Can one still be an aspirant in old age? That unknown fourteenth-century author of “The Cloud of Unknowing” wrote his text for a 24-year-old aspirant. There’s a moment in the book in which the author writes about how we cannot think our way to God, since God can only be loved. So we have to dwell in unknowing, so that the essence of a moment is less thinking and more in our love and in our will—a kind of naked reaching out to God and allowing God to reach back to us.
A fugitive chapter from a memoir in progress, The Man Who Wore A Tea Cup On His Head
So, then, and with common sense in mind, Ellen Frances dropped me off again, this time a bit south of Erwin at about noon on a sunny but cool Tuesday in November. We were at Indian Grave Gap, Becky the dog and me, and the start of another meander, five days, ending on a Saturday when she would collect me at Elk Park in North Carolina. The leg would add about fifty-five more miles to my meandering “legs” of the AT.
This would be different what with shorter days and longer nights in the tent and with the season being November but not in my soul. A few books along.
Which meant I had a bit more to pack this time including a camera and a small hand-cranked Swiss Army radio, a small cell phone, colder weather clothing gear, a light quilted survivors blanket and more food: about twenty-five pounds in the pack. The radio would help with weather reports if I needed to get off the AT and with the phone I could summon Ellen Frances to collect me at any one of four “bail out” places I had marked.
It’s good to plan. As for food, about 3000 calories per day, including a good breakfast, snacks, and then a good dinner when finished for the day. Freeze dried stuff.
I’ve learned, you see.
And off we went, swinging along, heading to a place called Beauty Spot, a wide open place called a “bald” with soft grasses and a clear view of the night sky.
It’s a lovely place to camp, wide open and in the spring myriads of wild flowers. But I was there in November with bright blue skies and then at night no moon but frothy myriads of stars and the occasional shooting meteor or a satellite
zipping across the sky which brought back memories of sitting outside in
Minnesota waiting for that Sputnik thing to appear, if it ever did appear. Some say it was all a ruse.
The sky was “powdered” which is how John Milton once described it, and he was right.
Pitch the tent then and enjoy the sunset and the panoramic view of the night sky coming cup and rotating, Orion especially, the night sky Novemberish. And it’s fun to come up and out of the woods and walk the path in the grass marked by posts with white blazes searching for just the right flat spot rot spend the late afternoon and night in solitude and silence for which I believe I have an almost primal need and without which no “wonder.” Both are rich and luxurious. And for me, bot are un-borable. I should be quick to note that in some newer Bible translations, especially the Book of Kings, that God is in the silence and that the silence is brittle. You know the story when petulant, defeated Elijah meets God at Horeb at dawn?
Which is a good time to do so and with more time in the tent at night when Becky the dog decides to roll around a bit, well, prayer in the dark with a sublime intensity. Something I’ve learned again, searching and find a deep quiet spot.
But not streams of fire or the heavens one mass of flame. Rather silence, the reflection of God’s truest Self? That small voice almost begging us to listen.
And then leaving the next morning, the rising sun on my back. Becky the dog ranging ahead, saddled with her own back pack, leading the way up and into the Unaka Mountain Wilderness. It’s dense red spruce forest and a place where the hike softens a bit, dapper looking trees along way, an old Prussian word, “pruce.”
And for the most part an easy meander up to about 5516 feet.
The trail then spills down the other side and even though one might think that downhill is easier than uphill, well, maybe not. Do watch where you place one foot and then another, careful about slippery wet leaves, hidden stones and tree roots and drop offs and Becky back on her leash. Less than a trail in fact and more of a pencil thin path. As I’ve said before, at age 75 life becomes a bit more brittle and once can sense it becoming more so at age 76.
Take care old man!
It was a close place as Huckleberry Finn might say; going down and rounding a corner came another man, slender, a bit shorter than me, and we came abreast of one another to stop for what Melville’s sea-farers might have called a “gam.” The word’s origin uncertain but in the dictionaries these days, a familiar social exchange of news and such. A good coinage that.
He said he was a minister, Episcopalian, and a recovering alcoholic. I said I was a recovering college professor from a conservative college and had decided to retire when someone in the administration referred to me as a “valuable human resource.” I didn’t mind the valuable so much but as notion of a human resource, well, I never much thought of myself as a commodity
And so began the “gam” on this very narrow Appalachian Trail path, the hike’s second day, November. I had Becky tightly leashed and I was standing with my back to a ledge just to my right. To the left was a droop off, not straight down but very steep, one which would have been hard to climb back up if one slipped and skidded down. I was making room for the minister but there was something about him that deserved study. There was the “gam” and there was the “kinship.”
He asked a kind of confirmation question: “What does the Bible say about the value of solitude?”
Easy answer and of course one of the traditional disciplines. What better way to acknowledge the interior of one’s own heart and come to know what God has laid upon us, a soft of one-on-one with the Divinity, a kind of singular catechism class, non-denominational.
I said something about how shepherds are usually alone and that perhaps solitude is soul-shepherding and that to know God is to learn to be still. Being alone and being lonely are no the same thing.
I mentioned that some people I know ask me about my time on the AT at my age. “What are you running away from?” And my answer is that I’m not running away; I’m running toward.” “But isn’t it selfish?” I would sometimes hear. And I would say it wasn’t but it was necessary.
He was smiling and then said something quietly about having to “come away.” To pursue intimacy; to draw near. And then he said he was just also trying to get over the mountain.
A metaphor, I noted, and said something about the way of life having more than one mountain in one’s path. One can’t go around them and one can’t dig tunnels through them. Can’t get heavy equipment down inside that back pack. Things are what they are and we have to do the best we can with the broken tools we have. Metaphor again. . . .
Ot, well, an allegory: Pilgrim’s Progress redux ….
I said that a student once posted a note on my office door: Please go away; he’s introverting. I kept it there and never took it down until the day I walked the sidewalks to my last class and saved it.
“Good to meet you,” he said and I said likewise and held out my hand. We shook. His was a good hand and his eyes direct with a good gaze. He walked on and so did I. Just before a curve in the trail he turned and waved as did I. And off he went climbing up and over the mountain. And off I went slowly picking my way down he mountain to a place called ”Low Gap” which put me about a mille-and-a-half to “Cherry Gap” and stocking up on water before my next camping spot, “Clyde Smith Shelter.”
And a good night in the tent thinking about that man, that Episcopalian, if that was what he was and if he was a man.
Could he have been a very human religious figure at work in our world, one of the Saviors of God about which Kazantzakis writes in his own version of spiritual exercises? Perhaps the story of what has come and what is to come and how does one write the pages of one’s future?
I know that those who are thru-hikers, starting in Georgia and then trudging north mile-by-mile, pacing themselves, little-by-little, often with hours going by before another persons comes along. The whole hike taken by itself can be one long contemplative prayer, the soul in solitude, but ever so difficult to articulate. Why, one wonders do so many have a tearful break-down when reaching the endpoint, Mountain Katahdin in Maine?
Thoreau tried to make the climb but failed.
I’ve yet to do that but can imagine crossing a tree barren area, up onto the Tableland, wind, rocks, and then a simple wooden sign. There must be, though, an enormity to the task, the last couple of miles, alone or with just a few others not known by their real names but their trail names. But, whatever, it’s like a beautiful surrendering which sounds like silly sentimentality—but it’s not
A trail name which is just a word but yet not a word and to be spoken only on the trail, and quietly, serenely . . . . Just don’t call be “Ishmael” at least not before I’ve said that word.
And that miracle having made it up and over the mountain. Thank you, God, for letting me be human! Are you calling me to spend some time in what’s to come on some desert?
The winds came up that night and then rain and some odd night noises, creatures of some kind. We had made it to Clyde Smith Shelter which is a few miles from Greasy Gap. Becky was shivering a bit so I unzipped the sleeping bag and she snuggled right in and began to snore. And so sleepless I was but happy and content. I have this flashlight assembly I can slip over my head. I turned it one and pulled out Kazantzakis and thought to read and reflect especially on that Episcopalian reverend until sleep found me. Where was he at that time?
Morning, then, and Thursday, and two plus days to go. But today a tougher hike from an elevation of about a bit less than 4000 feet to about 6300 feet, eight miles to the top, and then another five or so to Stan Murray Shelter. I thought first to call Ellen Frances and then decided to wait a few hours.
My plan was to make it to the top of the Roan Mountain area and traverse the “balds” to Hump Mountain with an elevation of about 5500. From Hump Mountain, then, I could easily finish the hike to Elk River by Friday, once the toughest part was over.
And so off we went with clouds gathered above but walking carefully because the night’s rain had made matters muddy and slippery, and so good caution.
It became a bit strange, however, the trail climbing bit-by-bit but what one might call the “ceiling” came down ever closer. I recall at one moment how I could look down at my feet and the trail where the air was still clear but more and more around my head the air was becoming more and more foggy, and more dense. “The Cloud of Unknowing,” I remember thinking and another book of contemplation, or is it “forgetting?”
Bur drawing upon what?
The fog became more and more dense which made the trail more and more difficult. You know what I mean. We drive along a highway and we know where we are because we can discern signs, those highway treatises that explain where the nearest gas stations happen to be or food or motels or rest areas. But on that climb into the Roan Mountain Highlands nothing of that sort existed. There are, rather, white rectangular blazes on trees and spaced a good distance apart, all easily spotted in good weather.
The trail was as vague as a mystical path and in truth some fear began to set in, the thick fog becoming more and more a fog of forgetting. It was hard to fix my mind or subdue distractions and to focus on what was right in front of me, a thin sort of path worn by others who had walked this way but perceptible only a few feet in front of me which I knew was eight miles to the top which was likely more “socked in.”
Such thoughts might be discouraging; that extraordinary sense of becoming lost was perilous since one could quickly get on what appears to be a track but isn’t and thus wrong.
I could only pray with the same kind of intention as that recovering alcoholic minister; but never before in the whole of my life and not to the work of my mind, my knowledge, but to acquire unknowing which is where language ceases to suffice because there are secrets, far more than I can possibly find words for but I can this and this is the truth.
I looked up and in that dense fog was a kind of vertical shaft, less gray and more white. It wasn’t piercing like a flame but narrow and curving and inviting. Becky the dog and I walked toward it, entered into it, bathed in it, while experiencing what I came to think of later as affection.
As we walked along, looking down of course to where I placed my feet, but then up and being sure that what was less gray and more white was in front of me, whatever it was between me and that shelter, time and the miles and the obstacles but less obstacles and the more I thought they were mere things not too be meddled with but this thought was also not usual thought but something sweetly awakened in what had to be my spirit which also cautioned me not to hurry less what I was feeling come spoiled.
It was not something I was actively doing but something that was being done to me.
As I write this, thinking back, I note how I’ve lost my sense of ordinary structure which almost seems to thwart an enthusiasm aroused in recalling this very deep experience.
Can one still be an aspirant at age 76? That unknown fourteenth-century author of The Cloud of Unknowing wrote his text for a 24-year-old aspirant. There are images in that book for the cloud itself, but by analogy the cloud also refers to God, which paradoxically suggests that the unknowing is a kind of unknowing by not knowing—an ambiguity or paradox. There’s a moment in the book in which the author writes, but which I can only awkwardly paraphrase from memory, about how we cannot think our way to God since God can only be loved, but not thought. So we have to dwell in unknowing, so that the essence of a moment is less thinking and more in our love and in our will—a kind of naked reaching out to God and allowing God to reach back to us. I wish as I write these words that I had that book along on that hike, but even so had I stopped at that moment to pull it from my backpack, I doubt the book would have given me at that moment the soft compress of the fog and clouds.
Never before in my life have I felt so comfortable and in good health as I crossed a gravel road and then back along that trail, refreshed, hearing the silence, seeing the smell, tasting the touch, naked before the grace that seemed to be part of the narrowish, whitish light portion of that cloud, consolation without any kind cause and more patience than I’ve ever felt before in my life even with miles and time to go before I could “shelter,” one step at a time.
It’s been months now since that time in November and now when I am writing this I wonder if I have become a contemplative or have been one the whole of my life. I suspect, or hope, but do know that I am up early every morning and with coffee make my way to our screened in porch when all is dark and quiet outside.
Why, though, I continue to wonder, do I have this almost complete desire to be anonymous?
The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.
The featured image is courtesy of Pixabay.