interestingly, it actually dumps you onto the approach ramp of an abandoned former highway interchange, complete with the proverbial “Bridge to Nowhere”, a fully-functional two-lane bridge over the highway. I rode across, but both side of the road just dead-end, so back I turned.

On the return trip, I stopped again at the Arboretum to enjoy the afternoon sun, and was joined by a hovering raptor.

All told, I really enjoyed Tuesday’s sunny ride. It was magical spending so much time in natural areas, and I particularly savored finding and exploring a handful of new, interesting parts of Eastern Mass. Yes, it was an adventure, by my criteria, and well worth the effort. At the same time, even though this ride was so wonderful, it really is a pretty typical ride. My rides frequently are just this special, and I’ve literally found dozens of such places.

The point of posting about it? Just to share that enjoyment with you; I hope you can empathize. My car-bound friends find it hard to relate to my enthusiasm when I describe some of the really great places and scenery that are found in the blank spaces between the roads on their maps. And I really feel sad for them, because they never find the many natural wonders that are so close to them, but which they can’t see because they’re limited to where the highways can take them.

Cycling is my way to find adventure and enjoy all those hidden places, and it gives so much for so little and such pleasant effort. And there’s always more places to explore, and you’d be surprised just how many amazing sights there are within an easy day ride. Next time out maybe I’ll spend more time checking out the Stony Brook Reservation itself, and go a little further down the Saltonstall route to visit Ponkapaug Pond, and then see what’s beyond the next hill, and maybe the one after that…

Were you raised in a particular religious faith?: No.
Do you still practice that faith? Why or why not?: No.
What do you think happens after death?: From my February 24th LJ entry "Philosophy for Dummies":
When we die, like any animal, we die. There is no essense or spirit which survives when our brain activity ceases. Because death is an inevitable end of our being, and because we never live to experience it, it is illogical to fear death. On the other hand, it certainly is logical to fear suffering and pain, if those are part of your road to death. But death itself should be accepted as the ultimate, immutable fact of life. Accept it and move on and enjoy your life, motivated further by the knowledge that your portion of life is finite.
I firmly agree with the Existential creed that there is no meaning to life other than to experience it, and believe that is an incredibly empowering, liberating, and optimistic realization.
What is your favorite religious ritual (participating in or just observing)?: Although I do not believe in religion as such, I feel that it is eminently logical to observe the solstices, equinoxes, and cross-quarter days, although not in any self-impressed wiccan sense. On those days I try to reconnect with nature and quietly celebrate the beauty and wonder of nature and life.

One tidbit: did you know that the change of seasons actually used to be observed on the cross-quarter days, rather than the solstices and equinoxes (they were thought of as the midpoints of seasons)? I find that a much more logical arrangement.

And happy Samhain everyone (even if few people realize that the cross-quarter day actually falls on November 7th).
Do you believe people are basically good?: I believe people have a strong trend toward laziness, ignorance, selfishness, and fear . As a moral relativist and secular humanist, I do not believe in the ideas of objective "good" and "evil" as such. The only "good" is acting in conformance with your own unique set of morals and values.

Well, it's been a few days, so I suppose it's high time to file my report on the Scotland trip.

As a reminder, I am the founder and editor of DargonZine, a magazine which prints the output from a collaborative writing project that is dedicated to creating a writers' community and inspiring and growing aspiring amateur writers. Founded in 1984, it is the longest-running electronic magazine on the Internet.

Each year, one of our writers hosts our annual Dargon Writers' Summit, a weekend of writing and socializing in the host's home town. Our previous Summits have all been in the US: Boston, Denver, Washington D.C., Chicago, New York, Pittsburgh, and San Jose. But this year we extended the Summit to a full nine days in order for Stuart Whitby to show eight of us around his entire nation: Scotland!

I'm not going to go into painstaking detail about the trip, but I did want to summarize it and make a few observances here.

But before I get into that, some other pointers. First, my personal site, OrnothLand, already has brief descriptions of what we did each day, with a handful of photos. Second, I'll be writing an exhaustive travelogue, which will be available in the near future. If you're interested in that, drop me a line at ornoth@rcn.com. But be warned: my weekend travelogues are usually about 30 pages, so this one might well wind up being as large as 90 pages of text! Finally, as soon as I can get the photos approved by the writers, a new 2002 Dargon Summit page will be available on the DargonZine Web site. Each of these will have a slightly different take on the trip.

For now, I'll just summarize. Six castles. Two cairns. Two ruined cathedrals. Watching our host jump off a cliff into a narrow, raging, freezing mountain cataract. Reading ghost stories beneath an alien orange full moon in a ruined castle on a cliff above the sea, the castle Bram Stoker's inspiration for writing "Dracula". Flying eagles, owls, falcons, and hawks at a falconry center. Wading alone into mist-shrouded Loch Ness. Drinking forbidden absynthe, the wormwood liqueur favored by 19th century writers. Scrambling to keep a grip on the edge of the world, a sheer 864-foot drop beneath me, as I climbed the face of Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh. Taking a distillery tour and drinking more beer and scotch whisky than wisdom would indicate. Seeing my own face staring back at me from a Pepsi can. Haggis; neeps and tatties; bangers and mash; Irn-Bru; and the omnipresent 80 shilling. Weather that alternated between sun and rain every 20 minutes, every day, without fail. A distillery pictured on the Scottish 10 pound note. BEUM! Deep Sea World, the Fisheries Museum, scenic Crail Harbour, and some fantastic go-karting (bruised myself heavily by driving so aggressively). Rhonda setting off the hotel fire alarm. Late night talks about relationships, family, and sex. Asking a young waitress to bring me "Vanilla ice cream, nude". The religious experience of the mountains. Rainbows everywhere, especailly Glencoe. Closing the 1000-mile circumnavigation of the country in Glasgow, with lots of sidewalk leering. Cutting 3 CD-ROMs with 2400 photos and video clips for everyone.

But what really mattered in all that? What really impacted me?

Let's start with the countryside: it was incredible. Mountains that leap up above you in piles of scree that defy the angle of repose, topped with unbelievable cliffs, punctuated with frequent streams of snow runoff that cascade down the face of the mountain in waterfalls, spilling into the inevitable valley river or loch in a speeding torrent. The endless, sumptuous green carpet of woods and farmland, punctuated by the unique bright yellows of alfalfa in the fields, gorse and forsythia on the slopes. The constant parade of picturesque and ancient bulidings: proud cathedrals, self-consciously conspicuous castles, long-abandoned farmhouses. But oh! the castles. The cold, passive strength of a granite wall. The understated grace of the entry arch and towers of a curtain wall. The sense of walking in the footsteps of Mary Queen of Scots, Edward I, Robert the Bruce, and Rob Roy MacGregor... Standing on an outer wall, hundreds of feet above the plain, sharing the feeling of power that the residents of those castles atop the crags must have felt. It was like wallowing in that sense of wonder that only a good fantasy story can evoke, and being for once truly a participant in those wonderful tales. The only words I can come up with to describe the land are 'wonder' and 'majesty'.

Ever since I was a child growing up in Maine, I've had a very close, spiritual affinity for the silent woods and the rocky crags. I wish that I'd been able to spend less time on this trip as the leader of a noisy group of tourists, so that I could spend a little more time to appreciate, to experience a spiritual connection with the amazing places that we visited. The closest I came was in our death-defying climb of Arthur's Seat. Despite being implausibly steep and a wonderful challenge to climb, it was a mere hillock in comparison to most of the amazing landscape we traversed, including the breathtaking Ben Nevis, more than five times the height of Arthur's Seat.

The other items of note all relate to my relationship with my companions: my writers. One of the surprises was that I received almost universal expressions of support for taking a more authoritarian role as editor. This has always been anathema to me, because I view consensus as the only way to instill a sense of ownership for the project in my writers, and as a requirement for delegating work to others. However, nearly everyone I spoke to balked, and suggested that I both rely less on others for useful work, as well as take more of the decisionmaking upon myself. I'm slowly allowing myself to be convinced, but it really is a major philosophical shift for me. I do think that this would integrate well with the board of directors structure that we are establishing, in that writers who feel a strong degree of ownership and want to have input can participate on the board, while other writers, who don't have the desire or time to do anything but write, can do that. The next step here will be figuring out how to present all that to the group so that it goes over, without sounding like me trodding on toes.

But more importantly than the feedback I got about the structure of the writing group were the relationships that we built. Over the course of ten days together, we formed an intense, very personal bond. We talked about our family histories and our childhoods; we talked about our growth as sexual beings and our relationships. For my part, I was comfortable enough to at least reveal to people my own two biggest insecurities, and was rewarded with several very touching and surprising responses. We offered one another compassion and understanding and a closeness that I'd never felt before. At times it approached a sort of sexual tension, but it wasn't dirty; it was more like an intimate closeness that was far more meaningful than anything physical.

In the end, I was truly amazed by the wonderful friendships that have about amongst this group. I'm really awestruck that almost two decades after I founded it, the community of writers that I created solely for my own benefit has produced such a strong, genuinely caring, close-knit group of people. They really are my family, and I'm honored that DargonZine, which I've always stated was my life's work, has brought these individuals together and not just helped them as writers, but also provided a cohesive, loving, supportive community for them.

The awesome landscape and impressive castles made Scotland a wonderful vacation and great research for a fantasy writer; but it was the people and the relationships we built that made it something magical. It's awesome to see that this trip worked so well on all those levels, and it still amazes me that I had some role in bringing it about.

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2007 DargonZine Summit: Las Vegas

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Scots Wha Hae

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