Travel by DAR

Berkshires: Herman Hesse For President

(First published in Esquire)

Right. Check. I know. Retreating to a yogic utopia in the Berkshires is not the typical travel beat. But here's a secret: sometimes when I come back from places like Timbuktu -- not right away but once the first thrilling flush of chaos wears off, the first glorious not-knowing which is my sock drawers anymore -- sometimes I feel I haven't gone. Even if I've been away six weeks, I feel I've only been someplace far, as opposed to deep. This time, after two nights in the upper reaches of Lenon, Mass., I'd been somewhere. I felt disoriented with calm, the opposite of jet lag: slowly and consciously, I had caught up with myself, attained my correct time zone. And it was only three hours from New York.

It didn't feel utopian off the bat, I can tell you. Turning off the Mass Pike onto the tarmac of Kripalu, I felt I'd only swapped one set of insipid bumber stickers for another: LEVITATE THE PENTAGON instead of OLLIE NORTH FOR PRESIDENT. Preliminary conversations with fellow neophytes did not help, replete as they were with retro-boasting, aggrandizing our achievements in the world we were leaving behind, as if none of us so anxious to shuck The System were anything but raging successes in it, as if the only ones who ever jumped a sinking ship were captains and first mates.

Nor was I happy to discover that many of the 250 folk who lived at Kripalu on a more or less permanent basis were former globe circlers and ex-Type A adventure junkies like myself. What could induce world trekkies to give up the open road for 350 acres anywhere, even if adjacent to the music wonderland of Tanglewood in a Scottish parklike setting; to swap perambulation for stagnation, jungle-stomping for vegetating? Friday, 5:00 p.m. Not even out of the parking lot, and already I was glad I had signed up for the crash cool-out course and not the extended enlightenment.

Even a stop in the souvenir shop failed to convert me. Like those philistines who spend their ninety minutes at the Whitney trying to get edified at the postcard tree, I took the gift shop tour to see what I could see. Herman Hesse listed in the appendices of whole-grain cookbooks. Herman Hesse listed in the appendices of whole-grain stress books. Herman Hesse -- but whoa. In one of the whole-grain history books, I learned that the fortress housing Kripalu used to be owned by Jesuits, that the miles of wall to wall I saw stretching out before me used to be miles of Jesuit linoleum. Friday, 6:00 p.m. Never had the prospect of eating sensibly, breathing deeply, waking early, sleeping soundly loomed more arduous.

And then: that was the end of the bad stuff. From that point on, bliss, balance, good vibes. Wholesomeness with a sense of humor. Earnest inner questing but not over-earnest. To my relief, there was evidence of neither the wild surmise nor the dispirited apathy that meditation sometimes brings on. Better yet, an absence of deep retinal contact; you know the kind I mean. The gaze that kills, the smugger-than-thou missionary twinkle, the unflappable fellow-love that so fries the butts of us striving stressed-out nine-to-fivers, making us feel as the wild Wampanoags must have felt when making the acquaintance of pimply Puritans. ("Don't worry, we'll save you easy as pie.") The withering leer of the spiritually superior. The astral one-up-manship. Aka assholiness.

None of that. In its place: doorways with photos of Pee-wee Herman. Basements with dozens of bright bicycles. Non-monklike food: the best vegetarian grub I've ever eaten, rubbing shoulders in vaulted silence with famous singers and anti-establishment figures whose names didn't seem to matter. Rippling out from the example of the guru (who has worn the same watch for twenty-five years, in contrast to the spending habits of his colleagues) was an atmosphere of pink-cheeked health, so that disciples in white looked as if they were off to a tennis match of the soul, rathern than angelically constructing Jonestown.

And more: Yoga that made me feel like a pup stretching in the sun. Evening chants that seemed like avante-garde theatre, in which what counted most were the silences, like Beckett at his best. All topped off by a massage the likes of which I've received nowhere. I'm talking better than being walked on by the harlots of Hong Kong, birch-branched by the beauties of Finland's smoke saunas, hand-fed opium by the masseuse-tribeswomen of northern Thailand. This rubdown was thought-filled, a conscious coaxing out of all the microscopic fears that hide in the musculature. A mystical meltdown massage ...

Sunday, 3:00 p.m. Loath to go. Sprawled on the patio, washed by strains of Debussy wafting over from Tanglewood, a bunch of us were hardly recognizable from two days before. Our best selves had emerged, restful selves we scarcely knew we had, alert yet relaxed like animals at ease, tarrying together in a state of calm vigilance – the vigilance it takes merely to stay alive, without the excess of vigilance that constitutes stress. Of all the addictions we had put on hold these past forty-eight hours -- caffeine, competition, sex -- none had we clutched more dear than stress, none had we surrendered with more trepidation to utopia. We loved stress, that nifty smell of burning rubber in the brain, that gratifying sound of nerve endings crackling black around the edges. We felt entitled to it. With what, after all, would we fill our time if we stopped blowing our own fuses? I personally have not the foggiest -- unless it be the energy of the universe -- but contemplating it helped me understand why people who've seen the world dally here. Not to stagnate but to center. To journey where no passport is required, exploring the inner realm of travel: a trek to the heart, infinitely more daring than Lindblad ever dreams.