Wish I would have known about that get together and the exhibit, I'd have been there. I was 16 when I hitchhiked out to the Rockies from Milwaukee, to spend the summer backpacking around the Rockies and learning to be good at it. To be good at making fires and catching trout, to be comfortable in a tent during thunderstorms or invasions of mosquitoes, or to have my tent pitched above the treeline, and for the first time in my life, to see the stars so plentiful and magnificent and infinite all around me. To feel right-sized for the first time in my young life. I brought three books with me in 1976, On the Road by Jack Kerouac, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, and Notes on Love and Courage, by Hugh Prather. I also picked up a paperback in Boulder of short stories by Hemingway...all of which kept me great company that bicentennial summer, where I was trying to piece together myself and the world around me. I still keep those books on one of my nightstands, and though I have read many, many more books those still hold a special place in my heart. Thank you for channel and your readings and thoughts on what I consider to be still one of the greatest ever written.
Wow! Fascinating. I would like to have been there. Having read ZAMM 6 or 8 times through my life, I intended to write to Pirsig to tell him what an impact his book made on my life. But due to my chronic procrastination, I didn't get round to it before he passed.
