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…I read Chinese poetry, I create vows of genuine friendship with these vultues on my path, with sidewalk kitties, with blue jays on the Bob Jones Trail, and most supremely, with every elegant cow I know. All these mountains.

Fortunately I have no explanation for any of this. An Oregon September 24, 2010 blind date through Match.com led me directly to this very strange California chair on which I sit and type here now, and I can see and roll back 60 years of connections from that Portland cafe. I guess I feel a little nostalgic today.

Early yesterday, Thursday, sipping coffee where I do, I came upon this line in a poem belonging to T’ao Ch’ien, who lived long, long ago – “My empty home harbors idleness to spare.” I have no one I call friend here in San Luis Obispo, despite much weekly people time. In this trailer I most often find myself alone. It’s not a bad thing. There’s idleness to spare.

So I say yes when Koans come calling, and find myself in these September 2025 todays friends with wing-ed and tail-ed creatures. Utterly belonging to the trails I hike. Entirely home on the morning cushion.

“A solitary boat without oars making its way in the moonlight.”

on Sunday morning when I set out on the Main Street of the Johnson Ranch trails I carried this as a goal – have an intimate conversation with one soaring, path-sharing vulture.

The ancient Zen master Hakuin said “The sound of one hand is not a sound you hear with your ear.” Two pair of vultures paid visits the first twisting mile of the walk, and the first pair spoke with their wings directly to my eyes one word: floating.

Close by the end of the trail a single bird flew immediately over my head, and when it banked away brought my eyes to the half moon still present in the mid-day blue, blue sky. A moment later this Zen koan arrived:

‘A solitary boat without oars making its way in the moonlight.’

Therefore,…

often I am high enough that I’m above the vulture’s glide on the wind. I don’t think I ever see that without feeling thrilled. Yes, that’s flying, and what little kid doesn’t spread their arms as wings, flying through summer vacation? There’s always that.

Yet for me, now, this path, there’s the clear feeling the vulture and the thermal wind doing the carrying are not two things. This – “You can take the kid out of Wareham, but you can’t take Wareham out of the kid.”

Joni – “Round and round and round in the circle game.”

All of which is why…

the vulture’s call was like a hawk’s, just more throaty, less ethereal. A possible Chinese poem: “circling Vulture, expresses throaty.”

And that was only one of the hundred sounds on this hike, different from the blue quiet there my first go round. New low-to-the-ground flowers must have blossomed, lavendars and yellows, since Wednesday, the buzzy hum of countless bees lifting up from near my shoes. One mysterious rustle through the golden grass and scrub after another. A young guy advising I climb over the padlocked fence to do the higher ridge-line trail, his small, black dog offering little whines for my attention. The chatter of other hikers.

The vultures’ cree, cree, cree, me far below, though…

I’d like to think I’ve become friends with the 10,000 vultures which soar and circle overhead when I walk out alone on sun-burnt hillside and mountain trails. “I may be gravitied down here, kids, but we’re not so different.” There’s a freaky childhoodness to see buzzards circling over me, like, do you know something I don’t know? But, there’s comfort as well. I’m not out here all by myself, even if that’s what the friendship number-counters tell me.

The vultures were there above Saturday morning as I walked through the Laguna Lake trails, a walk more aural than any other sense, at least until I picked up a pebble in my left hiking shoe.

So, Saturday…

This arrived in the mail Wednesday.

Notes:

(I’m 76 years old. I rent a room in a trailer. I work part-time on the front desk at the YMCA in San Luis Obispo, where I live. And about where, long, long ago, I dreamed of living, though I can’t tell which decade that was, or possibly why. Regarding Wednesday’s mail, I paid $6.90 on Ebay, plus tax. Who knew? Who knows? It’s resting on a pillow case covering an ancient pillow I’ve hauled back and forth 3000 miles over and over again. It could be my oldest personal possession, in a slow dance here with my newest.

My hope for today, Friday, is catch one of those meetings after dawn, and an early afternoon drive to Avila Beach to walk the Bob Jones Trail. My usual Friday now, though I’d never imagined it in September of 2001 when I lived in an apartment by myself in Lowell, Massachusetts, worked for a YMCA in Lawrence down the road, and moving then was running along the Merrimack River. So far from California’s central coast. Hiking cow-populated mountain trails. Mingling with Chinese poets.)

It’s Wednesday afternoon, 2:40, I just got back from hiking the Lemon Grove Loop Trail on San Luis Mountain. I discovered by chance a new way back down the mountain the last time I was up there, and pointed my moving again self toward the little jag right after sitting on the sacred bench a good long while.

As I was turning off to head down, I heard a noise like something moving through the brush at the place where the woods approach the path. Yes, my mind spun off to the likes of a big kitty. But much to my surprise – and amazement and joy – I saw two cows nibbling on the leaves of low branches, and then a wider view displayed a gathering of the girls standing up and laying down just into the trees. This sweetie one of the gathering.

We were way up on the mountain.

Every morning I give myself over to what I say out loud as “All offers.” A guest and host thing I think. Open invitation. And not always, life with its ups and downs, but sometimes what shows up is pretty fabulously cool.

I walked along the railroad tracks yesterday after work, a strong wind at my butt on the way out, a howling breeze in my face on the way back. My nose was running a lot. I don’t know why.

Getting out of the car back in the trailer park an older woman pulled up next to me at the stop sign. I held up the book I was carrying – “Essential Zen” by Taz Tanahashi and Tenso Schneider – but what I said in her direction was “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” Couldn’t tell you why.

I read that book in college and again down the road, and maybe again as time passed, and I came into the trailer with an urge to get a copy, and a wonder about just how long has Zen been so all this in my life? Like past what I consider the beginning, back when I bought used on Ebay John Tarrant’s “The Light Inside the Dark?” That’s just over there to my right right now, lingering with me some 17 or so years, but I’ll bet I’m a silly goose thinking buying and reading it was the beginning of me on (and as) this path.

Silly, silly goose. When I was very young I would snatch slices of bread from the kitchen and tear them to pieces and scatter those pieces on the snow and then sit in my second-floor Massachusetts window watching the birds arrive, me all mesmerized, I’m guessing not very separate from the birds, or the snow. And way, way before I ever spied Robert Pirsig’s book.

In our Koan group last night there was this – “On South Mountain clouds gather; on North Mountain rain falls.”

See.

It’s Sunday morning. John Tarrant Roshi presents from Santa Rosa in 30 minutes. Later, a plan to hike the Johnson Ranch, tightened laces, to explore a new ascending path my previous Tuesday eye spied climbing up and off toward the Milky Way, which I take on faith is beyond the daylight blue. Huff huff, puff puff, moo, moo.

The other day, Friday, I woke alert and began the day at two, and still, 19 hours later, I was bargaining for more time. In Massachusetts I use to see these bumper stickers – “So many pedestrians, so little time.”

Gina, my Santa Barbara Zen sidekick, recommended the David Hinton book “Hunger Mountain,” which I scored, and down the park’s clubhouse a while ago I came upon this sentence: “To see the world with this depth and clarity, sight mirroring things wholly, is always a solitary act.” Yay!! And yet…….I’m reminded of the Roger Waters album, “The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking.”

After I worked an unexpected shift at the Channel Islands YMCA Saturday morning, I drove to my Starbucks and got a coffee. People were happy to see me, and my favorite table was empty and available, like it’s been almost every time I’ve been there the last couple of weeks, which also made me happy – along with being the cause of happiness.

It may have been at that table, it may have been seven hours earlier drinking coffee after meditating on the zafu, maybe while writing my Pages, or any point in between. At one of those times I got to think about all the walking I’ve been doing these past four and a half months, especially the hiking, and that the attention to the lay of the path and – I know, more scary creatures – the ever-possibility of rattlesnakes sunning themselves on the hardpack, that hyper-vigilant attention, has produced within me and through me, even as me, something akin to a meditative state. Single-pointed mind. While moving.

So when back to the trailer for a meal I gathered a number of books walking/hiking related, and one was my very own “Astoria Strange,” specifically for the story “Turnaround Place.” A tale of movement.

I sat in a chair alone later Saturday night and read “Turnaround Place,” and I wept when I finished. Because it’s good. Because I did something good. Something that counts. I did good.