I stayed overnight at a friendly Zen monastery
San Francisco, Day 2, Tuesday:
No writing or photos can give you the trolleycar ride experience. It is completely physical, completely wind rushing by, holding on the the pole, completely everyday-rollercoaster exhilarating.
Kirk is a friend from New York. We meet up at Fisherman’s Wharf and rent bicycles.
Our plan is ambitious: bike to Muir Woods and back. It’s 40 miles round-trip.
The top of the map (the black diagonal line is where we’ll cross over a 1,500 foot mountain range):
The bottom of the map:
The guy who rents us our bikes wittily refers to this map as our GPS.
Just below the lower-left corner of this photo, two girls on bikes ask Kirk and me if they can take our picture for us. Kirk suggests we all, sweaty, get in the picture together, and we do, grinning.
We all bike over the Golden Gate Bridge, then down the hill to Sausalito.
The girls get lunch, and Kirk and I continue on.
In Mill Valley, we stop at a traffic light. An 85 year-old lady asks where we’re going. We tell her Muir Woods. She asks if we have strong legs. And then, caressing my shoulder with her fingers, she looks at my legs and says, “You do have strong legs.” Good grief. Her friend hobbles up, eyeing Kirk salaciously, and we bike for the hills.
The ascent along Sequoia is steep but, when we ask for directions, we’re told we can make it. “You’re energetic,” they say.
At the top, where Panoramic Hwy rides the ridge, Kirk and I look down at The Land Before Time-style valley.
“Do you want us to keep going?” I ask Kirk. “Because I could go on, or I could go back.”
Kirk is totally committed to going on.
The red arrow on the map shows our descent from Panoramic Hwy to Muir Woods.
The trees are perhaps the tallest in the world. I touch one. It feels like the skin of an old man or woman. If I let my imagination run, I feel as if the tree is waiting for something.
Kirk and I head back to San Francisco, but after a few hundred feet we pass by some deer. They don’t mind us at all, even though we’re only ten feet from them. It’s the closest I’ve ever been to a deer without its startling. We observe them for a long time, then continue on.
Fog has begun to set in. We are literally bicycling through a cloud. The top of the cloud is 100 feet above our heads.
With the fog, it gets dark. It’s only 5 p.m. but we can barely see the road. Then to our right, we see a sign: “Green Gulch Farms.”
Green Gulch Farms had been recommended to me by a coworker the day before, but I hadn’t known where it was. Now, in the middle of the dark and the fog, Kirk and I decide to descend to the twinkling lights of the buildings below.
“After all,” I think, “I’ve always wanted to stay at a Zen monastery.”
People are having their night off, but a friendly guy finds the woman who books the guest house. It’s her night off too. Kirk and I are stressed to bother them. But we don’t want to continue along the road tonight.
The guesthouse has a stovepipe pole in the middle of the house which goes all the way to the roof. Rooms are along the perimeter of the house. Kirk and I get our room, go to a communal dinner, and then I choose to go to a Zendo meditation.
I don’t have time to read the rules. After it’s over, I’m shown what to do. But first, there’s 90 minutes of silence, with each of us facing a wall, with our own thoughts and body, and a 10-minute walking meditation in the middle.
I think about the geese metaphor which I’d read the day before. I play out different ways to turn it into a story on leadership.
I review the events of the day.
Back in the guesthouse, I try to call my couchsurfing host, but neither Kirk nor I get cellphone reception. I turn on my laptop and bingo! we have a connection.
Kirk writes his friend who’s hosting him:
“I won’t be able to make it back to your apartment tonight. I was biking back from Muir Woods when the fog came in quickly and night fell. Fortunately, I found a zen monastery that has taken me in for the night. I’ll be back tomorrow….”
I write my couchsurfing host:
“I went bicycling with a friend to Muir Woods today, and on the way back fog set in and it was dark, so we decided to stay at Green Gulch Farm, a friendly Zen monastery with guest rooms….”
[Photo credits: Fisherman’s Wharf with cable car, Bicycle map, Golden Gate Bridge, Sausalito, Google Maps, Muir Woods, Google Earth road photo, Green Gulch Farm]
Similar Posts:Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
