I pulled around the gate, down the steep road to a gauntlet of curious signs. The first few were ominous, almost cautionary. "Private property" and the like. Then, as I traveled farther downhill, they became humorous, then down-right twisted.
"Grownups allowed if accompanied by children" one said. "I may be old, but I refuse to grow up!" said another. Even farther was a sign for a pay phone. About 25 feet above the sign, nailed-up and out-of-reach was a dummy phone. Whoever Rusty was, he had a sense of humor.
The driveway terminated in a collection of simple buildings, which included a bunkhouse, covered spring, an old-fashioned outhouse, a barn, a kitchen and more signs. One read, "Don’t ask me where I got the signs."
I walked into the kitchen and stood in an eerie silence, "Hello?" I shot out. There was no answer. I looked around the kitchen. There were jars of peanut butter, a clear bread box filled with bread, jelly, snacks, fruit, coffee and sweets. A sign above the sink said, "Help yourself to the food, just don’t be an a–" with a picture of a pig. On the walls around the kitchen were thousands of Polaroids pinned to the wall. Each had a head shot, a name, and a date.
Looking through a set of faded photos, it all turned a bit spooky. I called again. "Hello?" Nothing. I figured Rusty had become a recluse, holed up in one of the buildings and not coming out.
So I sat down and cooked dinner. Just after eating, I heard the roar of a truck coming down the driveway. It came around the corner, parked, and a thick, bearded man stepped out. He was wearing a straw hat, suspenders, thick glasses and a warm smile.
"You must be Rusty," I said nervously, and slipped my hand into his. He looked a bit like Hank Williams Jr. "I am, I am," he said, finishing with "Welcome!" "Did you get something to eat?" he inquired. "I did," I said.
He invited me in. We ducked to a small wood-and-stone cabin built just after the turn of the century. I sat down across from him and had a look around. It was a museum of sorts, an homage to hiking days gone by. It was stuffed with functioning antique furniture, stoves, oil lamps, tools and cast iron cooking equipment. "I’m Amish," he opened with. "We don’t do Corvettes or swimming pools. I just got my first light bulb last year," he said with a hint of regret in his voice. "To tell you the truth, I don’t like it."
I looked up at the ceiling at hand-hewn beams filled with a collage of vintage camping gear, tools and knick-knacks.
"Yep, around these parts, I’m the last of the first," he said, sounding worried. I asked him to elaborate. "Since 1982, I have taken in over 13,000 Appalachian Trail hikers during their 2,174 mile journey."
He continued: "Besides myself, there used to be nine establishments between Georgia and Maine where a hiker could sleep on a bed, take a shower or pick up mail. They were monasteries, Jesuit hostels, church functions, places like that. They’ve all closed now, making me the last of the first."
He reached for a huge stack of guidebooks and magazines, thumbed to a selected page, then handed it to me. In one form or another, Rusty and his Hard Time Hollow appeared in all of them.
"I really didn’t receive much recognition ’til National Geographic did a piece on the trail," he said. "Then, in ’03, we were flooded with hikers."
"I feed all of ‘em pancakes before they leave," he said. "I may go through 800 pounds of flour and 30 gallons of syrup" in a season.
Besides feeding them physically, he feeds them spiritually, offering guidance, sympathy, or just an open ear. On any given day he received calls and letters from people around the world, asking advice, wanting feedback, or just saying hello.
I asked him why he did it – why did he care for these thousands of hikers. He said simply, "I love people." Then he quoted Hebrews: 13:2: "Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unÂawares."
He leaned over as if to tell a secret.
He whispered: "Sometimes I get a bit lonely out here all alone."
"I do, too," I confided.
We said goodnight and I went to the bunkhouse and went to bed. The next morning Rusty and I had breakfast. After that he took my picture and placed it on the wall. He then said, "You need a trail name. Everyone has a trail name."
He handed me a pen where I scribed "Soulcycler" next to my name. He read the name and moved in close.
"Tell me, are you a Christian?" he said in a whisper.
"Buddhist," I said.
"That’s OK," he said, "At least you have a direction."
I thought it nice not to be judged or converted. He seemed to accept me just as I was, and in that I moved closer. Here was a man that housed, fed and cared for complete strangers as if they were his own children. In a way, I guess we are. We walked together back to the road and said our good-byes. I knew instinctively that I would never see Rusty again. He opened his arms wide and held me for some time. I was deeply moved. As I rode to the driveway, I took one last look at Rusty. He stood bear-like, right next to a sign. My favorite of them all. It was passage from the Bible that read simply: "Love one another."
I waved and rode away.
By the time I had reached Charlottesville, I’d found silence. Not silence in the conventional sense. Thomas Jefferson’s hometown was bustling with activity and still held plenty of noise. This was an internal silence that moved from the inside out. Earlier that day, acting on an invitation from founder Bill Stephens, I had followed a set of scribbled directions to the Blue Ridge Zen Center where I would spend the next three days. After brief introductions, I entered the Zen-do, bowed at the doorway, then sat on a cushion and crossed my legs. Accompanied by the faint smell of incense came the sound of the bell. I closed my eyes.
At first I looked around my mind as one looks around a room. All of the mental furniture was there – memories, people, plans, regrets, joy, sorrow. As I had practiced in the past, I began emptying the room as if throwing furniture out a second story window. When I finally reached a place of relative still I simply watched my breath … rising … falling.
In the absence of thought, my mind likened to the surface of water absent of wind or rain – calm, still, reflective. That stillness shifted to a great sense of belonging and connectedness. Oneness. Sometime later, the bell rang, and the session ended. Afterward, we shared Thai food and I spoke with Bill about Zen and science, two things at the heart of his life.
Both a Zen practitioner and a retired physicist for 35 years, Bill’s contributions to advanced electronics had led to breakthrough research with particle accelerators in the field of high-energy physics. Besides being a physicist, Bill was a Zen priest, or Osho. After receiving Dharma transmission from Zen-master Joshu Sasaki Roshi, Bill studied with great practitioners including renowned author Peter Mathiessen.
When I asked how he’d gotten into Zen, he said that it started with a firm grounding in Christianity. "Each night I would go to the window and pray. One night, between prayers, I experienced a powerful connection that derived from a pristine consciousness. It came in the silence.
"I had done enough reading to know that was the basis of Zen, and so I switched," he said. "It’s kind of like that scripture from the Bible that states, ‘Be still and know God.’"
His story captured my imagination. I had a very similar experience. We discussed some of the recent research of quantum physics pointing toward singularity of all phenomena. It seemed to match Zen’s fundamental belief in the oneness of all things – a singular fabric of interconnectedness where the concept of a separate-self is believed to be an illusion. I told him I was still a bit confused by the concept and asked him to elaborate.
"When you give up the idea of a self separate from the birds and the trees and the white clouds … you begin to embrace them, because you ARE them," he said.
It seemed to flick a switch within my mind.
He went on to describe Zen as the "great leveler," explaining that within the Zendo, people of wildly different beliefs could sit next to one another without conflict. He concluded, "They could be Muslim or Jew, Democrat or Republican, within the silence of meditation, all arguments cease."
Bill and I finished our dinner and our discussion, and I spent the next few days with him and his son, Jim. We walked the majestic courtyards of the University of Virginia, and strolled the gardens of Jefferson’s Monticello, and ate and meditated.
When it came time to leave, I packed my things and gave Bill a hug. Before saying good-bye, I picked up a cartoon he had sitting in the Zen-do. It showed a series of creatures standing on a set of stairs.
On each step stood creature in a different state of evolution until it reached a nervous looking man. The first creature below looked at the empty stairs above still waiting above the man and stated, "I don’t know if you noticed, but there are a lot more steps to go."
