Reflections on Zen and the Art…

There’s a passage, early in Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, that describes why riding a bike feels so different to making the same journey by car. When sitting behind the wheel, he writes, we experience the landscape as if viewing it on TV: cocooned from the elements, the driver is at a remove from all that passes them by.

In contrast, motorcycling is an immersive experience: you feel the wind and rain directly, the heat of the sun and chill of the shade. What’s more, your body is essential to control of the machine: leaning into bends, absorbing the bumps, reacting to the road with throttle, brake and gears. At its best, the intensity of engagement is akin to a state of ‘flow’, and for some (not least me), the key reason they ride.

Of course, there are other attractions to motorcycles, and touring the US these last two weeks has reinforced many in my mind. On the road, there’s a camaraderie between bikers; a shared passion that’s acknowledged with nods of our helmets, or a wave of the hand. And typically, on arrival, there’s a generosity to the welcome you receive, fuelled (supercharged even) by Americans’ probing curiosity.

All this adds an extra dimension to the quality of the journey, the memories we file and the stories we share. There’s something specia too, about being ‘in’ the landscape while travelling through it at speed.  Pirsig’s TV analogy seems not to stretch to a motorcycle visor ( I suspect he rode with an open face helmet) and here on the desert roads, the immensity of the place and smallness of your presence is as tangible as it is intoxicating.

I’m conscious that little of this will be new or revelatory to a hill walker or cyclist. The fellowship of mountain huts is legendary, as is the love of bicycles in, say, France. I was once riding through the Alps on a tandem when a mountain train stopped for the passengers to cheer us on; some even disembarked to offer fresh croissants. Another time, on a mountain trek, I met a blind walker who humbled me with the interest he showed in the achievements of others. 

Indeed, the physical demands of most outdoor pursuits are greater than motorcycling, lacking, as they do, an engine to boost your momentum.  Cycling, in particular, can be so draining that you close in on yourself, leaving precious little energy for admiring the view. Rock climbing and whitewater kayaking - my other lifelong passions - are not dissimilar: the attraction being less an adrenaline rush than their immediacy and intensity of focus.

Perhaps then, my newfound love of motorcycling has something to do with age, coming as it has with a lessening of strength and slowing of the reflexes. I like to think my powers of concentration are undiminished; certainly Jane would tell you I’ve not lost the ability to selectively zone out! Jokes aside, there’s probably some truth in this, though it’s not the full picture.

Since taking up the pastime, I’ve been amazed that motorcycles are not more popular with the younger generation. The vast majority of riders are male, white and likely retired. Yet for less than the price of an average electric mountain bike, you can buy a machine that will capably take you around the world.  If I were twenty years old again, I know what I’d be doing with my summers.

Thankfully, my youngest son is just as happy to humour his old man. Indeed, riding with him has become one of my greatest joys. So while I’ve loved every mile of my two-week tour of the Southwest States, I’d trade them all in a heartbeat for a single one of the trips we’ve made together in Wales. 

Luckily, I don’t have to.

Which brings me back to Robert Pirsig, whose autobiographical journey can be read on several levels: as a travelogue, a philosophical conversation, and a coming of age in his role and relationship as a father. I doubt that he travelled the same roads as me this fortnight, but it’s surely no coincidence that ‘Zen and the Art’ has long been one of my favourite books. 

Size matters…

Travelling by motorcycle through the US this week, I’m struck by the tension between my sense of both its familiarity and difference, Unlike the twenty or so miles separating Dover from Calais there’s no language barrier here, the roads and infrastructure are not dissimilar to our own, and the food, for all its occasional oversize portions, would find a welcome home in most British pubs. I guess the climate is more extreme, but that’s increasingly so in the UK too - frankly, even Vegas felt like Blackpool on acid.

Indeed, so much of our culture is now shared that the differences between them are smaller and subtler than we perhaps like to admit. There’s a tangible lack of self-consciousness in America (even more so of deprecation or irony) that to us Brits can feel brash to the point of cringeworthy. So too with the overt displays of patriotism and religion; yesterday, on the road to Cortez, I counted over fifty US flags, several of them flying from Baptist chapels.

While that’s not something you’d see in the Cotswolds, a moment's reflection brings to mind the Union Jacks we dig out for the World Cup or Royal Weddings.  And as for Americans being arrogant,  consider the plummy accents of our upper classes and elitism engendered by public schools. Ultimately, for all our superficial contrasts, I can’t help but feel that deep down we’re more together than apart, not least in a common if incompatible faith that our respective homelands, and their associated values, music, sports… you name it… are a model for the rest of the world to follow. 

But riding through - and ‘in’ - the landscape here, I’m struck by one overwhelming difference, encapsulated in an adjective that repeats with every turn of the road. This place is vast!  And as I said today, tongue in cheek, to a delightfully welcoming gallery host I met in Durango - size matters!

We were viewing some over-scaled photo prints by David Yarrow, and thankfully, she laughed, confirming that we can share a sense of humour after all. It turned out that we also shared an interest in nature and art, and the capacity of both to inspire and connect us to something bigger than ourselves. 

Of course, all this is possible in a more intimate setting. My point is not that bigger is better. Rather, that it’s different, and at the risk of using an intentional pun, massively so!  

Scale is important - and especially in landscape and art - because, more than any other visual or spatial factor, it impacts directly on our intuitive responses. By this I mean those visceral feelings that come in the nanoseconds before thinking and categorising and verbal proxies such as beautiful, or awe-inspiring, or for that matter, vast! Taking a painterly example, it’s precisely why the abstracts of Rothko or the water lilies of Monet were rendered so large.

And following that vein, I wonder how riding here - and the physicality that involves - has shaped my first impressions after an absence of twenty years. So much of America is bigger, and yes, brasher and less apologetic, than the distances and polite understatement that sit more comfortably with our British reserve. But it’s also wonderful and immersive and - that word again - vast.  

On Tuesday this week, I rode across the Navajo First Nation territory, uninterrupted and almost entirely alone. ‘Follow the road for seventy-two miles,’ my sat-nav said, the arrow straight tarmac melting into the heat of a pale desert sunrise. As the miles clicked by, I kept thinking of Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and the violent, if ultimately redemptive, novels of Cormac McCarthy. 

That probably says more about me than it does about modern-day America. But then this is a landscape that it’s easy to get metaphorically lost in, and yet also, I sense, a good place to find yourself.  In both regards, there’s, thankfully, still much to discover. 

Chasing dreams….

It’s rare that I’d post something on this blog before its publication elsewhere, but after a three-month respite, it seems a good way to return and set up some more regular musings.  As will become clear, I’m writing this at the start of an American road trip; a long-dreamed-of adventure of sorts. The piece is my pending editorial for an alpine newsletter, but hopefully, it has wider resonance too.

I hope you enjoy it.

Chasing our dreams….

From the window of my hotel room (on the twenty-fourth floor of the putative Royal tower), I can see little more than mile after mile of low-rise development. The flat roofs of the industrial blocks below me are peppered with air conditioning units and parked SUVs.. Beyond them, the desert and the pale hint of adventure….

In a well-travelled life, few places have rendered me so intuitively uncomfortable as central Las Vegas. Seldom have I felt as out of place and conscious of mankind’s impact on the environment, let alone our propensity for frivolity and hubris. It would be easy, though rank hypocrisy on my part, to write a piece that tears a strip off its every conception.

For the truth is, I’m here out of choice, as a gateway to a landscape that’s been on my wish list since I first watched a cowboy movie. In many ways, the city is a symbol of the conflicts that fulfilling such a dream involves. I came here in a plane, was driven from the airport by a Somalian refugee, and other than avoiding Trump Tower, paid little interest to my hotel room beyond its location and price.

How we balance the urge for adventure with environmental and ethical concerns is one of the most complex and difficult choices of our times. Like many of us who love the outdoors, I try to make a difference, and indeed, to give something back when I can, but I struggle with the idea of imposing limitations. I don’t pretend to have an easy answer, and certainly won’t stand in judgement of others, least of all, on the basis that my regular visits to the Alps are somehow more worthy than the choices of those who might opt for, shall we say, less wholesome locations.  

Which is perhaps why, for all its kitsch and superficiality, transiting through Las Vegas has been such a prompt to reflection. Not least, as a powerful reminder of the immense privilege it is to explore and experience the world like no generation has before - be that for landscape, for leisure, or for that matter, playing the slots and tables in a fantasy-themed hotel… 

 P.S. Please leave comments as usual if you wish, but understand that for the next few weeks, my technology is limited and replying or counter comments may be difficult for me to achieve.

Marine - a friend in nature

Marine - in french, a name meaning 'from the sea'.

Last Thursday I returned from France, almost three weeks later than planned, thanks to an unscheduled sojourn (two actually) in the french health care system. I left behind one gallbladder, a string of nasty infections and an experience that was both frightening and uplifting in equal parts. While its not something I'd want to repeat, there are memories of my time there that I will carry with me - and I would not want to change...

In saying this, I don't mean the treatment, which was first class and no doubt swifter than our NHS would have provided. The efficiency of the various scans, the transfer to Lyon, the endoscopy and operation were impressive, if somewhat of a blur.  To be alone in a foreign hospital, with limited language and something clearly very wrong, requires putting your trust in others and letting them get on with the job. They were, I'm delighted to say, magnificent.

But post-op recovery requires something different. For when there is action there is concentration and focus;  unlike the long days and nights, alone in a room, where one's mind wanders and spirals, plotting a course through the mental whirlpools of Charybdis and Scylla. It's at times like like these that you need not so much a doctor, as a friend.

Which is where Marine fits into this story. 

There were many nurses in the ward, all of them kind and helpful, but she was the most jolly and the one who asked the most questions — not about my pain, but about me as a person and later about our shared passion for the outdoors. It began, in broken English, with her mention of going for a ski randonee that weekend — or ski mountaineering as I said we would call it in the UK.  She'd been brought up in Bellevaux, she said, an off the tourist track village that she was delighted I knew well, nestling as it does, under the Roc d'Enfer and Pointe de Chalune. 

And from here on, we were off...  every day thereafter, talking of the mountains and what they mean and why they're so special. I mentioned that I'd once snowshoed to the remote refuge de chavanne above her village in the winter. 'So you must know Claudius', she replied' he's a legend!'  Which indeed he is, living there alone, making copious flagons of wine and welcoming walkers and skiers all year round.  

I showed her photos of our trip and she shared more her own: a gallery of peaks and cols and cloud inversions that make this corner of the haute-savoie such a wonderful place. Later she asked about my writing and kayaking and I learned she started skiing and climbing before going to school. I could go on here, but the details don't matter, except between us in authenticating our shared passion and confirming it was something deeper than the ephemeral highs of stereotypical thrill seekers.   

Of course, I'm well aware that it's easy to romanticise a supposed friendship in times of stress. Indeed, what middle aged man would not be delighted with the attention of a young and pretty nurse?  For all I know she may have forgotten our conversations already... But truly, I don't believe that's what was going on here - and even if it were, it's not relevant to my central point .

Which is that in making a mutual connection to place and nature, she intuitively grasped that this was what I most needed to recover.  And if nothing else she understood that nursing is about more than dressings and injections. Two days before I left the ward I had a relapse in confidence and it was Marine who spotted it first — and who spoke to me thereafter that day not of the physical symptoms but of the snowfall in the hills of the Chablais, and of her friend skinning that morning up the Col de Chalune.  

Don't worry, be happy... she sang, every time she came to my room... and whatever you do, don't change Mark! You're the best and most intersting patient on my sector, she said — and true or not, it made me smile again. 

So don't you change either Marine. 

Your concern and love of nature will stay with me long after my body has healed and my time in a french hospital is but a story from the past.  This matters, and so much more than we allow ourselves to think.  

Meanwhile,  I wonder if one day we might meet again?  

If we do, I hope its on the hills, with my family beside me, so they can thank you too...  Perhaps we will cross paths on slopes, or walking on the Nifflon d'en Haut, the ridge which separates your house from mine.... or, even better, at the refuge we talked about in Ubine, that's owned by Les Amis de la Nature..  

How fitting would that be? 

Coming through and counting steps

It’s many years since I last wrote a piece on my phone - certainly more than a decade; back in the very early days of this blog.  But needs must and I have the time to kill … For I’m currently in hospital in France where I was first admitted almost two weeks now…

A short break there to speak to the nurses

…

In mutually broken French and English we make ourselves understood. Not that the medical details are the purpose of the post - suffice to say I have been very unwell but am recovering at pace and am in good hands.  It will be fine - all in good time. 

Meanwhile a friend wrote to say it was an excellent opportunity for people watching… I replied, that there’s nothing so foreign as a frenchman, for the Channel is, in many ways, wider than the Atlantic.  But in truth I have a private room and the best of care, and it is the medical staff that I speak to most. 

I am struck by everyone’s kindness here and its contrast to the ‘system’ which is rigorous and rules everything - though astonishingly good in its way. ( They apologised because my private ambulance to Lyon for treatment was 45 minutes late on its return). One nurse, frustrated by lack of information for me, said there’s no humanity in the hospital - she meant the processes I think. And certainly, I hope so, because she was a living example of how much there is.

In many ways I feel blessed to have fallen ill here in France, despite some bewilderment at times. A funny word to use that - blessed - for it intimates at a type of faith with which I struggle.  And yet I have often used words like prayer and even Godspeed when speaking to others recently. Perhaps there is something in that … and perhaps, even in our secular world, they have meaning that is more than mere analogy or cultural carry over.  I sense they do in fact.

Meanwhile the photo above is of a village near my house here. Needless to say it elicits many mirthful quips - and yet, it is a beautiful place.  Indeed, I am counting the days - and the steps - till I can return. 

Very soon I hope.

Autumn musings

Oscar winding up ...

At the back of my cottage is a field. It’s one of those nondescript patches of our landscape that sees little traffic other than the cutting of silage and an occasional foray from Oscar, my ever-attentive whippet. If there wasn’t a public right of way, I doubt there’d be a gate to the road.

And yet for all its isolation — or perhaps because of it — it’s not a silent or deserted place at all. If you were to walk there in twilight, you’d likely see badgers by the northern hedge, or perhaps the family of foxes that live nearby. There are rabbits too and an occasional polecat; there’s even, somewhere in the scrub, the remains of our tortoise, which escaped, never to be found again.

Often, as I write in my garden office, there are buzzards looking for a meal; kestrels too when the grass is fresh cut. Over the years I’ve seen dragonflies, woodpeckers, almost twenty different butterflies, an adder, many weasels and a stoat… The night brings owls and moths and who knows what…

I sometimes wonder if I should submit my sightings to a wildlife survey. But they are so fleeting and incomplete that instead I write blogs and essays, which I guess is a record of sorts. What’s interesting, is that there’s often as much to see from my window as there is when I go travelling.

If Oscar could talk, he’d say it’s all about paying attention – and no doubt waiting patiently too. Yesterday, as he sniffed the morning air, I glimpsed the unmistakable tail of a red kite hovering above us. When I first came here, the nests of these magnificent raptors were protected by the army; today, there are over 300 breeding pairs in Wales.

That progress should give us hope — and prompts me to muse, that perhaps my little tramped field is not so nondescript after all.

A version of this post was first published in the AAC(UK) monthly newsletter

A Morecambe and Wise Summer

Dark clouds gathering...

As some of you know, I edit a monthly online alpine newsletter.  Here is my latest introduction, that I thought might raise a smile.  Ironically, the sun has since come out in Pembrokeshire.

---------

According to the Met Office this apparently miserable summer is not so bad after all. It would seem our lack of sunshine is merely on the drearier side of dull and well within the statistical norms for an Atlantic archipelago that sits astride the jet stream. The problem, they say, is not so much the indigo skies as our rose-tinted memories of years gone by.

If that analysis seems awry, you’ll not be alone in your thinking. For it seems we’ve evolved to recall most keenly those events that are ‘exceptional or good’. In the case of the weather, we tend to evoke – and romanticise —the heatwave summers of our youth more than we do those holidays on a windy beach. Reality, the Met Office claims, is more prosaic than our fallible memories would lead us to believe.

I was pondering this after Jane and I spent a week in the Lake District earlier this month. Most days were grizzly at best, and yet we togged up and walked round Derwentwater and through Langdale and sat in the caff with dripping cagoules and a soggy map… actually, it was a waterlogged phone, but you get the picture. 

And you know what: we had a lovely time!

So much so, that it made me wonder, if us mountain lovers have developed some sort of evolutionary advantage? We might most vividly recall our sunniest summits or perfect paths – but it isn’t going to stop us making the most of the more mundane. Indeed, here in the UK, we’d have pretty paltry tick lists if we only ventured out in the best of conditions.

None of which is to suggest we should dismiss the meteorologists. Rather, that in summers like these, we do well to remember the wisdom of perhaps our two greatest forecasters…

What was it they used to sing?

Bring me sunshine
In your smile…

Now, that really does bring back memories.