“The door to the past is open. He could push it shut, latch and lock it, but he doesn’t want to. Let the wind blow in. It’s cold but it’s fresh, and the room he’s been living in is stuffy.” —Stephen King, “Billy Summers” Fifty years ago this summer, my sister and I took off on a backpacking trip from a trailhead in Big Sur right off Highway 1. Our destination was the Tassajara Zen Center, about 20 miles into the Ventana Wilderness, and we thought we could get in and out in a couple of days. That would give us time to hang with the monks for a while before heading back to the East Bay. We knew the Zen Center was on an arterial road that ran down to Highway 1 and we planned to hitchhike back to our car from there. That’s how I did things back then, with a lack of planning offset by a youthful optimism in the benevolence of human nature and the random kindness of the universe. In the darkest hours of our trip, that optimism wasn’t exactly broken, but it was shaken in a weird way. But more about that in a moment.
Field Notes: The Mystery of Memory
Field Notes: The Mystery of Memory
Field Notes: The Mystery of Memory
“The door to the past is open. He could push it shut, latch and lock it, but he doesn’t want to. Let the wind blow in. It’s cold but it’s fresh, and the room he’s been living in is stuffy.” —Stephen King, “Billy Summers” Fifty years ago this summer, my sister and I took off on a backpacking trip from a trailhead in Big Sur right off Highway 1. Our destination was the Tassajara Zen Center, about 20 miles into the Ventana Wilderness, and we thought we could get in and out in a couple of days. That would give us time to hang with the monks for a while before heading back to the East Bay. We knew the Zen Center was on an arterial road that ran down to Highway 1 and we planned to hitchhike back to our car from there. That’s how I did things back then, with a lack of planning offset by a youthful optimism in the benevolence of human nature and the random kindness of the universe. In the darkest hours of our trip, that optimism wasn’t exactly broken, but it was shaken in a weird way. But more about that in a moment.