A Lofty Vision

Published October 4, 2009

It’s within sight, but I can’t get there from here it seems.  Must find another way up.

Seems to happen to me a lot, so it didn’t surprise me that this was the view from my campsite along the edge of Iris Meadow in Rock Creek Canyon Thursday afternoon.

And here was the view at ground level.

“Now what is history?  It is the centuries of systematic explorations of the riddle of death, with a view to overcoming deaths.  That’s why people discover mathematical infinity and electromagnetic waves, that’s why they write symphonies.  Now, you can’t make such discoveries without spiritual equipment.  And the basic elements of this equipment are in the Gospels.  What are they?  To begin with, love of one’s neighbor, which is the supreme form of vital energy.  Once it fills the heart of man it has to overflow and spend itself.  And then the two basic ideals of modern man–without them he is unthinkable–the idea of free personality and the idea of life as sacrifice.

BORIS PASTERNAK, DOCTOR ZHIVAGO PASSAGE HIGHLIGHTED IN ONE OF THE BOOKS FOUND WITH CHRISTOPHER MCCANDLESS’S REMAINS; UNDERSCORING BY MCCANDLESS, from the book INTO THE WILD, by John Krakauer

More to come on Chris’s story, but for now, besides the part about loving one’s neighbor, what caught my eye about this passage was the riddle of death.  That’s why people/we write symphonies, etc?  Do you agree with that?