Fire Monks Read Free Page A

yet fifty, was dying of colon cancer.
    At forty-six years old in the summer of 2008—the age his father was when diagnosed—David didn’t want to die without waking up, without having tasted his life completely. That desire had led him to Tassajara and then to take priest’s vows. But on June 21, listening to the lightning, he felt a deep unease. If the fire came Tassajara’s way, what would they do? As director, he’d have to do more than talk to the friendly people staffing the fire information line and courier updates to the work circle. He knew something would be required of him, even if he couldn’t anticipate exactly what it was. And would he be able to meet it?
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    Shortly after the thunderstorm, Colin Gipson drove Tassajara’s green Isuzu Trooper up to Lime Point, a limestone outcropping on Tassajara Road partway between the monastery and Chews Ridge, beyond which the dirt road continues for another seven miles before turning to pavement.
    In July 2008, Colin was head of shop at Tassajara, responsible for overseeing and often executing physical plant maintenance and repairs. The first time he came to Tassajara, in the spring of 2002, he was with a couple of friends from the Austin Zen Center. Driving in, he asked, “Where is this place?” One of his traveling companions pointed into the depths of a canyon at the end of a fraying ribbon of road. There’s no hiding here, Colin thought.
    Six years later, the forty-four-year-old former U.S. Marine with a youthful face and gray hairs sprouting from underneath the rim of his baseball cap could probably make the drive up the road with his eyes closed, after so many trips to town for supplies. The Isuzu was certainly more comfortable than his motorcycle, a Kawasaki KLR650 he took on long road trips between practice periods.
    Tassajara Road was in pretty good shape on June 21—much better than it would be by the end of the summer, after baking in sun and shouldering the traffic of the guest season, or than it was in the winter, when rain and snow washed chunks of it away. Chinese laborers built the road in the late 1880s. Now Monterey County crews maintain it, grading it every spring after the rains end. Bay laurel, madrone, live oaks, scrub oaks, manzanita, sycamore, and western maple lined the road’s edge—their leaves coated with road dust. By June, the wildflowers that paint the limestone cliffs in April and May had dried up. Only the hardiest Indian paintbrush, yellow monkey flower, and yucca remained.
    Colin pulled the truck off to the side of the road at Lime Point. He wore shorts, a T-shirt, a baseball cap, and a water bottle slung around his torso—his usual attire when he wasn’t in priest robes. But there was something of the uniform about Colin even when he wasn’t in robes. He kept a cool layer between himself and the world—the habit of someone raised to be “a pleaser” in a family with a legacy of troublemaking.
    At Tassajara, something is always in need of repair. Some buildings date back to before the turn of the last century. The plumbing is full of patches and prayers. Colin was confident in his job as head of shop, something he couldn’t say about other positions he’d held at Tassajara, in the dining room and kitchen. Practice positions, as job assignments are called there, are assigned not to take advantage of talents, but to teach the flexibility to develop ones you didn’t know you had. Experience is not as important as willingness.
    But Colin had driven to Lime Point that day—and quite a few days before that, since the Indians fire had started earlier in June—because of his experience. As a teenager in rural Texas, he’d worked as a volunteer firefighter, putting out brushfires.
    This wasn’t brush country, the grassy knolls of central Texas where he’d lived on his grandparents’ ranch, west of Austin. This was the Ventana