What Next?
On New Year’s Eve, the question hovers above us: What next? I think what we do next, both as individuals and as a culture, is shaped by what we consider essential. In one sense, no one knows for sure what will come next. Uncertainty is part of the human condition. In another sense, what comes next is up to us. Each one of us.
As I welcome the new year, I will start with memories, because where we are and where we will go next are an extension of where we have been. Of course, I remember lots of things, just like all of us. I suspect that with the inevitable accumulation of plaque in the arteries and synapses of my aging brain, many memories that are now sharp and detailed may spread thin and become diffuse.
Looking back on my life may be like looking at a familiar landscape through mist. Images adrift, unmoored from names and dates. I imagine it to be like kayaking, alone, on an open ocean, in a fog bank. Even as it is now, certain memories from my life stand out in greater relief than others, like icons detached from narrative. They are often memories of small moments rather than dramatic ones. Here are two such moments:
The first is from a trip I took to Iceland in 2019. I came one night to a beach at the end of a long and rugged dirt road that crossed a mountain pass in one of the most remote parts of the island. I arrived late at night, in unsettled weather, after driving for hours and seeing not another human soul. The arctic summer sun occasionally pierced the clouds, which shrouded steep basalt buttresses.
As soon as I stepped out of the car, I was greeted by two sheep-herding dogs. They were clearly working dogs from a nearby farm, but they were off duty, and an unexpected visitor had come to their valley. They came with a stick, and were ready to play. And so we played. I threw the stick over and over and over. One of the dogs was black and one was brown. The brown one always got the stick, but the black one seemed happy enough to be in the chase.
Although they had personalities all their own, they reminded me of my own dogs, far away in Seattle. I felt boundless affection for those two Icelandic dogs, but it was the kind of affection that expanded in my heart to include my own dogs at home, Rosie and Cooper, which, at that moment, I loved more than ever, rather than less.
Funny how feeling love for one creature just opens you up to other ones as well. Each dog contains all dogs, and in each one the world itself is made manifest.
As the two dogs gamboled in the surf, chasing each other in circles and nipping at each other and then exploding in a furious sprint down the beach, there was no mistaking the sheer joy of being alive on this exceptional planet. Joy that came from a mysterious place inside the dog, a place beyond all anatomy, a place called consciousness.
That joy animated a body of bones and muscle and fur, a body that in a few short years will die, as will we all. Those two rambunctious dogs seemed to incarnate all of nature. And they represented, also, the capacity for me to enter into relationship to the rest of the living world, to rejoice in the connection.
The ocean is part of this memory, just as much as the dogs. The turquoise water and golden sand were incongruous with the temperature. Still, it was a deserted beach on the Arctic Ocean at midnight, so of course I stripped naked and entered the surf. I ran as fast as I could through the sand, the two dogs at my heels. Then I put my clothes back on because it was windy and cold as hell.
***
The second memory is this: a moment on a trail in Zion National Park, twenty-nine years ago, with an open-hearted woman wearing blue jeans and a bandana on her head, a woman with kindness and laughter in her deep brown eyes. She was a northwest girl, from the land of water and giant trees.
We wanted to get to know each other, but we didn’t know each other all that well, yet. What better way to increase the knowledge than a road trip? So we went to northern Arizona and southern Utah, the stomping grounds of my youth. I wanted to share with her the country of red rocks and aching blue sky. I brought her to high and exposed places, and I told her to look for scorpions in her shoes after a night of camping in the desert.
We were hiking on the East Rim Trail, on a part of the trail cut right into the side of the sandstone cliff. I turned to speak to her and she wasn’t there. She had stopped a few paces back, and I found her standing still and facing the cliff, her eyes maybe eight inches from the stone. Just intently staring. Lost in the crosshatching, the delicate striations, the warm and subtle variations in color.
That very sandstone is one of the things I had wanted to share with her, but even so, the intensity of her engagement took me by surprise. The look on her face was the kind of focus that can be mistaken for a frown, but really is the deepest kind of concentration.
As much as I loved sandstone, I had seen it all of my life — but it was new to her. That whole trip to Zion is a series of good memories, but that singular moment of radical attentiveness to the stone is what stands out to me the most.
It was also one of those moments when we really understand — and let it sink in — that another person is another world, and within her is an ocean of feeling and experience. She is a holy and wholly distinct being, a spirit. She is a Thou, as Martin Buber said. As are we all.
I may think I know her, yet I can never really know her completely. And yet… we overlap. Or, I should say, we can choose to overlap. We are sometimes invited to overlap. We can grant each other that honor, that gift.
***
I will move now from memories to resolutions. I don’t know if I have resolutions or not, but at the beginning of every year, I make lists. All kinds of lists: mountains I want to climb, people I want to visit, track meets I want to participate in, varieties of tomato for the garden, alpine flowers that I hope to find in the wild, activities I want to do with my daughters, hot springs I want to soak in, skills I want to practice or learn.
Since I’m not a big fan of burdens, I shy away from the word resolutions when I make these lists, and I just call them intentions. They are not “to do” lists. They are simply a way to sit with a notebook and a cup of coffee on a wet wintry morning and think about what sorts of things make me happy. I’ve not made my intention lists for 2024, but I know at least two things that will be included.
In the summer, I intend to return to a place where I have unfinished business. It is a high ridge in the North Cascades, the ridge between the watershed of Grizzly Creek, which flows into the Stehekin River, and the watershed of Fisher Creek, a remote valley that feeds Thunder River, a major tributary of the Skagit River.
Nestled into a rocky depression right on top of the ridge is one of my sacred places: Upper Silent Lake. I intend to return to this lake, to baptize myself in its icy water, and then to climb the west ridge of Fisher Peak, a climb that I left unfinished ten years ago and that has been calling to me ever since.
Upper Silent Lake is one of my favorite places on Earth. It is easy to fall into clichés; finding the right language for matters of the heart is a challenge. When I say this place is holy, what I mean is that for whatever reason, the wholeness of the world has been made manifest to me here.
I like to swim in it, although it is frigid. I feel, in this water, that I am partaking in something more interesting and significant than my own paltry and fleeting life. This water will make an extraordinary journey. First, it will drop a few hundred feet into Lower Silent Lake. Then, as Grizzly Creek, it will tumble with great enthusiasm to the wild Stehekin River. It will enter Lake Chelan — a stunning and very deep inland fresh-water fjord. Then it will join the mighty Columbia, and, eventually, enter the Pacific.
Upper Silent Lake is a synecdoche: a small mountain lake, yes, but also the whole watershed. It is the whole world; it lets me in.
***
And a second intention is this: I intend to spend time — much more time than in the past few years — with those friends of mine who lift me up and help me inhabit the best version of myself. I am thinking of those friends who “restoreth my soul,” those who are like a deep drink of cold mountain water to my spirit when I am suffering thirst. I intend to visit these friends unhurriedly, and to let them know how much they matter to me.
There is a Buddhist concept known as sangha; in its strictest and most traditional usage, it refers to a community of monks or nuns who help each other on a spiritual path. In a broader sense, it might mean any group of people who help each other grow in a spirit of kindness, humility, compassion, and — for me — humor.
Thich Nhat Hanh has described sangha as a “beloved community.” I like that. I’m not a Buddhist, but I will borrow the word sangha, just as I pilfered the word grace from the church I no longer belong to, and I apply it, loosely and in my own fashion, to my life.
As I’m using it, the word applies to those people in my life in whom I find support, refuge, and growth. Some of them are family, and some are friends. Some live far away from me. I hope that I can be sangha to them in return. As a part of this intention, I intend to have no intentions, to have no expectations, regarding these visits. I wish not to squeeze benefit from people; I wish only to enjoy them in a spirit of gratitude.
***
And now, let me speak of loves and griefs and fears, for the three are tightly braided. I don’t know how it is possible, in 2024, for a thinking person to move into the future without feeling some grief and fear, but I will lead — and end — with what I love rather than what I fear.
I’ll begin with some simple tasks that feed my soul, draw me away from phone and computer screens, and connect me to the living, breathing world. I’m talking about the endlessly entertaining business of growing flowers and nurturing bees. I’m talking about California poppies, fuzzy-horned bumblebees, tansy phacelia, and blue orchard mason bees.
Nothing can pull me out of existential despair better than watching mason bees hatch and scuttle their little blue-green butts in and out of the nesting tubes, laying eggs for the next year. And when I take a day away from the city, away from my garden, and hike up into the high country, nothing is a better remedy for anxiety than to see a fat alpine bumblebee feeding from and pollinating a vibrantly purple Phacelia sericea.
Next up: Something that might strike some readers as trivial or not serious enough for a reflective essay, but is a matter of utmost seriousness to me, a “pearl of great price,” so to speak. This thing has been a life-saver to me in times of depression so deep that life was drained (almost completely) of joy. I’m talking about music.
So, let me praise music that has blood and soul and passion in it, music that eschews the auto-tune, the drum machine, the beat equalizer. Give me, instead, music that is rife with flaws, with botched notes and serendipitous mistakes, unplanned spurts of inspiration. Give me instruments descended from the horn of a ram, the skin of a goat, horse’s hair, and a donkey’s jawbone. Give me a horn section.
Give me music dripping with desire. Give me a rock & roll scream that can pack an ocean’s worth of pain or pleasure into three seconds. I want it funky, rollicking, joyful, heartbroken, sexy, wide-open, full-throttle, raging, gentle, and sometimes as simple and uncluttered as birdsong.
From the bottom of my heart, I thank the friends of mine who make music.
There are times when I am sinking into despair and disillusionment, times when I think humans aren’t going to survive the catastrophic mess we are creating for ourselves — and that we don’t deserve to. But then… music lifts me. Even music that expresses deep sorrow, doubt, pain, or rage can lift me in a way I don’t quite understand.
A species that can produce Johann Sebastian Bach, Ella Fitzgerald, Steely Dan, Patsy Cline, Yo-Yo-Ma, Aretha Franklin, Chris Cornell, Susana Baca, George Frideric Handel, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Sam Cooke, Etta James, Derek Trucks, Tom Petty, Bonnie Raitt, Urbie Green, Wynton Marsalis, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendricks, Duke Ellington, Pearl Jam, Johnny Cash, and Bob Marley can’t be all bad.
***
And now, a confession: On this night when we are supposed to be optimistic, to be fun, to lift our glasses of spiked eggnog or champagne, I’d be lying if I said I was completely okay. So, I will mention some fears. I won’t go into excruciating detail, and I won’t make arguments. My purpose here is simpler. Call it emotional testimony.
I fear that my children — and my children’s children — will inherit a world that is damaged and degraded far beyond our capacity to restore it to health.
I fear that in our culture we are more disconnected from other living creatures than at any other time in human history — at precisely the moment in history when we need to understand our interdependence and to re-establish connection.
We are rapidly killing what sustains us. The stock market does not sustain us.
Climate change is only one aspect of this damage, but it is perhaps the most serious aspect. About a decade ago, climate researchers were predicting a summertime ice-free Arctic Ocean by the year 2040. My fear is that an ice-free Arctic will be a reality in the next decade.
I’m not going to explain why I think an ice-free Arctic spells trouble for Miami, or Houston, or Phoenix, or Bangladesh, or Samoa, or my children’s children. I will just say that all things are connected, that boundaries are an illusion, that everything is part of everything else.
Another fear: Democracy could easily slip away. If it goes, we can also give our goodbye kiss to the notion of a government that actually takes care of its people and its land. We can kiss goodbye to the confidence that our leaders will tell us the truth, ever. And we can kiss goodbye to the notion that all of us are equal under the law.
Finally, we can kiss goodbye to the expectation that anything of lasting value will be conserved; value will be monetized and squeezed out of every living organism that is deemed useful. The organisms (including people) that are considered useless will be assaulted out of sheer, gratuitous meanness.
It’s not my intention to be a “buzz kill” on New Year’s Day, but I want to say that those who wield the wrecking ball are counting on the rest of us to grow tired and give up the fight. The destroyers, the exploiters, the dominators… they want us to shut up and drink our eggnog.
***
You may be wondering, at this point, if I’m going to wish you a Happy New Year. I am, from the bottom of my heart. I want it to be happy for me as well. I will work, diligently, toward that end. But the honest expression of my fears is an essential part of my New Year’s reflection. What should we expect, as we move into 2024? How do we shape it?
I often think about life in climbing metaphors. And so, on New Year’s Eve of 2024, I am thinking in terms of cultural route-finding errors. In an outdoor adventure that goes disastrously wrong, there may be what we call a watershed moment. It is a moment in which a route-finding error dooms the adventurer.
A watershed moment means, literally, a moment of choice that commits the adventurer to the wrong or right course. Perhaps there is a sequence of several seemingly insignificant and subtle misreadings of the landscape that eventually turn your head around completely, and lead you to follow the wrong stream down the wrong drainage. Perhaps to a cliff edge, or into a box canyon.
One of the common themes in disaster narratives is that once a course is chosen, it becomes increasingly difficult to retrace your steps and undo unfortunate choices. Often, this watershed moment goes unnoticed, its import under-appreciated, its consequences not clearly understood. It is often only recognized as a defining moment in hindsight… if it is recognized at all.
Here are some cultural route-finding errors: To assume that economic growth is the same thing as economic health. To mistake power for greatness — in an economy, a military, or even in a family. To conflate the flow of money with free speech — especially in a society with enormous wealth disparities. To mistake belligerence for strength. To mistake a dominator for a protector.
To view vulnerability as a weakness and an embarrassment, or — even worse — to see it as a condition to be exploited and despised. To value competition over cooperation. To choose selfishness over generosity and cruelty over kindness when times get hard. To place our faith in leaders who view us as a commodity to be exploited, consumers to be manipulated, a resource to be mined, a host to be parasitized, a herd of passive bovines to be milked for money and votes.
And, for believers in a religion that is based on the teachings of a certain Galilean, it is an especially egregious route-finding error to think that seeking the power of Caesar is the best path to ushering in a society that honors the one who gave us the Sermon on the Mount.
To evangelicals: Jesus is not going to rescue you from your own decision to ignore his teaching, and your children will suffer along with everyone else’s children as we slip into the aftermath of our route-finding errors. Having secured your deal with Caesar, you may find that power was the wrong thing to seek.
***
We are on the wrong course.
At the same time that we are destroying the conditions that sustain us — fertile soil, clean water, predictable climate — we are making a greater god than ever out of money and the power that money can buy. An ever-smaller sliver of humanity — a tiny, tiny sliver — is accumulating wealth, depleting resources, and exploiting the rest of us in a manner that can only be described as obscene. Artificial Intelligence will only assist them in doing it faster.
What sense is there in having a billion dollars? Or ten billion? Or 254 billion? It can’t end well.
How much is a billion? I have been thinking a lot, lately, of birds. In particular, I have been reading accounts of migratory water birds, endless rafts of them, migrating along flyways from the Arctic to the tropics, along corridors of wetlands. They used to fly, in inconceivable numbers, through the central valley of California.
I have read about how they descended upon the wetlands of the Skagit estuary, here in my beloved Puget Sound. Feeding on an equally uncountable number of fish and insects. The abundance. The sheer profligate abundance. Uncountable birds, more numerous and glorious than flying dollar bills.
That abundance is passing from our lives. Who would have thought it possible, even a generation or two ago? In its place, we can wonder how it is that one man can have 254 billion dollars. We can wonder to what use those 254 billion dollars are being put.
A billion birds, at least, are connected to the salmon, the bears, the fishermen, the orcas. The shit of a billion birds feeds the soil, and the soil feeds the rest of us.
***
I want to end with love and hope. We have choices. We can change course. We can choose — individually and as a culture — to reject the destroyers, the exploiters, the dominators. We do not need to follow, elect, enrich, fear, or celebrate them.
We do not need to hold money as the best measure of value, and we do not need to get hoodwinked by manipulative and sociopathic salesmen.
Let me choose music, bees, dogs, soil, birds. And water. Outside my window tonight, on New Year’s Eve, it is clear, but in a few days, some rain is moving in from the Pacific. I am reminded of the sacredness of water, how it is both essential to life and indifferent to it. I sincerely hope that the weather will get colder, and that snow will fall in the mountains. If it happens, I will call that snow grace. This has been the warmest December here on record, and I know I’m not the only one who thinks of August fires on January the first.
I’m grateful for my sangha — especially the phenomenal women who surround me in this life I’ve stumbled into. The woman who stared intently at the sandstone walls of Zion, and who has now been my companion for 29 years. The two daughters of exceptional insight, compassion, and discernment.
We now have a grandson who is too young to speak, but who greets the world with bright eyes and an enthusiastic oooooooh as he investigates everything under the sun. Rosie and Cooper have passed on, but a new dog, Sam, has filled our house and our hearts with his boundless goofiness and joy.
Dogs, bees, and very young children live in the eternal now. I spend much of my time in the future, and I’m no stranger to dread.
I feel that we all have some route-finding to do. I know I do. But there is also the moment we are in, the joy we take in each other, the commitments we can make to live with, through, and for each other.
Tonight and tomorrow, the question hovers over me: What next? It is up to me what I will do.
I remember that dog who greeted me on that Arctic beach: his eyes, intelligent and lively. What next?
You have a stick. Are you going to throw it?
Yes.
Happy New Year.
