Sedona Ramble II

Heading into the full moon in Libra one year later now. The human world strangely paused–not our minds and spirits, but our outward activities severely circumscribed. Pandemic.

I knew something was coming. Knew it back in 2002, after having a breakthrough experience. I felt something big was coming that would change everything, possibly even wipe out human life as we know it, but it mostly felt hopeful. Back then it felt joyous, like humans were on the brink of a revolution in consciousness. The times were dangerous for sure, but we would wake up. We would turn on a dime.

In early April 2016 I sat on my side stoop in Glens Falls, NY, and had another kind of experience. It was the cooling evening of a kissing-warm day. The trees were budding and the birds were singing, and the sun was setting in glorious yellow-orange and blue. Sitting there on those steps, witnessing all that glory, I suddenly felt I was one of the last humans to behold spring unfolding. It wasn’t a thought, it wasn’t an abstract musing. It was real, and terrifying, and humbling, and sad.

That was a bad year. We lost a lot of our culture keepers that year. Prince and Leonard Cohen, David Bowie, Harper Lee, Alan Rickman, Elie Wiesel, Gene Wilder, Carrie Fisher. The list goes on. The Western world lost a lot of culture keepers, and the United States publicly lost its moral compass. Despite his drawing huge crowds and running a strong campaign funded by The People of the United States–through multitudinous small donations–the media ignored Bernie Sanders and focused on DJTrump. And despite the overwhelming public support for Bernie Sanders, the DNC gave us Hilary Clinton. And despite his delusionary campaign promises and openly demeaning, even disgusting, behavior toward disabled people, women, and give him time anyone you could possibly put in front of him, Donald (he tells it like it is) Trump became the 45th president of the United States.

It was a surreal year, 2016, and all that summer I couldn’t shake the sense of being on the Titanic when all the rich people were still asking for hot toddys and complaining about putting on life jackets. Except it wasn’t only rich people, it was most people.

Since then the feeling of something impending has grown stronger and stronger. I don’t fly as a rule–the last time I’d been on a flight was 2011 for my brother-in-law’s wedding, and before that 2001 for my grandmother’s funeral. It never made a lot of sense to me for people to fly all the time, for a whim, but as the years went by it got so that any venture that put me more than an easy drive from my family felt like I was taking a chance late in a game of musical chairs. When the music stopped, I wanted to be home.

However, last winter found me by chance with a bunch of Delta miles I had not purchased but were redeemable only by me, and my mother kept telling me her house in Arizona was open as home base. I planned a solo trip for April, during the full moon, and booked Air BnB for some camping equipment and an inside scoop on where to primitive camp in Sedona, where I was led on that lovely, healing morning ramble.

The point of all this is to say that I’m a sensitive. There are subtle subtexts that play along with the more apparent energies of this world, and people do not usually speak about them. It drives me crazy sometimes, because I know I’m not the only one who sees or feels these subtexts, but the dominant mode is to ignore them. Out of politeness or a sense of how inconvenient and inefficient it would be to address their existence. But now that the game of musical chairs has stopped I’ve been feeling a lot of fear and intensity, and I know it’s not all my own. The past few years have been incredibly wild, pushing the envelope of our ability to swallow one more inconceivable thing over and over again–but people have always had their busyness, their distractions, their vacations to keep reality at bay, and now we have been grounded with ourselves and the crazy news.

So I’m feeling all this intensely and my mother, who is a lifelong Republican, emailed me to inquire about my health. I responded:

…the whole thing is very heavy and it wears on me. I think it’s the not knowing what is going to happen, and seeing every person in my life as possibly gone all of a sudden. Seeing everything really, as possibly gone. It isn’t just the virus, it’s the whole world and the changing weather, the earthquakes and fires and floods. Humanity has tipped things too far, and nature needs to find balance again.


When you asked me to go to London with you, even if I did have a passport I didn’t want to go because I’ve been feeling this coming for a long time. I didn’t know what or when, but I knew something was coming that would likely shut down the world–and any chance of return.

And she wrote back:

You have such an innate sense of oneness with this world and such a sense of responsibility that I am not surprised you had strong feelings about what was to come. I am not a biblical scholar by any means but there is the prediction of a catastrophic end to the world as we know it. I choose to believe it is a major event that will bring us all to a place of true beginning – a reset button – if you will – that allows us all to make the changes we need to in order to move forward in a different and more positive direction.


I hear sadness and some fear in your words and I guess I have a more positive take on this – as horrible as it is. I think of this as it is – it is an opportunity to come together and restructure our lives and the world we live in. At 78 years young I am not afraid of dying, just very sad at what I will miss in my loved ones’ lives. My world (life) will definitely end but you have so many years ahead to work toward the changes that need to happen for us to continue to live in this world.


You and I are at opposite sides of the political spectrum but share common core values – but we can all come together through this. This isn’t political – this is changing the world.

When I read my mother’s words, I thought of my experience in the desert, under the April full moon, and knew it was for sharing, not for keeping. These experiences of the subtleties of life, the subtexts, the undercurrents, have been scoffed at by the mainstream and kept hidden too long. If even one person reads my account and understands they are not alone, are never alone in this beautiful, magical world, then my purpose has been served. But make no mistake–my love for people has its roots in loving this Earth. I write to express my re-learning how to live in harmony with all of life. As part of remembering who we are.

It’s come to the time when we see what is essential–we recognize what is essential. We may have varying needs based on personal proclivities (to be honest, I’d been hoarding notebooks and shampoo for months before this happened), but certain things I think we can agree that everyone needs. Clean water and clean (not poisoned) food. A safe place to live and develop meaningful relationships. We also need natural, unspoiled places, because the balance of life depends on these. Trees, animals, water, the insects, the fungi. The hard truth is, humans could become extinct just as easily as humans have wiped out many brothers and sisters with our uncontrolled “I, me, mine” and “I want.”

We have spent too long chained to an agenda that does not serve the Earth and its future generations. We may disagree on many things, but the essential truth is before us.

It is time to fight for this Earth.

Boynton Canyon Trail, Sedona, Arizona, 2019

Sedona Ramble

I am moved to share an experience that happened in April 2019, during the full moon, while I was camping alone in the desert just outside of Sedona, Arizona. It isn’t something I thought to share until now–as the opening line of the account says, “This was for me.” But a lot has happened between then and now. Humanity has been stopped in it’s ceaseless outward activity and forced to wait, and wonder. Will this virus kill my loved ones? Will this virus kill me? What is going to happen in the fallout?

I want to share this account for many reasons, but the primary reason is to offer it, the way a wild strawberry offers itself to you as you pass by on the trail.

∞∞∞

This was for me.

Yesterday I awoke just as dawn was glowing in the east–still dark but, with the full moon, light enough to walk. I put my sandals on and stepped outside the tent, which had been wide open all night on both sides. I thought I’d go pee then come back to the tent and figure out what I was doing, but instead of peeing I kept walking slowly along a trail I’d found the previous morning. Rounding a bend I came face to face with the moon. She was right there, large and bright before me, and I thought of all the pain I had caused in my life through my own bad choices. I cried a little, strong but brief, cleansing, and asked to release and be released. I have been over this ground many times. We make bad choices based on bad options and faulty knowledge. I took responsibility as best I could, did the best I could, trying to be what I thought everyone wanted me to be until I just couldn’t anymore.

I stood there facing Grandmother Moon and let her see these choices, and I asked for forgiveness and to let them go. I cried, grieving for the pain and confusion I had caused others and myself. Tears streamed down my face and in my hair, but I did not wipe them away. When the tears stopped flowing I walked on and soon came to a place where bouquets of white flowers had come up in profusion overnight. They were all over the trail and up a little hill to my left. I felt certain they were telling me to go that way, so I followed the flowers up the hill to a small campsite, unused for a very long time, where someone had built one of those cairns you see all over Sedona. This one had fallen, and I stopped and rebuilt it before realizing this wasn’t what the flowers were leading me to.

I stood up and saw the “Weathertop” hill I’d climbed the previous morning, and thought maybe that was what Spirit intended–for me to climb that hill again to witness the sun rise. I was wearing sandals and this didn’t sound good to me, but trusting I was being led I started walking toward it, down the other side of the knoll I was on. Soon I came to a blasted juniper–very old and its trunk split in two. It reminded me of Bob and I, our marriage split apart. I stopped to talk with it. I touched its green fronds and told it I brought greetings from the north, from my tree friends the maple and my new tree friends in New Paltz, though I didn’t know what kind they were.

The juniper and I did not really connect. I felt no hostility, but no friendly warmth. During the time I was visiting the moon went behind a cloud and I looked around and saw that there weren’t any white flower bouquets nearby–I had left them when I came down the slope. I had gone off course.

So up I went again and there were my guides, showing me the way. Left again, and straightaway I came upon another very old juniper–this one was also split, but not in two. It was split into four and all were growing individually, intact. It was a clear message to me that ending my marriage did not have to destroy my family. We could grow as individuals, together. It also reminded me that codependency is not healthy. Togetherness at the cost of my own being, my true nature, is not something that Life asks of me, or of anyone.

I greeted this juniper, thanked and blessed it for its message, and followed the flowers again, farther to the left and down another slope, where I saw a large, round boulder. It made my heart leap and tears come to my eyes again. Tears of joy. I immediately walked toward it, and just as I reached it and realized it was a large mother “keystone” of a semicircle of smaller stones, coyotes began howling and yipping all around. At first I thought to be afraid, but then I touched the boulder and let their voices move my spirit in gratitude. When they stopped, I looked at the boulder. Near my face, where my hand was touching, was a heart. A very clear heart, in red stone, in an otherwise light composite.

Shows the size and orientation of the heart on the boulder. Just about that big, in that orientation.

I touched the heart and set my intention. It was automatic, like I knew exactly what to do. I asked to live my life with intent. Conscious, clear, from my heart. I said it in more words and images than that, but the essence was–I wish to live the remainder of my life from my heart, with clear intention. I wish to give to the world what I have to give, from my true self. Then I was crying again, cleansing tears of joy. I pressed my forehead to the heart and gave thanks, then pressed my body against the boulder, hugging her and thanking her, allowing my tears to enter her body. She smelled good, and I told her so. I pulled back and gently stroked the heart with my fingertips, kissed it, then continued on around her, into the semicircle of stones and beyond, giving thanks as I went. The white flowers led me up again to the old campsite, and on back down to my own camp, where I finally squatted and peed, feeling that I was releasing much more than yesterday’s water.

*One last thing about my dawn walk:

It was Magic. I was sure of this, certain of this. And the Moon told me: do not lose this. Do not forget.

Magic is real. Life is Magic.

Don’t let this go.

White flowers that led me on a ramble.
Lovely spirit guides. Sedona, Arizona, in April 2019.

Re-entry

I’ve been disconnected from computers and the internet for two weeks, which I spent in the mountains, hiking, worrying about vegan food and then saying fuck it I’ll be mostly vegan and throw in some eggs from pasture-raised chickens and some cheese from pasture-fed cows, sleeping, reading, and consuming a fair amount of wine. I finished two books and started a third (The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, Let’s Speak English by Mary Cagle, and The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin, respectively), and found out my favorite time to wake up is actually 9am, not 5:15.

It has been a very wet spring and summer here in New York State, and in the Adirondacks that means mosquitoes. Devout and fanatical and swarming. Any venture out of doors, for even the smallest amount of time, drew an instant posse of bloodsucking vectors, which meant that I had a choice: either become their feast or submit to DEET. I did try the non-DEET, “natural” stuff, which smells almost as bad, but I had to spray it every hour or so, and there was always the feeling of being watched…they fly near enough for you to hear ’em, letting you know it’s only a matter of time before they land again.

So I am out in the Pharaoh Lake Wilderness, hiking miles and miles through mud and over stones and up steep inclines smelling like Deep Woods OFF and sweating through all my clothes and backpack too. More than once it occurred to me that many people would question why I want to do these things. What is the draw? In the midst of these hikes, I dreamed about showering and settling in for wine and a good read. I stumbled on tree roots and worried about getting caught out there, no phone reception and a broken ankle and one ibuprofen and a decent amount of water but not that decent….and I wondered why I do this. Why I keep coming back for more. And other than the beauty, and the peace I feel in the woods–the sense that my little self, with my little story and my little worries are, well, little in the grand scheme of things–I didn’t have an answer.

Then I took a hike–not a very long hike, not even ten miles–and I found out why.

When I opened the register to sign in (it might save your life!), two pictures of timber rattlesnakes greeted me: the yellow phase and the black phase. Timber rattlers are present in these here woods–stay on the trails and be careful when approaching rock ledges where they might be sunning themselves. I’m thinking, This is cool. Second time this summer I’ve been in a place where timber rattlers are supposed to reside. I’m thinking I’d like to see one. I sign in and Lucy, my intrepid Black Labrador, leads the way into the woods.

And we are merrily trotting along in the fullness of our early-hike energy. There is a grass that looks like bamboo, except it’s only a foot high. Curious. A long plank bridge takes us over a marsh, opening up a view of blue sky and massive cumulus clouds. Lucy manages to step through the cracks between the planks only a couple times. We walk alongside a large stand of white pines planted by the CCC back in the 1930s, when the American president gave a shit about the American people. The trail swings to the left and becomes darker, more foresty, and we dig in to our hike in earnest.

I get in a bit of a trance when I hike sometimes–one foot in front of the other, over and over, does that to me. I was falling into this trance as I pushed my legs to carry me up a hill when suddenly I heard, live for the first time, the unmistakable sound of a rattlesnake. It took me a fraction of a second to focus where it was coming from and there is my Lucy, nose to nose with a big, coiled rattler. She had obviously not seen it until that moment, and luckily had no Lucylike ideas about chasing it or barking at it. For once–for, I swear, the only time in our relationship, she let me slowly pull her back, drawing her in like an empty fishing lure on her leash, until she stood next to me. Still clueless. We stood there together for about two minutes looking at it. It was in yellow phase, but dark and very well camouflaged, and it was right on the trail. It was coiled, its triangle head held high, and as big as my forearm in the middle. It never stopped rattling, and this was spooking me, a lot, so I looked around for a way to continue onward. Because yes I thought about turning right around and heading back to the car, but that isn’t why I was here. Why was I here? To go hiking, dammit. So we picked our way carefully through deep leaf litter off trail, looking for more rattlesnakes the whole time, and came back to the trail a safe distance on the other side. I looked back once, still amazed and filled with adrenaline, then we went quickly on our way.

∞ ∞ ∞

This has been a very difficult year. I don’t need to say this, really, because it has been a difficult year for a lot of people. But other than the massive dying off that occurred among the keepers of our culture during 2016, other than the gobsmacking political circus and the hope that flamed bright for Bernie and the defenders of our waters only to be doused by the same old bullshit: business as usual, power and money over life and love and all that really matters. Other than all that, and the ever-increasing evidence that yes, climate change is not only real, it is happening right now–other than these very big things, in my own little life, in my own little story, I have been having a difficult year. In fact, this vacation was deeply needed and looked-forward to for this reason. I needed a complete break from everything.

Hiking does this–it puts you back into your body. And the hiking had been doing its job well. Other than a couple of disturbing dreams, I had let go, for the most part, of everything that had been weighing on me since last October, and immersed myself in physicality, simplicity, and a bit of hedonism. Maybe it was the rattlesnake, or the adrenaline coursing through my body as a result of its appearance, but my mind soon picked up every worry and pain from the past year and worked me up into a full-blown panic attack. I was in the woods, with no possibility of contacting anyone, and I was sure my whole life was imploding at that moment.

To give an idea about how it is possible to believe something like this, even in the face of facts that prove otherwise, a little story. My kitty-corner neighbor at work, Alex, popped his head into my office a couple of weeks ago and asked, first, if I was OK (we’d had some hard news a few days earlier that hit me very hard), and then whether I am afraid of heights. To this I said yes, but I like to push my boundaries. So he excitedly took me into his classroom, where he and a couple of students had taped a wooden plank to the floor. They were there with Aaron, our neighbor across the way.

Alex tells me to stand in front of the plank, and that I am to jump off a building in virtual reality. I put on a headset with goggles, which showed me a city street, with a car stopped at a light–I could see across the street to a tree, maybe a park. It was cartoony, like a video game. Alex gave me earbuds, and handed me two paddles to hold in my hands. I could now hear the sounds of the city, and birds. He told me to look down to the right and push the top button. I did this and doors closed on the city scene. Elevator music was playing as I watched light move in the line between the doors for a long time. A long time. When the doors finally opened again, I was on top of the building. A flock of pigeons flew by, giving me vertigo. Alex told me to step out onto the plank, which I could see in virtual reality, and jump off. Whoa. I knew this wasn’t real–I knew it. But it was all I could do to step out on that plank. When I did, wind started blowing (he had one of his students turn a fan on). So I’m standing there in the wind, looking down maybe 30 stories to the city street below, and all of it looks like a video game, but my senses are completely fooled. I edge my way out to the end of the plank, determined to do this because I know it isn’t real. I ask Alex, “Do you die in real life when you die in a dream?” Ha ha. After a few whiny moments, saying I don’t think I can do this, I stepped–not jumped–off the plank, and almost fell when my knees buckled in surprise, finding the floor just where I knew it would be. The scene around me still said I was falling from a building, but my body knew better–the illusion had popped.

∞ ∞ ∞

On this hike, my mind conjured all the horrible scenarios waiting for me upon my return to normal life, and completely fooled me into believing that they actually were occurring at that moment. And instead of going back to try to fix everything, I was hiking farther and farther out into the woods. I kept on, to finish what I’d started.

We stopped on the shore of Lake George, where the waves from boats and the rising wind drove Lucy crazy. I heard her make sounds I’d never heard her make–at first I thought she was hurt, but then I realized she had never seen waves and she kept trying to bite them and catch them but they eluded her, making her more frantic. The more she tried to get those waves and couldn’t, the harder she tried, and it frightened me. Then, on top of everything–the snake, my mind-illusions, and the dog being freaky, those cumulus clouds had turned dark and threatening. Thunder rumbled close, and I knew we had to run for it but I knew we wouldn’t make it.

Lightning flashed, thunder boomed, and soon the rain came. I donned a poncho that kept the rain off me but made me sweat through everything twice over. I trudged along, watching Lucy ahead of me and knowing that we would eventually make it back to my car if I just kept putting one foot in front of the other. And as I clambered through the pouring rain, scared that a tree would fall on us, I clambered through the nightmare program my mind had cooked up for me, lived through scenarios I thought would kill me–mentally kill me and drive me to escape in some permanent way–and found that I could bear up as long as I kept low to the ground.

We kept going, steady and strong. We marked the place where we’d seen the snake–Lucy stopped and told me the exact spot, and I thanked my good girl. We made it across the plank bridge, where we startled a blue heron from its hiding place, past the white pines, and the bamboo grass, and the sign-in station. We walked out of the woods and onto the road, and to my car, and then, as if it were all a dream, I knew that everything I had been imagining wasn’t real. All was well, but if it wasn’t I knew I could handle it, as I had been handling it all these months, all these years, all my life.

Life is an ordeal. Hiking is an ordeal. They both push you to the limits of mental, emotional, and physical endurance, and through this you build in yourself the knowledge of your own strength. I love the beauty of the woods, I love communing with the trees and the wind and the animals. But I hike because it pushes me to know what I can bear. Going out is often joy and discovery, and sometimes difficult choices about whether to continue on a path, but it is the return that makes you burn, and shows you your true mettle. Even though you have no other choice but to keep on walking.

Lucy tilting at waves

For Father’s Day

My Dad

My dad making an awesome veggie quiche.

A few weeks ago I attended the Eastern New York Association of College & Research Libraries conference, and the vendors there were many. Perhaps you know the deal: you walk up and pretend to be interested in their product, and they shower you with swag. I am very uncomfortable with these exchanges, so I avoid them as a rule–even though Thomson-Reuters had a really neat canvas tote that I kept glancing at with a certain amount of desire. But no tote is worth what to me feels demeaning to both myself and the sales reps.

However, in my travels to and from the various talks and poster presentations, I kept passing a white-haired gentleman who looked like he wanted to be somewhere else, and my heart felt a tug whenever I passed. I smiled and said hello to him each time, and once he gave me one of the coveted bonus raffle tickets. Toward the end of the day I finally went over to speak with him, not because I was interested in his product or wanted swag, but because he looked so out of place and I know that feeling very well.

The Life and Legend of Sheridan R. Jones, by Joseph Hilko

The Life and Legend of Sheridan R. Jones, by Joseph Hilko

So we talked for a while about books, and we both agreed that hard-copy books are superior to electronic books. Then he started talking about his thirteen-year-old daughter and her smartphone. He said she has it with her constantly, that it is an addiction. When he was that age, he said, he was fishing, scouting, camping. Now all kids ever do is stay indoors with their electronic gadgets. I said yes, I had very much the same kind of childhood–Girl Scouts, camping, and even fishing. The man brightened and said, you went fishing? So I had to qualify and say, My dad used to be an avid fisherman and took me with him often. We talked for a bit longer about the sad state of childhood these days, and when I made my move to go he told me to wait a moment. He walked across the aisle to another display, grabbed a book and some literature, and came back to sit down. He opened the book and signed and dated it, then gave it to me. The Life and Legend of Sheridan R. Jones: America’s Pioneering Outdoor Writer and His Search for the Perfect Fishing Lure. Sure enough, when I opened it and started leafing through, there was a picture of this man, younger, with his little daughter holding two great big fish.

Since this conversation I have thought a lot about my father and the gifts he gave me while I was growing up. We disagree on many things, and sometimes drive each other crazy, but my dad gave me some priceless gifts that have allowed me to weather even the deadliest storms in my life.

Nature. I’ll list this one first because it is the greatest, most life-sustaining gift ever given to me, by anyone. Throughout my childhood, until I was 15 or so, vacation meant camping. And not just camping but traveling to different places, to see America and Canada. I’ll admit that many of these trips involved a great deal of fishing, which I did not particularly

First Fish

Me and my first fish.

enjoy, but camping was the best. My brothers and I got a new place to roam around in and explore, new kids to meet (sometimes), and to sleep in our own tents. My dad did things like carving out steps in the dirt using his camp shovel so that we could get into the camper easily. I loved stuff like that–it made me feel that his imagination was strong, and mine was, too. But it wasn’t just camping–during my formative years, from 6 to 14, we lived in places where I had easy access to nature and the freedom to go out in it anytime, for as long as I liked. In Houston, Texas, I rode my bike until it was a part of my being and it would never throw me off no matter how dangerous the stunt. I caught chameleons and watched them change color. I caught snakes and wrapped them around my neck to scare my mom. I dug clay in the front yard and made pots to bake in the sun. Later, in New York, while I endured a daily onslaught of bullying at school for three and a half years, a rock by a babbling brook in the woods was my safe place. I sat there for hours, while the nature around me planted ideas of fairy kingdoms that blossomed in my mind and enabled me to save one small spark of soul life for another time, in a future I could not imagine, away from the torment. And as an adult nature continues to nourish my spirit, continues to save me. I know that as long as I can behold the beauty of trees, sky, water, I will be OK.

Music. In 1974, when I was six years old, my father was moved temporarily to Chicago for his job. My parents took this opportunity to drive around the country, seeing sites such as the Mammoth Caves in Kentucky and the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln, visiting my mom’s college friends in Delaware and Boston, and camping everywhere before finally arriving at our destination. The radio was on the whole time we were in the car, probably to keep their sanity up front from the bickering that came from the back. But since we were on the move, they had to keep searching for radio stations, and I got to hear all of the music FM and AM had to offer. Which, in 1974, was pretty damned good. Music became a big part of my life and continues to be–and it has saved my life/sanity many times.

Connection with strangers. With all the traveling around we did, I got to see how my father interacted with people we didn’t know. My father would talk with anyone. He started up conversations, and he never shied away from a conversation started by another person. This drove my mother crazy, but I liked it. I liked my dad, the guy who smiled and chatted and felt good talking with people he didn’t know. When we broke down once and had to go to a garage to get the station wagon fixed, he climbed under the car with the mechanic to help out. That was my dad, and I was proud of him. It took me a long time to come out of my shell after my disastrous teen years, but slowly I, too, have learned the joys of talking with strangers. We humans exchange love in many ways, and this is one of them. I am grateful to appreciate that.

It is difficult to say what a parent gives to his or her child, but because I took the time to talk with a stranger at that library conference in May, it became clear to me that these three gifts, for sure, my dad gave to me. Big, beautiful gifts. Thank you Dad. I love you.

Family camping, 1976

My brothers and me with my dad, camping, 1976.

A Thought from Grandpa Joe.

We must be willing to get rid of
the life we’ve planned, so as to have
the life that is waiting for us.

The old skin has to be shed
before the new one can come.

If we fix on the old, we get stuck.
When we hang onto any form,
we are in danger of putrefaction.

Hell is life drying up.

Excerpt from A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living