The Grand Canyon Zen Golf Tour - Paperback

by Jack Random (Author)

In 1993 the author and his friend Wiz embark on a seminal journey in a 1965 Mustang that takes them from Nashville, Tennessee, to Modesto, California, and back again. Determined to explore the land and its people, to perform jazz poetry on the streets and to hit a sacred shot into Grand Canyon, they remain open to whatever adventures await them. Leaving the past behind they clear their minds to take in the lessons of the journey. Each round of golf and each encounter with the land, its history and its people seems to offer a message that applies equally to their lives, their relationships and the game they love. A family of white supremacists on the Texas panhandle offers a fair deal on a spare tire. A wild man on the streets of Albuquerque terrorizes the poetry crowd. Grand Canyon inspires shots into the infinite void. Don Juan has a laugh as they play three rounds on the road in Utah. Suicide rabbits dive beneath their wheels on the loneliest road in America. They find solace at a family reunion in the high Sierras of Graeagle. They explore small town America in central California and escape the shadow of death. They play golf in the kingdom at Pacific Grove. They are stranded on the path of a killer in Yosemite National Park and witness a sky of a million stars at Sonora Pass. They are enchanted by the dance of Esmeralda on the streets of Boulder, Colorado, and are lured by sweet temptations that would alter their destinies. From the vast open plains to barren wastelands, from the Great Rocky Mountains to the High Sierras, from Grand Canyon to the magnificence of Yosemite, from the Mississippi to the Pacific coast, they collect memories, stories and lessons that will last a lifetime and enable them to adapt and overcome the problems that await their arrival home. The Grand Canyon Zen Golf Tour captures a time in the recent past when America was full of promise and its people were searching for meaning in art, poetry, music and spirituality - even in the royal and ancient game of golf. This edition also includes eighteen lessons from The Handbook of Zen Golf.

Author Biography

Jack Random has lived both an ordinary and extraordinary life. His roots firmly planted in the fertile central valley of California, he has marched the streets in protest, haunted jazz town bars, read poetry in cafes and town squares, strutted his hour upon the stage, crisscrossed the country by air, rail, highway and thumb, mourned at Wounded Knee, gazed into the eyes of the crow at Grand Canyon, and paid tribute at the grave of Geronimo. He has labored in the fields of plenty, toiled on the assembly line, pursued higher education, and attempted to enlighten children in the public schools. He has been a pilgrim and a seeker of truth. He is married to the love of his life. All the while he has chronicled his thoughts and revelations in words: plays, poetry, novels, stories and essays. He is the author of Wasichu: The Killing Spirit, Number Nine: The Adventures of Jake Jones and Ruby Daulton, A Patriot Dirge, Pawns to Players (Crow Dog Press), Ghost Dance Insurrection (Dry Bones Press) and the Jazzman Chronicles Volumes I-X (Crow Dog Press).