Walking up and around the long ridge of Tamalpais, "Bay Mountain," circling and climbing-chanting-to show respect and to clarify the mind. Philip Whalen, Allen Ginsberg, and I learned this practice in Asia. So we opened a route around Tam. It takes a day.
Stage One
Muir Woods: the bed of Redwood Creek just where the Dipsea Trail crosses it. Even in the dryest season of this year some running water. Mountains make springs.
Prajnaparamita-hridaya-sutra
Dharani for Removing Disasters
Four Vows
Splash across the creek and head up the Dipsea Trail, the steep wooded slope and into meadows. Gold dry grass. Cows- a huge pissing, her ears out, looking around with large eyes and mottled nose. As we laugh. "-Excuse us for laughing at you." Hazy day, butterflies tan as grass that sit on silver-weathered fenceposts, a gang of crows. "I can smell fried chicken" Allen says -only the simmering California laurel leaves. The trail winds crossed and intertwining with a dirt jeep road.
Two
A small twisted ancient interior live oak splitting a rock outcrop an hour up the trail.
Dharani for Removing Disasters
The Heat Mantra
A tiny chorten before this tree.
Into the woods. Maze fence gate. Young Douglas fir, redwood, a new state of being. Sun on madrone: to the bare meadow knoll. (Last spring a bed of wild iris about here and this time too, a lazuli bunting.)
Three
A ring of outcropped rocks. A natural little dolmen-circle right where the Dipsea crests on the ridge. Looking down a canyon to the ocean- not so far.
Dharani for Removing Disasters
Hari Om Namo Shiva
And on to Pan Toll, across the road and up the Old Mine Trail. A doe and a fawn, silvery gray. More crows.
Four
Rock springs. A trickle even now-
The Sarasvati Mantra
Dharani for Removing Disasters
- in the shade of a big oak spreading out the map on a picnic table. Then up the Benstein Trail to Rifle Camp, old food-cache boxes hanging from wires. A bit north, in the oak woods and rocks, a neat little saddhu hut built of dry natural bits of wood and parts of old crates; roofed with shakes and black plastic. A book called Harmony left there. Lunch by the stream, too tiny a trickle, we drink water from our bota. The food offerings are swiss cheese sandwiches, swede bread with liverwurst, salami, jack cheese, olives, gomoku-no-moto from a can, grapes, panettone with apple-currant jelly and sweet butter, oranges, and soujouki- greek walnuts in grape juice paste. All in the shade, at Rifle Camp.
Five
A notable serpentine outcropping, not far after Rifle Camp.
Om Shri Maitreya
Dharani for Removing Disasters
Six
Collier Spring- in a redwood grove- water trickling out a pipe.
Dharani of the Great Compassionate One
California nutmeg, golden chinquapin the fruit with burrs, the chaparral. Following the North Side Trail.
Seven
Inspiration Point
Dharani for Removing Disasters
Mantra for Tara
Looking down on Lagunitas. The gleam of water storage in the brushy hills. All that smog- and Mt. St. Helena faintly in the north. The houses of San Anselmo and San Rafael, once large estates..."Peacock Gap Country Club"- rocky brush climb up the North Ridge Trail.
Eight
Summit of Mt. Tamalpais. A ring of rock pinnacles around the lookout.
Prajnaparamita-hridaya-sutra
Dharani for Removing Disasters
Dharani of the Great Compassionate One
Hari Krishna Mantra
Om Shri Maitreya
Hari Om Namo Shiva
All about the bay, such smog and sense of heat. May the whole planet not get like this.
Start the descent down the Throckmorton Hogback Trail. (Fern Canyon an alternative.)
Nine
Parking lot of Mountain Home. Cars whiz by, sun glare from the west.
Dharani for Removing Disasters
Gopala Mantra
Then, across from the California Alpine Club, the Ocean View Trail goes down. Some yellow broom flowers still out. The long descending trail into shadowy giant redwood trees.
Ten
The bed of Redwood Creek again.
Prajnaparamita-hridaya-sutra
Dharani for Removing Disasters
Hari Om Namo Shiva
Hari Krishna Mantra
Four Vows
-standing in our little circle, blowing the conch, shaking the staff rings, right in the parking lot.
Poem: "The Circumambulation of Mt. Tamalpais" by Gary Snyder from his collection "Mountains and Rivers Without End."
Photo: "A Pikes Peak Prospector" by William Henry Jackson Colorado circa 1900.
Painting: "Sunset Glow on Mr. Tamalpais" by William Keith, 1896.
Prajnaparamita-hridaya-sutra and the chant
