I was camping with a friend in the Canadian Rockies, back in 1995, beside Berg Lake, at the foot of Mount Robson. One day, we decided to hike from base camp up to the spot where Robson Glacier reaches it lowest point and melts into the snow field. As we walked up the valley toward the foot of the glacier, the rock walls on either side of us seemed to become more and more imposing, growing higher, looming bigger and bigger, the subtle color in the rock coming into sharper focus, the quiet becoming ever more quiet with every step we took. We could hear the hum of the glacier moving all the time, maybe we even felt the rumbling through the soles of our boots, and there was the constant, though intermittent, thunder of avalanches on the higher slopes of Mount Robson. It was a generally clear day, with blue sky and strong sun, although big fluffy white clouds were floating through the sky, but with enough space between them so as not to obscure the sunshine for more than several moments at a time.
   We were probably within 500 yards of the glacier when I had to stop and sit down beside the trail. My friend kept on, his goal being to reach the top of the narrow valley and touch the glacier itself, as though it was a trophy to be collected upon completing the hike. I simply could not continue. I was in awe, in shock, actually. My senses, indeed, my soul, could not take in any more of such beauty. I felt that I might burst if I continued to collect any more of this wild landscape without taking the time to absorb it, to respect it, really. I sat there on the rock, shaking, nearly in tears, knowing that I was seeing god and understanding, not intellectually but viscerally, what wilderness is. I knew, not in a metaphoric way but with certainty, that this place was real, and that the city, and the life, I'd left behind were not.

    I was about halfway up the cliff when the fear stopped me cold. I had been doing just fine until I reached this overhang. My right foot was on the edge of a wide crack in the rock; my left foot was lower, resting on a tiny nodule of stone; my hands were flat against the granite wall. Up to this point handholds and footholds had been plentiful and I’d been climbing fairly quickly, thinking fast, letting momentum take me from one move into the next. But now, about 50 feet up from the base of the cliff, I was stuck. I stood there looking for my next move and saw nothing within reach.
     Craig, the Outward Bound instructor down there on the ground, couldn’t know precisely what I was seeing; he couldn’t know on which small bumps in the rock my eyes fell, but he was familiar with the shelf that was blocking my path and the routes across it. He also knew something I didn’t: he knew the nature of the decision I was going to have to make to finish this climb.
     The shelf was several feet above my head; it stuck out of the rock like a skewed mantelpiece, wider on the left, protruding further from the cliff-face on that side. I’d have to cover less distance to get over the top if I chose the right side, but I saw nothing above the shelf except smooth rock, nothing to grab hold of, nothing to keep me up there. I might be able to push myself over the right side from where I stood, but then I’d be scratching frantically for handholds before falling backward into space. (I could see myself falling when I looked up there.) If I went to the left, the initial effort would have to be greater, but I could see potential handholds above the shelf on that side; if I could get onto the top of it, I might be able to stand there for a moment and grab something.

    So there really are ghosts, spirits of the dead I mean, that haunt the living, forcing us to live with an unbearable memory, or reminding us that our lives once intersected with those of others, some of whom won’t be left entirely behind. I never understood the nature of ghosts, nor was I even convinced of their existence, until I heard the story, long after my father’s death, of the ghost that haunted him as he lay dying in a hospital bed in suburban New York.
     One morning his younger brother came to visit and was surprised to find Dad agitated and confused. “What’s wrong?” asked my uncle.
     “He was just standing there,” said Dad, “at the foot of the bed, in his uniform. The German. He was just standing there looking at me. He was right there, in his uniform. He was there until you walked in, Willy, staring at me.”
    It took my uncle a little while to calm Dad down and get him to tell the whole story. The young German my father saw that morning was a soldier he had killed in 1944. Dad was a first sergeant with the Ninth U.S. Infantry Division and fought in the invasions of North Africa, Sicily and Normandy. In addition to a Bronze Star with two oak leaf clusters and a Purple Heart, he earned eight battle stars. His unit, the 47th Regiment, landed at Utah Beach on June 10, four days after D-Day. He apparently ran into this particular German shortly thereafter.

    I made a hole-in-one today at my home course. First time I've done that. A moment of beauty, to watch a perfectly struck 8-iron fly high and straight at the hole, 140 yards away. The ball landed just two inches right of the hole and jumped in. I was playing with my brother and two friends. Beautiful and surprising to see the ball disappear after landing just beside the flagstick. I knew when I hit it that it was struck perfectly, it felt pure, like nothing at all. Then we watched it fly, holding its line, dead on the flagstick all the way, never moving left nor right at all. We knew as it began to fall that it would land close, but to see it hit the green, spin leftward and disappear... well, it was a moment breathtaking in its perfection.

   On the Friday night before the semifinal round of the Club Championship,  I read again some of my favorite parts of the novel The Legend of Bagger Vance by Steven Pressfield. Many golfers have enjoyed the book, which is vastly superior to the disappointing, sentimental film of the same name produced by Robert Redford.
   The movie bears little resemblance to the novel, which is a retelling of the Bhagavad Gita, a sacred text of Hindu mythology. The book closely parallels the theme and structure of the original Sanskrit poem. The key to the novel is chapter 21, in which the mystical caddie Bagger Vance reveals his true nature to Rannulph Junah, who's facing a crisis of confidence during his epic golf match against the great Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen.
    At a moment when Junah, physically exhausted and emotionally defeated,  is ready to quit in despair, Bagger tells him that loneliness is the great burden of competitive golf, capable of crushing the human spirit. The caddie then explains that he, Bagger, is an incarnation of the single, universal Self that all people share. "You are never alone," he tells Junah. "I stand by your side always."