The Writer’s Hiking Pole

“It’s worthy!” said a Japanese tourist going down the mountain as my parents and I were hiking up to see the Broadmoor Seven Falls in Colorado when I was little.

Getting up early just to get the ideal sight at the ideal time of the day and expecting a refreshing, soul-stirring experience with the sunlight glowing on our faces, we were quite disappointed by the waterfalls. It was nowhere near the “Milky Way falling from the skies” like in the Tang dynasty poet Li Bai’s poems, nor were the splashes of water “throwing off the nightly clothing of mist” like Henry David Thoreau’s Walden Pond.

The highlight of our journey was, surprisingly, seeing a squirrel peeing from a tree. To this day, my parents and I still joke about how even the squirrel’s pee was more impressive and memorable than the Seven Falls. For sure it was not worthy for us then, at all.

Years have passed, and now I ask myself the very question that the Japanese tourist probably asked himself going down that mountain: “Was it worthy?”

We too often label things as “worthy” and use the labels to distinguish what deserves our time and attention from what does not: a “noteworthy” feature, a “newsworthy” event, a “trustworthy” friend, a “blameworthy” conduct, a “praiseworthy” effort. Once we make the distinction, an expectation forms, and we rely on it to keep going. So when we are questioned, whether it is by other people or ourselves, the most common excuse for still going is that one has come so far already, so why stop? There is, of course, merit to this way of thinking. Growing up in China, I was taught that being determined about something is worthy of the highest praise, constantly surrounded by platitudes like “perseverance is victory” or “only hard work can bring about success.” Yet the longer you go without knowing why, selfishly hoping that there might be a destination—breezes after storms, plains after hills, successes after failures—, what you might get eventually instead is the sight of a squirrel peeing.

I have my own “platitudes,” too: pinned on top of my notes on my phone is the last stanza of Seamus Heaney’s poem “Digging:”

“Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I’ll dig with it.”

Below it is a quote by the master of memory and unreliable narration Kazuo Ishiguro from his book An Artist of the Floating World: “A man who aspires to rise above the mediocre, to be something more than ordinary, surely deserves admiration, even if in the end he fails and loses a fortune on account of his ambitions.”

At the end of the day, instead of incessantly questioning the worth of what you encounter or produce, know that in fact, we all hurry from one destination of life to another, trying, if not things that make us happy, things that keep us living, doing, if not things that keep us living, what we have to do, and at the end doing the same things over and over again that we have to do we fail to enjoy.

So you might ask, “What is really worthy then?”

The answer is simpler than you think, as simple as the delight of that Japanese tourist—it is not that the Seven Falls itself was worthy, it was the moment that he decided to pick up his hiking pole, without high expectations that were bound to be disappointed nor preconceived notions to be rejected. It is by appreciating this world as it is that made the journey worthy to him. The value was not defined by the risks of sprained ankles or pollen allergy, not the miles of rocky paths that he trekked, and certainly not the view.

Your pen is your “hiking pole” that will lead you through the darkest nights and the most treacherous landscapes. So it is all worthy from the very moment you choose to begin, to dig deeper and deeper into your writer’s world and aspire to rise above the ordinary—it is worthy even if you read a novel just for the sake of reading it. It is worthy if you open up a new Google doc and start brainstorming for the most ambitious, transcontinental assertions. It is worthy just by picking up your pen.

Harrison Huang