Rites of Passage
a review of Leaning on Cedars P a t ri c k W . Co m s t o c k Leaning On Cedars by Andrew C. Shurtleff The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2013 One of the remarkable features of modern American culture is that rites of passage— initiation ceremonies marking the transition from childhood to adulthood—have all but vanished. This makes modern American culture something of an anomaly, for initiation ceremonies have been a fixture in nearly all pre-modern societies. Often, the ceremony took the form of a vision quest, in which a young person was sent off into the wilderness, alone, to await a vision. What the ritual offered was the chance to put aside the influences of family, friends, and culture, and the chance to embark on adult life with an independent sense of purpose and direction. Although the vision quest has largely disappeared from modern culture, it has been preserved in literature, and Andrew C. Shurtleff tells a gripping story of one man’s vision quest in his
2012 novel Leaning on Cedars. Shurtleff, who earned a doctorate from Columbia University in 2015, offers readers a thoughtful, discerning meditation on philosophy, spirituality, and the meaning of human existence, and the book’s subtitle—A Story of Initiation for Our Time—hints at an experience that has been updated and made relevant to the modern era. The book’s protagonist is Jason Chapman, a twenty-one year old Coloradan who has come to a crossroads in life. His
relationship with his girlfriend having come to an end, and he yearns for a fresh start, so he sets off on a solo backpacking trip in the wilderness of the Rockies in late March. The hike has an auspicious beginning, but soon a blizzard sets in, forcing Jason to struggle mightily against nature for his own survival. Because Jason himself is a writer, readers have access to a doubly rich narrative—the story told by the omniscient narrator, and the story told through Jason’s journal entries, which provide a vivid sense of his thoughts during the unexpected ordeal. By turns metaphysical, philosophical, and spiritual, Leaning On Cedars presents us with the fruits of Jason’s harrowing experience, and, in the end, we come away inspired by Jason’s fortitude and penchant for self-examination, and awed by his single-minded pursuit of his destiny. As Shurtleff writes, “He was willing to take the risk, the chance to embrace his destiny, and would allow nothing to stand in his way.”
LILIPOH
Winter 2016