Havre Nice Day: Long walk, short drive

The other day, I had an unusual conversation with a gentleman, and the nature of that conversation stuck with me.

I was driving on U.S. Highway 2 when I stopped for a man who asked for a ride to Rod’s Drive In. Once he had gotten into my vehicle, I asked him if he would need to be picked up after he was finished eating. He simply replied, “No, I’ll walk.”

I then asked, “Are you sure, sir? It’s cold out; it’s really no trouble.”

“I like to walk,” the gentleman said. “Gives time to think, lets the mind wander. Meditating.”

I looked at the man for a moment, then back to the road.

“Thich Nhat Hanh says that walking is one of the greatest forms of meditation,” I replied.

The man turned in his seat to look at me and asked, “Who?”

“Thich Nhat Hanh, he is a Vietnamese monk. Of the same breed and era of the monk  Thích Quang Duc, who set himself on fire to protest the Vietnam War, sitting silently meditating in the streets of Saigon as his flesh turned to ash. Thich Nhat Hanh, was from out of that world and emerged, starting a monastery in France, helping millions understand the importance of peace and nonviolence. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. even nominated him for a Nobel Prize in 1967. In Dr. King’s words, ‘I do not personally know of anyone more worthy of this prize than this gentle monk from Vietnam. He is an apostle of peace and non-violence. His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity.’”

The man turned back and replied, “I agree with Hanh, I find that in this world people move too quickly, get into their cars, close the doors, cut themselves off from the outside world as they burn down the highways.”

He paused for a moment, taking a deep breath, then continued, “When you’re out walking, you can see everything, hear everything, whether it’s silence or thunderous noises, there is something to it that makes your feet plant deep into the soil and feel something more.”

I grinned, then replied, “Kind of like Clarisse McClellan in “Fahrenheit 451” (by Ray Bradbury). She liked to walk. She talked about her uncle, driving down the highway at low speeds, while everyone else is zipping down the roads at a hundred miles an hour, so that he could see everything.”

The man looked confused for a moment, “It has been a long time since I read that book.”

“The book talks about how everyone drives at insane speeds on the highways, so much so that people have to extend the lengths of billboards so people can read them. A flash of green, it’s grass, but you don’t see it. A flash of brown, a forest. A flash of white in the sky, it’s a cloud, but everyone is moving so fast that they never actually see it.”

He nodded his head.

“We get so trapped,” I continued. “Everything is go, go, go. Never stop and breath, working hard to get that next paycheck, although there is nothing wrong with that, but life is about so much more. Politics, entertainment, local gossip, people can be living their whole lives without ever really having a life.”

“It’s a shame,” the man replied.

“I knew so many different people who worked hard for 20, 30, even 40 years, providing for their families, paying bills, and there is nothing wrong with that, actually it is quite admirable. But they work themselves to the bones, saving money for that ‘someday’ that they will have time, then before they know it there is no time left.”

He began to laugh, “That is why I love being in Montana. Fishing, hunting, camping, hitching, whatever, there are more people here, I think, that understand that it’s the little things that matter, to make time for the little things.”

And with that we had arrived at Rod’s. He stepped out, we said our goodbyes, and I drove off, looking more carefully at the world I was driving in.

Having the knowledge is one thing, I thought, but it’s easy for anyone to forget what is important.

“Happiness only real when shared.” — Christopher McCandless aka Alexander Supertramp.