Long, Long Time

So, 2010 has been around for over a month. Happy new year....

Returned recently from another 2-night stay in snowy Yosemite, which was just what the doctor ordered. Not my doctor, of course, but somebody's doctor. I visited one of my doctors a couple weeks ago, and he billed my insurance company $65 for a 10-minute visit. The 40 minutes I spent in the waiting room were free, I guess, just a perk of the modern medical practice. If my doctor had prescribed 2 nights in Yosemite, imagine what he could charge!

Were I a younger, less encumbered man, I believe I would spend a month in Yosemite. At $5 a night for the walk-in Camp 4, rent would be a bargain. A larger tent, a chair, and a stack of books would easily comfort me for 30 days. Free showers at Curry Village would keep me clean enough for my own company, and miles and miles of hiking opportunities would keep me occupied and active. Being the eccentric old man in the tent would be a nice change--at list in description--from being the cranky old man in the cubicle.

In some ways, I suppose, such an experience could be likened to a month in rehab. I could wean myself from computers and telephones, from artificial light, from a plethora of bad habits. After 30 days I could drive home and present myself to family and friends so that they could ooh and ahh at my progress.

Come to think of it, we all should take a month and do something but what we are doing now. We might come out on the other side being outwardly no different, and maybe we wouldn't change much inwardly. Perhaps lessons learned from all those books by, among others, Tarthang Tulku and Shunryu Suzuki are starting to sink in (or maybe find their way out?). Imagine a month in a tent: sleeping on the ground, breathing good air, listening to the ice fall off the rock faces. Not a bad picture, really.