Soten LYnch
Pull, pull, pull, pull, splash, pull, pull....This meditation on the kayak deeply reminds me of my years of step, step, step, step, step on the pavement as a distance runner. How familiar the feeling of letting everything else go and noticing the intimacy of the paddle slipping into the water, stroke after stroke. The smoothness of the pull...the quiet of the boat parting the still water with its bow. Perhaps a bird call here and there, but otherwise the silence stretches out as far as does the water, horizon to horizon.
I've joined Kurt on three different trips with Inside Passages over the last two years. Our connection was formed through our cousin Zen Buddhist sanghas in Oregon, and Washington. I've been a Zen Priest at Great Vow Zen Monastery in Clatskanie, OR for about the last ten years. As my partner and I started leading backpacking-meditation retreats out of the local wilderness, our teachers put us in touch with Kurt and his retreats up in Alaska.
It has been such a joy to be a part of this experience. Kurt has been a career fisherman in Petersburg since encountering its romance while a young man in college. His intimacy with the environment transmits a deep knowledge of 'place'. The tides are the breath of the ocean. The silence is the speech of the natural world. This silence is interrupted by the occasional bird, or passing boat, perhaps, but so too must the silence of our natural mind be punctuated by our own selves coming forward from time to time. And how much clearer are these movements of self when seen before a background of clarity, silence? The silence of the wild enhances our own. Is this not why so many of us feel the call to nature? Even if only for a weekend?
Soten Lynch & Shinei Monial
Gathering in this sacred space with others, from all over the world, what an opportunity to gain perspective on our lives. The natural world has a stability that reinforces what is most important, and what is most trivial. Connecting with others in this sacred space, we get to know each other before our stories about who we are and what we've done. This is a deep, tribal connection. Even over a week this happens. And then as the stories start to come out, as they always do, how interesting to see them through eyes that recognize the common humanity in all of us. Your story is my story. My story is your story. I could just as easily be in your shoes, seeing through your eyes.
Keene Channel Lodge has been hosting this kind of authentic bonding between people and people; people and place. I am very grateful to have been a part of it, and look forward to returning this August.