Road To Heaven:
   Encounters with Chinese Hermits
   Bill Porter
  1993 Mercury House, San Francisco USA
   ISBN: 1562790412


In China there have always been people who prefer to live in frugal solitude, trading flatland dust for mountain mist. They have been the most respected men & women in this oldest of societies. Bill Porter trekked into the Chugnan Mountains to find them, experience their rarified lives & bring back their simple, serene & momentous stories.

This gentle tome has warmed the cockles of my heart & mellowed the angst of my soul on many occasions. In the clutter of my western life - saturating traffic; motors moaning into every pulse: the state of my wealth, health & contentment seeming mirages on my smoggy horizon - I open this deeply engrossing saga & am immediately transported to another time, another place, another experience of being alive in the here-&-now.

Road To Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits is like a column of smoke against a forested mountainside after the first snowstorm of winter & Steven Johnson records, with black & white photos, rare glimpses of weathered, mystical hermits in their chosen niches.

Filled with history, poetry & lilting descriptions of their adventures, we walk & whisper, sweat & giggle with Bill Porter as he follows the clues, directions & invitations up cliff faces, into monasteries, muddy holes & awe-inspiring landscapes to visit, meet & speak with these old, vital & clear souls.

A breath of fresh air, Road To Heaven heals what ails you, massages your cramped personal space & beckons your soul out of hiding & into the quiet, high reaches of some extra-ordinary & mindful folk.

While your local library may well carry Road To Heaven, Amazon.Com lists it as out of print although they're willing to hunt up purveyors of used copies for you.

Ever since I lived in Port Townsend, Road To Heaven has been an Old Friend & I return again & again to refresh myself as I would to a waterfall I've found in the forest. Lovely, lovely reading.

Bill Porter is a writer & translator & his works include: The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain; The Mountain Poems of Stonehouse; The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma & Sung Po-jen's Guide to Capturing a Plum Blossom - the first book of art or poetry ever printed.

Steven R. Johnson is a photographer whose previous published works include Here among the Sacrificed a photographic & written account of riding the freight trains along the West Coast of the United States.
(10/10/99)

Rebecca