Excuse me, do you have time for a beer?
When I am on the trail, I often run into people or “lower” life forms that impress me. I am moved to think that it would be great to sit down with those creatures and talk. Not talk actually, but listen. There is something about the people that venture into the wild and the things that live there that fascinate me and arouse my curiosity.
To wit: When my son and I walked the John Muir Trail, we regularly bumped into Rose along the way. Rose was from England, she was approaching middle age, and she had come to the United States by herself to take a 220-mile three-week walk through the Sierra wilderness. Only a very special woman sits on her sofa in England and says to herself, “I think I will go to America and walk the John Muir Trail alone. Yes, that’s a good idea.” I would like to sit down with that woman, have a beer, and just hear what she has to say. Rose, I am not going to talk, I am going to listen. I want to hear the musings of a spirit like yours.
Another woman, Joanne, who lives in my home town divided the John Muir Trail into four sections and hiked one each summer for four years. This past summer, Joanne completed the last section of the trail. That means she hauled a pack over 13,200-foot Forester Pass, then walked another twenty-five miles to the summit of 14,495-foot Mt. Whitney. Joanne is 82 years old.
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Wouldn’t you, wouldn’t anyone love to sit down with Joanne and simply listen to her say whatever she chooses to talk about? I know that in the course of drinking a beer or two with Joanne or Rose I would be immeasurably enriched. How could it be any other way? What’s more, on the trail, I frequently meet people with bright spirits like theirs. In a world where it is easy to lapse into cynicism, the people I meet like Rose and Joanne make me proud to be a member of the human race.
This beer-buying urge even occurs with creatures, trees in particular. Have you ever walked past a massive tree on an exposed alpine ridge gnarled and twisted by ages of holding fast against hail and snow pushed by a raking wind and wondered what it has seen during its life? Pick any bristlecone pine from the White Mountains. The Methuselah tree, still alive and well there, was 3,000 years old when Jesus was born.
What have these ancient monarchs seen? What do they have to teach? I would like to know. My gray matter is extremely thick, but very slowly I am beginning to learn their language. I will never be fluent, but I will continue to listen.