Review by Ed Quillen
Mountain Spirits – August 2005 – Colorado Central Magazine
First Church of the Higher Elevations – Mountains, Prayer, and Presence
by Peter Anderson
Published in 2005 by Ghost Road Press
ISBN 0-9760729-4-7
Mountains seem to inspire one of two human reactions. One is greed, as in “how quickly can we mine, log, graze, or subdivide this range, and go back to civilization with a pot full of money?” The other is reverence, as in Psalm 121, “I will lift mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.”
In this collection of essays, Peter Anderson is blessedly free of greed, and his intense reverence is often punctuated by his connections to the temporal world. For instance, he planned a 40-day solo sojourn in the Henry Mountains of Utah, but postponed the start and cut it to 36 days because he wanted to see all the final NBA playoff games the year that Karl Malone and the Utah Jazz went down to the last buzzer against Michael Jordan and the Chigago Bulls.
It’s that sort of mixture, the supernal with the mundane, that I found most engaging in this baker’s dozen of contemplative pieces, all connected to spirituality and mountains. If there were too much mundane, it would read like a guidebook or boastful account of mountains ascended; if there were too much spirituality, it would wander off into ethereal realms beyond the interest or comprehension of prosaic sorts like myself.
But Anderson finds the right balance in every essay. Along the way, you can pick up some of his biography – a solo winter in St. Elmo a couple of decades ago, seminary, migration around the West, stints as river guide and wilderness ranger, bouts with journalism and teaching – and you can read this as a sort of spiritual tour.
He prays and fasts for 36 days in the wilderness, works at an agricultural monastery, patronizes a sweat lodge, befriends a priest fond of Yukon Jack, and tracks down the history of “the Hermit” of Las Vegas, N.M., who was reputed to be able to heal the sick. He writes mostly from the Quaker tradition of individual inspiration amid a community of fellow believers, and I gained more understanding of the Society of Friends – a group I have long admired from a distance.
When he’s outdoors, Anderson has a keen eye for the world around him: “The task at hand is to find an out-of-the-way camp – one that is secluded enough to serve as a hermitage for a month or so. Although the mountain basin has been grazed heavily by buffalo herds that spend the summer months on the high slopes of this range, human tracks are scarce. As the mid-day glare obscured the canyons out east of the range, flies buzz through rising heat and winged grasshoppers crackle up then crash in their jerky mate-seeking flight. Even now, in mid-June, the sun is bright enough and strong enough to have me longing for shelter and shade and a camp near running water. But I have been looking for a while now, covering much of this alpine basin without finding that place, and the prospects are beginning to look a little grim.”
But Anderson also addresses the realms beyond him and within him: “Why solitude? It isn’t about seeking any great mystical insight or developing some out-of-the-ordinary contemplative skill. It just helps me to listen for an interior voice that is authentic and true and more likely to be found in stillness than in the chaotic mix of voices I usually hear, inwardly and outwardly, in the great flow of the day-to-day. It gives me a chance to eddy out – to spend a little time in the ‘still water’ where reflection is possible. I don’t think Jesus walked into the desert because he expected to find God there; I think he went into solitude so that he could hear more clearly the Inward Teacher that dwells in all of us.
“For the last few days, I’ve been listening to questions that have no answers and I’ve been haunted by a sense of my own finitude and aloneness…. And so, I feel a bit weary in the presence of all the unanswerables.”
Anderson draws on much besides the Bible; he cites Thomas Merton and John Muir – and Jimi Hendrix and B.B. King – as he ventures from inner world to outer in the mountains of Colorado and Utah.
He’s a fluid and graceful writer, but this book is not for fast reading; many paragraphs deserve time for digestion and contempation before the reader moves to the next one. First Church of the Higher Elevations reads well enough in town, but it would be an even better companion for that next long hike, back-country camping trip, or rainy day in the tent, when you’re trying to figure out just how you fit into all that’s around you.