For a little bit I was thinking of being a Druid. For a long time, I thought it was a rather flakey hippie religion, until I was in Hong Kong over the winter, on Lantau island, an island in the South China Sea famous for having a giant bronze Buddha statue on top of a mountain. The Path of Wisdom makes a circuit shaped like the infinity symbol, rising steep and rocky up the scrubby mountainside. Zen proverbs have been charcoal-etched into massive pine columns erected by monks at intervals, striking in their power and simplicity. At the top of the path I look down at the mountain pine forest laid out below me, and across an awesome vista.

Across that unspanned chasm is Phoenix Mountain, a promontory of bare stone that glows when sunlight strikes. All the elements are in harmony. To my right, the mountain drops off into the sea, the sun blazing fire on its liquid surface wreathed in golden mist. Clouds of mist form and unform about the Phoenix peak, transient yet ever-present, undefined yet ever-flowing, against the immutable face of the eternal mountain.

For the first time I hear the voice of a mountain. It is not a voice like one "hears" because it is silent, but a voice one feels. It is not the voice of an individual, and the voice has no words, yet it speaks, and the not-words are. "I AM HERE."

Above and around me the Zen columns rise against a blue mountain sky, cold and pure. I can't read the Chinese characters. According to a broad English translation, they are about the nature of non-existance, and the impermanence of self. I have learned more by not-reading them. This is why they call it the Path of Wisdom.