Sunrise Symphony: excerpt from "Trouble in Paradox", chapter 9 "Only a Madman".

On this wild excursion I have with me a canine alarm clock. Kiowa sets my sleep schedule for me, regular as the river. Each morning here in Paradox, just about an hour before dawn, as the birdsong begins to echo off the canyon walls and the stillness of night is giving way to the gentle burgeoning of reawakened life, he rouses me with a cold nose and damp doggy-kisses to unzip the tent door and let him out. Age has taken his ability to hold his bowels and bladder. As he ambles off into the privacy of dawn to answer the inveterate call of necessity, I fix myself a cup of coffee on my little backpacking stove. When he returns we sit together in the foyer of the tent and watch the opening performance of the new day. As my mind come slowly out of the night's torpor I smoke and sip coffee and we listen to the music of morning, a full-bodied symphony of sunrise.

      The overture is performed by the river, slow and deep-structured and somehow building. The first movement is begun by the earliest of early birds, that little brown fellow known as the Canyon Wren, performing a solo sonata allegro, his rapid gushing cadence of clear, curved notes descending the scale, then pausing and starting over an octave higher. For the second movement we hear an orchestral cantata: the Warbling Vireo trumpets his rich, syncopated "I am a vireo vireo!" setting the melody; the Mourning Dove hums his gentle melancholy "coowoo-ooo-woo-oo," modifying the texture and timbre; the Hermit Thrush adds his flutelike descending whistles, elaborating the theme. The undertones of the river build a bridge to the third movement, in which all voices join and the crescendo is reached when the Robin arrives with his loud, throaty "cheery-cheer-up-cheerio" finishing the movement almost too abruptly. But then comes the coda: a few Goldfinches nesting in the cottonwood above my tent sing the end of the sunrise symphony with their sweet, quiet and plaintive "tee-yee" rising, and "tee-yer" dropping, the music fading gently out as they one by one leave off the song or fly away.

      As the overture concludes the features of the canyon begin to become distinct in silouette. The first and second movements bring color and shadow into the day. And, as if on cue, as if there were some great choreographer behind the scenes, with the finale of the third movement, the abrupt crescendo, the fireball peeks into my riverside nook and touches my face--this section of my canyon points more or less east to west. The coda brings the slow mellow dance of heat in the tent and a strong desire to breakfast.

      This is how I begin my days here in Paradox. Back home in the city my day began to the noise of gears grinding and engines belching black soot on 21st street. I keep this contrast in mind at all times, for one, because I have always loved contrast, but also for safety reasons, to help vindicate my actions, to aid in the defense of what I have done here...

Wilderness or Civilization: A Critique of Modern Society

Note: During my sojourn in Paradox I often held debates with a campfire; in this excerpt, from chapter 11, I am debating whether or not to return to civilization.

     "But the wilderness might have to be my home," I respond somberly, an ache of dread rising like heartburn in my throat. That civilization back home, it is a crime against humanity--and nature. Really, to speak clearly, it is not a civiliazation at all, absolutely undeserving of the name: more an organized gang of independant individuals reverting back to the barbarous individualism of childhood. Civilization is a delicate balance between reason and instinct, between passion and restraint, between nature and nurture, order and chaos. Some phases of culture are more balanced than others, yes, and some are just plain corrupt.

     Forgive me, O enlightened postmodern age, if my admiration leans more toward the austere virtue of self-restraint and discipline in the Victorian nineteenth century, more than the rich pot-smoke baccanalia of thoughtless self-indulgence in the hippy sixties and beyond. Forgive me if I doubt such highminded social progress, if I point out that tolerance can be taken too far (and usually is), that individualism is a herd-instinct which eradicates distinctions and mutilates identity, that all the great social causes have failed, leaving only new and more subtle evils in their wake. Forgive me if I judge the obsession with individual psychology and "finding one's self" more as narcissism than personal improvement, if I fail to see how the assertion of personal liberty needs a criminal indulgence--like Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov, who proved his freedom by casual homicide. Forgive me if I want conventional mores and responsibilities, sacred traditions and the difficulty of achievement--and personal freedom.

     Asked for centuries to swallow the idea of a slow, geologic creep toward the grand perfection of culture and humanity, and then to have that entrenched idea exposed as a cruel fraud in the hideous burnout of the twentieth century. Broken promises. With a history like that, isn't it forgivable that we run like mindless partisans to one extreme or another? that we find shelter in the murderous Puritanism of rightwing religion and politics; or that we dissappear in leftwing liberal paralysis, naive and cynical, ever with that reactionary peaches-and-cream idealism so helpless in the real world--flee the conservative bughouse to wander a liberal wasteland, as Thomas Mann said. Or that we hideout in the chaotic and vulgar nightmare of unrestrained individualism, nursing a sixties hangover, where everything is equal and the Will is God and no value judgment is possible; or that we take shelter in the sickheaded self-absorbed narcissism of eastern-style meditation, that mystical bootlicking guru-guided life-denying creed of the perpetually unsound; or that we dissolve our personalities into that insensate nebula of the gullible self-help junky; or that we descend groping into that thoughtless paradise-in-a-pill labyrinth, ever believing that happiness is simply a chemical reaction; or that we stow away in the deadhead distraction and soul-tainting flatulence of the mass-media megalith and all its many arms of crude amusement... One creed or another, any creed, all creeds, all counterfeit, all temporary, all products of some invisible cultural neurosis.

     Speak of values, either proclaim them inviolable, or butt blindly against them. But we are forever unable even to define the term, for the old ones don't make sense anymore, and the new ones are futureless and empty. We are infantile in our helplessness but reckless in our pride, and so we become a culture of shallow makebelieve and pernicious falsehood. The obvious evils and blatant failures of society are either cut out of the picture or conveniently blamed on forces claimed beyond control. Anything that does not come quickly and with ease we ridicule as obsolete or simply treat with indifference. The difficult questions of life are left to a gaggle of experts, the important decisions left to queue of authorities, and the rest of us dance around in the vacuum. The future is now, tomorrow is disposable, and manifestly disposed of... Who could wonder at the inexplicable hopelessness, the wrenching despair, the inarticulate angst we sense everywhere these days...? Who could wonder...

     "No way," I affirm, solemnly, to the campfire. "The wilderness is the only thing left for us, the only thing left worth fighting for, the last refuge of sanity. I can't go back to that ironclad shell of a social disorder, that integrated disintegration they call civilization... I must learn to live off the land, find the primitive and rebuild the good world out here in Paradox... No, I can't go back. I won't go back."