Day 28, final hike

November 7. Day 28.

The New moon is tomorrow. The project is over. On my descent tonight, I thanked the missing moon for it’s guidance. Our cycles were matched for at least this one month of my life. I may never feel this connected to that cycle again, and certainly never have before. In this sense, even if in no other way, the project is successful. I am convinced that whether any visible product is made of this experience, formally beautiful or conceptually profound, I have made art with Mount Sanity.

Day 27

November 6. Day 27.

Tomorrow is the last day of this walking piece. I still have not encountered my electrical friend again. I would like to one more time. Just to get his picture. I forgot to take his picture! Meanwhile, the thrill of walking one more time is unbelievable.  When someone asks about this project, I try not to talk about it very long, I feel it takes energy away from the walking. My breathing is so loud in my ears (or is it my mind) all day long now, even off the trail. I’m worried it is distracting to others it seems so loud.

Day 26

November 5. Day 26.

It is helping. Breathing, thinking less. Breathing, thinking less. Climbing on the rocks up and stepping down. Not speeding up past the point of my endurance, not slowing down to the point of heaviness. A difficult balance. Carlos Castaneda’s teacher (invented or real), Don Juan spoke of “stopping the world.” I am hoping to see what he means.

Day 24 & 25

November 3 and 4, Day 24 and 25.

Rest. Rest. Rest.

Day 23

November 2, 2007. Day 23.

It’s true, what seems to be left is walking and breathing. The writing, reflecting or any other creation that encourages philosophical insight feels like a lie. I’m still exhausted and I think I’ll have to take the weekend off again, but Day 28 is not too far away now. I wish I could walk through the weekend and keep the project symmetrical. Instead, I have to accept my limitations and rest.

Day 22

November 1, 2007. Day 22.

The trail is becoming friendlier. I know it’s a struggle I can handle in some way now. I can’t explain what changed. It might be different again tomorrow, but something feels lasting about my attitude today. Writing here seems distracting from the effort of the project. I’m directing too much of my attention away from the walking toward the writing. I’ve stopped taking pictures to keep my concentration on the trail.

Day 21

October 31, 2007 Halloween! Day 21.

I unfortunately didn’t see my electrical friend today, but in the spirit of Halloween, on the way down during my evening walk, I detected the slightest bit of haunting. I intentionally left on the climb a little late, so that I would descend in deep dusk and maybe be included in a conversation among the spirits. Right around the old quarry by the flagstone armchair I heard the token stick crack of a stranger’s footstep. I approached the chair. The stars fought through the final blue haze along with the quarter moon so my own shadow began to flicker across the remnants of the mine trail. Spooky. The sound came from the overlook, so I headed into the final crevice before the vista. Right as I reached the estimated spot, the darkest part of the narrowing, I paused. Every hair on my skin listened for another footstep. No footstep, but a small breathing sound. I flicked on my little LED flashlight, but I could only see grass and stone. The breathing continued, but I could not locate it. I stepped out of the narrow spot into more moonlight. My flashlight proved useless here. I said, “hello!” and my own voice suddenly scared me to death and I bolted back down the trail to the bottom laughing at myself.

Day 20

October 30, 2007. Day 20.

The midterm is over. Finally. I managed to walk this morning and this evening without too much stress. I haven’t studied for a test in so long I wasn’t sure I would be able to retain information anymore, but I was surprised after a few days of reading and discussing the ideas with others in the class how easily things were popping into my head as I wrote eight pages of essay questions. Blech. I know my memory works fast, but it doesn’t retain well unless I keep refreshing. I would love to be able to access this information throughout my life, but I can only imagine how often I’ll be scrambling to remember someone’s name during a heated conversation over binary linguistic theory and how the theories of Derrida and Barthe help define post-modernism. (yeah, right… but I’ve heard it happen!).

I also ran into my flash flood friend again this morning and this time he asked me what I’m always taking pictures of. “Mostly dogs” I said, “and the shapes of rocks when the sunrise hits them.” I was trying to sound artsy without sounding pretentious (it never works). He seemed curious actually and suggested I take some pictures of this tree root exposed from the tree having fallen down. We were standing right in front of it. It’s the one that looks like an anteater that I always pat on the head just before I finish my final three hundred feet to the top (I almost caught my friend at the top this morning!). I asked him what he found interesting about the root and he said he had actually been on the trail when the tree fell over. I thought this guy must be a complete wingnut with his disaster stories, but that only made me more curious so I asked the obvious question, “what happened?” and he told me this amazing story if I can remember how he said it,

“About fifteen years ago, I was walking here at about this time one morning” (6:30) “but it was extremely cold and windy. It was during the fall.” (of course) “I had bundled up pretty good, but I had not prepared for the amount of wind I encountered at the top. It was as if a train had hit me when I passed over the summit, freezing coldI! It was still quite dark from the clouds and sunrise wasn’t for another half hour, I had no idea if it would be any easier to go down the way I came, so I just kept going. This was before cell phones, so I knew I was being stupid, but it was too late to do anything about that. I also was just getting through a messy divorce, so the experience of fighting the wind actually felt kind of redemptive.” (he said “redemptive”!) “I walked over the summit, and was picking my way headfirst down this bunch of rock steps right here when I felt this weird nausea come on really suddenly. I have a strong stomach, so I felt confused by it and when the dizziness hit me, I went into a kind of shock and couldn’t feel my legs. I tried to sit down, it was happening so fast, I can’t even tell you how fast this all came on, this ringing started in my ears and then a dry POP! Like a twisted towel flicking my ear drum. The ringing became so severe I remember trying to cover my ears,” he showed me how he clutched his belly and tried to cover his ears at the same time, “when for what felt like a minute, everything around me was completely lit up, like it was high noon. It must have been a fraction of a second because I still wasn’t even sitting down, but everything glowed white. It crossed my mind that it was beautiful, but it was so terrifying because the shadows of the pine trees were dancing maniacally around my feet and my head was spinning. I tried to take a breath when I realized I was suffocating, something seemed to press on my chest when I tried to inhale, but before I could worry too much about it, BOOM! BOOM, BA-BOOM BOOM!” he threw his arms away from his body and spit a little as he tried to make these huge sounds, his eyes were wide open, I noticed his nose was running a little bit, and then he looked at me seriously, “A bomb dropped! or that’s how it felt. The ground shook, which is no small thing when everything around you is solid rock!” I held a laugh inside for a second trying to give him the space he needed to finish. He stood up dramatically from his crouched gesturing and painstakingly whispered, “LIGHTNING!” with his eyes still big and round.

At this point I actually did laugh a little and he slowly started to laugh a little bit too. I couldn’t believe it, “how far away from it were you? Did you see the tree fall?” I asked him. “I was right over there.” He pointed to a bunch of piled rocks at a turn in the trail, maybe about 25 feet away. I asked again, “did you see the tree fall?” He said, “well first I puked.” I laughed again, “but then I looked up and saw that the tree was on fire lying on its side and the wind had completely stopped. I suddenly felt amazing inside, like my life had completely changed in a way I never could have understood then, but it turns out to have been true.” “what do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, that’s another story, but the tree burning there and the wind so quiet all of the sudden I just knew everything was exactly as it was supposed to be. I didn’t even feel cold anymore. I just sat down right there on those rocks and enjoyed it like a bonfire. A sort of surreal bonfire, of course, but I felt so good all over. My breath seemed to be coming from my feet and my hair felt like it had nerve endings in it. As the breeze started picking up again, my hair kind of played in it.”
“Weren’t you worried lightning would strike again,” I asked,
“no, it’s hard to explain, the rain started falling and the wind picked up again and the tree kept burning and I didn’t move a muscle. I think I sat there for an hour. It might have been only five minutes, I don’t know, but I didn’t want to leave. When I got home, I called my lawyer and said, ‘I don’t need anything from the settlement, I just need to move on’ and that was that.”
And then his dog barked at something and we both snapped out of our reverie. I realized we were standing on a beautiful slope and the sun was fully over the horizon now. I knew I had to get going so I could get to class in an hour, but I said I hoped I would see him again on the trail tomorrow. He shook my hand really sweetly and I felt incredibly grateful for him being there. It made my day (and got me around the mountain).

Day 19

October 29, 2007. Day 19.

Well I did it. I got up and climbed it again today. Sunrise and sunset. The project is beginning to know me too well. I’m seeing my reflection in this climb and I’m trying not to look too closely. The amount of awareness it’s requiring of me is blinding. I feel like all of the magic I’d felt at the beginning, the sense of Sanita as a spirit, the feeling of my spirit connecting with hers has diminished to the pure physicality of the place. I am atoms. The mountain is atoms. Although, according to string theory, we’re actually vibrating strings, nothing quite as small as we had thought, more of a collaboration of particles and waves. There is not a lot of heart in that. Trying to find that small voice of compassion to accompany the awareness is proving to be difficult, that sense of empathy for others, the same. I have a big midterm tomorrow, so when I’m not walking, I’m studying art theory. It makes Jack a dull boy.

I did have an interesting encounter this morning though. I almost forgot the conversation I had with this man I see every morning on the trail. He says his dog is the ambassador of the mountain and has to greet everybody he sees. It’s true, the dog runs up to me every time and I love it. He’s helped me get to the top quite often. His owner is always on the way down while I’m on the way up, even when I’m there at the crack of dawn climbing in the faintest moonlight, he’s on the way down. It’s like he lives in a cave at the top. Occasionally we comment on the sunrise and say hello, but today he asked me the strangest question, “Have you heard anything about the floods that have happened here?” I asked where he meant, “down at the bottom, they start in four mile canyon and wash right through here.” I said no. He said, “in the past sometimes when it rains here, huge walls of water come rolling through. Some people have been caught in it and washed away. When I walk here through the rain, I wait until it’s been raining a while in case there might be any flash floods.” I said thanks, I guess. He smiled and said, “Just wondering, I see you out here all the time, want you to be safe. Have a good one,” and he left.
(The ambassador of the mountain)