“I ran deep into the Rocky Mountains while on 24-hour fasts, used exhaustion (as well as some mind-altering drugs) to loosen the grip of reality."

"I put myself in front of the most gorgeous places on earth. I climbed frozen waterfalls and remote desert towers. I ran at night, during hurricanes, and bobbed face up, in the middle of lakes, in the middle of the night, in my birthday suit. I was searching and searching — for what, I did not know — and in the process I was failing and failing, powerless to pry the lid and taste nature’s mysterium tremendum."

Wrote Francis Sanzaro, a year ago, in "The Next Walk You Take Could Change Your Life" (NYT).

I'm reading that today because it was a suggested link at the bottom of a new op-ed, also by Francis Sanzaro, "When I Stopped Trying to Self-Optimize, I Got Better." That newer piece quotes Antoine de Saint-Exupéry — in his book "Wind, Sand and Stars" — "Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add but when there is nothing left to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness."

One thing I liked about the older piece is in the comments section, by someone in San Jose named Hasan R Rahim:

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), the Bengali Nobel Laureate in literature (1913), wrote (my translation from Bengali): -- 

Covered vast distances, spent much money,
For a glimpse of faraway wonders
Of imposing mountains and endless sea.
Yet I have not seen with open eyes
Only a few feet beyond my front door
A dewdrop glistening
At the tip of a rice stem. 

-- Once we learn to pay attention, the natural world, and life, become miraculous, and the seemingly ordinary turns transcendent.