The Path Ahead

As most California places go, Sagehen Station is remote.  As the hawk flies, it is 20 miles to the nearest town, 20 miles to the nearest residence, 20 miles to the closest people.  20 miles is a long way to walk through country like this.  It is the distance that separates me from the next dreaming human each night when I lie in bed.  20 miles if the truck breaks down.  20 miles if I hurt myself or become ill.  It gives me pause once in awhile.

I put a lot of thought into why I am here, and what I hope to get out of life here.  Why choose such isolation, why a landscape with such serious consequences?  Why a place so devoid of other people?

The simple answer is that I come by it honestly.  Admiration for the lone journey has been my companion throughout life...all of my life.  It is a fundamental part of who I am.  I was always fascinated by the stories of adventure in the lore of mountains and oceans...the strong, solitary adventurer deep in the wild, alone, his survival dependent on his skills pressed by the constant test of the environment.  While at school, I admired the pantheistic individualism expressed by Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman and all the other wordsmiths of the Romantic Era.  So too, solitary spiritual writers like Thomas Merton at the Abbey of Gethsemani.  I suffered a persistent gnawing for solitude through a couple of long partnerships, despite their deep pleasures.  Yet I likely would have never had a chance to experience a solitary life were it not for the death of my second wife.  But die she did, and with a few scars left in her passing, she gave me an opportunity I would not have chosen, but now relish.

With that opportunity, I am powerless to resist exploring the dream of Sagehen Station.  How could I not embrace it, this chance to really and truly follow one of my heart's strongest curiosities?  The surprise, to me and perhaps others, is that despite knowing the desire plenty well, I don't have a solid vision of where it will lead.  What will a life lived very alone feel like after a year?  After ten?  I don't know.  How might it change who I am?

I believe our lives are shaped by all the events and experiences each of us live.  Emergent from these events and experiences is the unique path each of us finds ourself on.  When I came of age, I fled Southern California and the human decline it represents to me...people living behind double-locked doors, drapes drawn, pretending the ugliness outside their walls doesn't really exist...people spending hours on the freeways (boy, what a euphemism), heart rates elevated, multitasking between their cell phones and iPods.  They don't even know about the qualities in life they have lost.  Perhaps that is the saddest thing.  I see these paths, rushed people busy in their urban entanglements, as sheer hell.  There is hardly a space to look long and hard at a natural vista.  Hardly a space to contemplate who you are and how you fit.  No room for humbleness there.

So far, my path has been fortunate with many years in quiet and beautiful places, some shared with good partners and friends, some alone.  The journey has eased me into a slower pace of moving and thinking, a pace with a focused attentiveness to the world around me.  The longer I am here, the more focused I become on the goings-on outside these walls.  My attention is being pulled in directions more wild.  It is in this sense that I believe landscapes sculpt us over time, and that the landscapes we choose, each one of us, get expressed in who we become.  And in this knowledge lies the power of control, if we are only brave enough to grasp hold.

My path is here, and now, in this place of breathless beauty and vast expanse.  I feel small and insignificant, and it makes me smile.  Now, for me, is Sagehen Station, and forward is a journey into a solitary existence with the natural world, a non-denominational hermitage of sorts.  It fulfills a dream carried through many years.  Perhaps some of my questions will find answers.  Others may disappear.  The spirit around me manifests in the sage and pine, in the canyon and the mountain.  It pulls me in, constantly, an invitation received in every glance.  It is my cathedral for worship, and it is my home.

And over time, I will be shaped further, I hope gently, by this wild place.

                                                                                                                      -gmm