I couldn’t remember whether I had put fresh sheets in the guest room.  I imagined that it must be hot somewhere. I wondered whether the litter box would get changed.

I thought about how badly I smelled; and about how badly Ann smelled.  I reflected on Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. I remembered my sleeping bag – that really smelled.  

The rope snaked through the snow in front of me.

The tent was wet when I stuffed it.  I wondered if it was frozen. A raven circled overhead.  I worried that it would dig up our food.

My hip flexors hurt.  I had a hot spot on my foot.  Every now and then, it looked like it might clear.

Thoughts of kids and friends and the office drifted through the ping-pong ball that was the white-out world that I had walked in for hours. My shoulders ached. Again. Still.

Man’s Search for Meaning.  My search for meaning. Some sense of meaning.

My chest heaved. The load heavy. One step in front of the other.  Up the Kahiltna.

One can’t exactly be aimless on a glacier.  But you can get pretty damn close.

I have always enjoyed the big carries up a mountain.  My mind is able to wander unrestrained. And in the wandering, it is replenished.

There’s a Zen teaching that compares the mind to a strong bull. The bull will go crazy if you lock it into a small paddock. But if you turn it out into a big pasture, it naturally quiets down.

“The big pasture is an attitude of mindful curiosity,” writes psychologist Joan Borysenko. It doesn’t matter what happens next. One thing is as good as another. Tension or peace, joy or sorrow, boredom or excitement. All are the same. Not inherently good or bad. Just what’s happening in the moment. Wait a minute, or even a few seconds, and something else will happen. Thoughts are as impermanent as clouds.

In a big pasture, the mind begins to rest.  The petty doesn’t disappear.  But the debris begins to settle.  Like one of those Christmas globes with the plastic snow particles: Things clear when you stop shaking.

My mind became more peaceful on the Kahiltna.  I was able to swim in its essential nature: curiosity, introspection, creativity, inquisitiveness.  And I was able to see more clearly.

Deepak Chopra says, “To make the right choices in life, you have to get in touch with your soul. To do this, you need to experience solitude, which most people are afraid of, because in the silence, you hear the truth and know the solutions.”

“Without space to grow, our best ideas may never materialize,” writes Scott Dinsmore for Goodlife Zen. “We have to clear out some room.”

Darren Hardy uses the analogy of attempting to grow an oak tree in a flower pot. Eventually, if you don’t give it some space, it becomes root bound.

Days drifted into nights and into weeks of wandering in my mind. What a luxury, what a gift to spend my time with Frankl and one of the most important books I’ve ever read.

And  then to imagine my own book ideas and photography projects and speaking topics.  To look at the clouds. And the towering ridges.  And to think about Meaning. Or about Nothing.

Our society tells us to stay inside the lines, but the real world gives us a blank sheet of paper and infinite creativity,” writes Dan Miller.

But we need to create space for that.

I miss the pasture of the Kahiltna.

A really good shepherd gives his sheep as big a pasture as possible.  The challenge is to do that for ourselves.