Pine Mountain Zazen

This morning had to be the coldest morning so far this year, although the forecast predicts the record to be broken again tomorrow morning. That was little consolation to me as I got up at 6:00 a.m. and dragged my tired butt into the shower. Today was the day I was taking the Zen Buddhists hiking.

At some point earlier this year, I submitted a proposal as requested by the Board of Directors of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center to lead a quarterly series of outdoor excursions, basically hiking in the woods. The first trip was sometime last September up into the Cohutta Wilderness of the North Georgia Mountains. This quarter, today, it was to the south along Pine Mountain.

Two weeks ago, I did a recon hike there with my friend K. Today, however, was 20 degrees colder.

I got to the Center at the appointed meeting time of 8:00 a.m., and most of the group was already there - the last few rode up a few minutes after me. We left by 8:15 and were on the road after the obligatory Starbucks stop.

We rode down in two cars - my Jeep and Dr. Karl's van. My Jeep took four and the van five. We got to the trailhead around 10ish, and started toward the trail.

However, right at the head of the trail, the Park Service put up a self-serve parking fee facility. You're supposed to take an envelope from the post, put two dollars into it and place it in the box, and leave the stub on your windshield to show that you've paid. I did this two weeks ago during the recon hike, and a woman who was doing the same thing at the same time told me to be careful about it - the police do ticket offenders she said, and it sounded like she was speaking from experience. Today, however, there were no envelopes in the post - therefore, no way to leave a fee and no way to show that you've paid.

So we started hiking down the trail at 10:15 without paying the parking fee.

We walked the trail in the reverse direction (clockwise) than the counter-clockwise direction K. and I took two weeks ago. Hiking clockwise, we got the longer, less interesting part of the hike done first, while our legs were still fresh and we were still excited about the concept of just being outside. We stopped for lunch a little before noon at the same log K. and I ate at two weeks ago, and hiked on to some cliffs overlooking a scenic waterfall for sitting meditation (this was, after all, a Zen hike).

We sat for 30 minutes, accompanied by the sounds of falling water, wind in the trees, and the occasional human voices from hikers stopping below us to admire the falls. At the end of the sitting period, we soon started hiking again to regain our warmth.

From the lunch stop on, and most notably from the meditation spot on, the trail was much more diverse and interesting than the prior portion (that was my plan and the reason I led the group clockwise). Along the last two miles, we passed through several different eco-systems - from piney ridgetops to grassy river bottoms, and through mountain laurel thickets, across many stream crossings, and past numerous falls and cascades. It rained very briefly, about two minutes, followed immediately by the only direct sunshine we had on the otherwise cloudy day. I searched for a rainbow, but couldn't find one.

We got back to the parking lot about 3:30 p.m. While we were gone, the police did come by, and left warning notices on the windshields of my Jeep and Dr. Karl's van. The notices had our tag numbers, and warned that unless we returned a copy of the notice along with the parking fee, we would receive a citation. So I walked over to the fee facility, and found that they still hadn't put envelopes in the post! Apparently, the cops had come by, wrote the warnings, put them on our windshields, but couldn't be bothered to put the envelopes needed to make the payments where anyone could use them.

So we wrapped the required two dollars in the warning notices and dropped them into the box.

They better not send me a citation.

Anyway, we got in the car and headed home, stopping in the town of Warm Springs for a coffee. Warm Springs was crawling with tourists, and the streets were lined with gift shops and Christmas tree lots. I entered a store that advertised "Starbucks has got nothing on us," and paid $4.70 for a crappy latte made from powdered milk.

But despite the weather, and the warning, and the crappy latte made from powdered milk, we all had a great day, and drove back to Atlanta with smiles on out faces.