Vision Quest
Poem: A Tribe Apart [1] – Jonathan Thompkins
Vision Quest:
Wilderness is survival by knowledge of nature and wits
Reality is a slippery slope
Lonely spiritual wanderer, kayaking, listening to Grateful Dead, an initiate up on ancient pathway to manhood
The footpath north toward Signal Knob
Senior year is the last one to get things right
Mancub, king of the mountain, friend of all living things
Hooked on playing a native drum with Grateful Dead tapes
Expressing feelings in rhythms and song trouble speaking directly
Four small brown & white chickadees are part of this place and so am I
Pain of leaving Andy, Allan, Bill, Joan and parents is so great he moans aloud and writhes in agony
How delicate the balance is for what makes us happy
Nothing seems to be happening, everything is happening
Berates himself for not being more sensitive to those he cares about
Shroud of pain and failure engulfing him lifts with the rising stars
Belief in the capacity to change
Maybe four sunrises and four sunsets equal four days
Parents getting old and dying soon; not being a good son
When the Big Apple Circus came to town, Jonathan Tompkins took his mom
Honor & Other Relative Things
Small-minded to say animals don’t make choices
Ethics as something you need for your job? Really?
Value: environment, friends, outdoor sports
Who gets the heart transplant?
Calculus? Ethically I would cheat
Take responsibility for our actions
Don’t do something if you can’t live up to it
Rudder to navigate the world that lies ahead
Vision Quest isolated me so much from the average person, I felt like some kind of creep
Schools are like prisons; they don’t teach you how to live
Society doubts, but most doubts are about myself
If the world doesn’t change, how can we?
Shedding Light on Darkness:
Steamy heat and lush greenery intoxicating
Winter: depression enters life like a rolling fog
The cold long darkness of winters in Alaska destroyed his parents’ marriage
Unrelenting gloom of endless nights
Feeling responsible for jump-starting his parents
Pressure an only child feels from being family glue gets to him
School is a boring blur of wasted time inspiring little effort
Sun sears away inner fog and shadows
The ocean draws him toward new frontiers of seeing
Coconuts look like wizened faces that crack open revealing luscious, sweet flesh
Teacher: take however long it takes, until people get comfortable
No room in school for honesty; it breaks your spirit, pushing you further and further down the hole
It tears your soul to pieces
It devastates your self-esteem
Everything in there is awkward
Something catches your eye and you’re like, Geez, how does that work?
High school takes ninth graders and turns them into metal poles, taking off all the edges
It is beautiful to see people set free
That’s fucked up, that’s fucked up, that’s fucked up
Feel so real like I am in the center of the galaxy
Barracuda, stalking us like wolves stalking antelope
Drugs allow looking back on what’s going on; becoming part of nature
Now or never
Happy people who have light in their eyes
Making connections at different levels
Trashed out, my mind started falling downhill
“Hold judgment to yourself lest you wind up on this road”
The Great Unknown of College Lies Ahead:
Kayaking: a total mind-body connection, confidence and euphoria
Perceives things more clearly on the river, it’s not me, it’s society
Just leave civilization
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[1] Patricia Hersch, A Tribe Apart, NY: Random House, 1998.
Henry E. Hooper 