Completing circles is an honorable thing. I look for meaning the way one peels back the skin of an onion or a poem. I love the smooth surfaces of things—like eking out the meaning of a moment—especially in writing, when you think you know a thing, you realize you don’t. So, you dive back in and, perhaps with patience, it opens further.

Lately, I’ve been taking long walks and hikes around my new Northern New England home, Manchester, New Hampshire. As my boots find their rhythm on the earth, I’m reminded of all the other places I’ve walked—with some degree of assurance that I am, in fact, being taken care of. Hiking, like writing, has a way of doing that. It settles you. It sets you right. It reminds you who you are.

When I first came to these parts—just a bit farther north—I wrote about Riprap, Gary Snyder’s poem and metaphor, as a way of marking the start of my sojourn see: The Journey: Proctor’s Riprap. Snyder turned 95 last week and still inspires me, especially when I remember the stories he told when I met him years ago—about living with the other Beat poets, about the forests, the mountains, the long days of labor in Oregon and Washington, and the Zen practice that undergirded it all.

Gary Snyder wrote a poem called Riprap, first published in 1959, when he was reflecting on his time working logging roads in Oregon. A riprap path is built by laying irregular stones side by side to keep the road from washing away—to hold the earth in place against weather, time, and wear.

That image has stayed with me all these years.

I, too, riprap my way across the terrains I travel. Through writing. Through remembering. Through living. I try to set down images and experiences in a way that keeps them from being swept away by the storms that inevitably come. That’s what life brings for me—a kind of guided meditation, a lived practice, so that the reader might catch a glimpse of joy or heartbreak they didn’t even know they needed. Or perhaps something they had forgotten but now comes rushing back to the surface, like it never left.

There are very few things I won’t write about—but I chose not to write about my full journey to Teotihuacán. That choice reminds me of a story Gary once told me about his time living with Allen Ginsberg in Berkeley, back in the 1950s.

One day, Gary comes home from work. He opens the door to their shared apartment and sees Ginsberg, eyes glued to a book.

“Hey, what are you reading?”

No answer.

Gary steps closer and realizes—it’s not a book. “Hey man, that’s my journal! Why are you reading my journal?”

Ginsberg, without even looking up, says, “Because I am a writer.”

That’s what we do. We read each other. We walk the roads that others have paved—roads that have been shaped by years, even centuries, of footsteps before us. Our paths may be new or well-worn, but each of us makes our own imprint on the earth. Some choices — and words — are for others. Some are just for ourselves. Alone.

Snyder’s Riprap is more than just a masterful metaphor—placing words “stone by stone.” It’s also about what he chooses not to place down. What he keeps close. The people, the places, the memories he fiercely protects. Maybe that’s part of why he’s lived so long—longer than almost any of his Beat contemporaries. He built his life with intention. With care.

Snyder sits firmly atop my Pantheon of poets. I return to Riprap often, especially when I’m starting or ending a thing.

To remind me why I even exist.

May it always be so.

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From The Journey: Proctor’s Riprap

Curated Reading and Listening:

My hike (back in July of 2021) made me think of Gary Snyder and his poem “Riprap.” I met Gary at a school in the Bay Area about twenty-five years ago. He told me so many wonderful stories about the world, about his poet friends, and about life. From his time growing up in Oregon and living in the Sierra’s, Gary would have deeply recognized and appreciated the work Proctor folk do in the world everyday. Hear Gary read “Rirap” HERE.