Escaping to Live the Dream? Maybe.

Robert Pirsig became a sailor subsequent to the success of his five-million-copy bestseller, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” He also easily broke my publisher-rejection record, with 121 publishers saying “no” before one took him on. He holds the Guinness record as the most rejected bestseller in history. For years, I’ve been aiming to break it. Mr. Pirsig finally left us, crossing the bar this April.

During his life, our wakes never crossed, but our paths nearly did. Pirsig was from Minnesota, where I went to college and graduate school. In 1975, I read his book, which is still on the top of my fascinating and intellectually challenging list. Back in the mid-’70s, in my “I’m going to be Hemingway” days, when I could afford it I’d get on my Triumph motorcycle and head north from St. Paul to the shore of Lake Superior. There I’d rent a cabin in which I’d work on my Great American Novel.

One late fall I rented a cabin in a rather tired-looking resort/campground north of Duluth. There were perhaps 10 log cabins on the property, with Ma and Pa, two Norwegians, minding the store. Being late in the year, I was the only renter, and I stayed pretty much to myself, emerging only for walks in the woods between bouts with my typewriter.
One day Ma and Pa emerged when I did, and, in the shy way of Norwegians, made their way over to me, all the while looking down at their feet. “Good day for a hike,” I said.

Pa, still looking down, jabbed his toe in the dirt, avoiding eye contact. “Say, me and the missus was just wondering: You in there all by yourself?” he asked. I nodded.

“Kind of unusual, that’s all, I guess. Everything all right?” Yes, I said, telling them I was a writer. Pa looked up, then over at Ma. “Uff da, you don’t say! We had a writer, right in your cabin, alone, too, by jiminy. Some book about motorcycles. Did real good, I heard, don’t ya know.”

But back to the boat part of Pirsig. I read Pirsig’s second book, “Lila,” which, on the surface, tells of his trip on his Westsail 32 from the Great Lakes to New York City. He went on to cross the Atlantic twice and then settle in South Berwick, Maine.

That was interesting, but it was his essay in “Esquire” magazine that really stimulated my thinking. It was about escaping the dream rather than escaping to the dream. Pirsig wrote:

“Those who see sailing as an escape from reality have their understanding of sailing and reality backward. Sailing is not an escape, but a return to and a confrontation with a reality from which modern civilization is itself an escape. For centuries, man suffered from the reality of an Earth that was too dark or too hot or too cold for his comfort, and, to escape this, he invented complex systems of lighting, heating and air conditioning. Sailing rejects these and returns to the old realities of dark and heat and cold. Modern civilization has found radio, television, movies, nightclubs and a huge variety of mechanized entertainment to titillate our senses and help us escape from the apparent boredom of the Earth and the Sun, the wind and the stars. Sailing returns to these ancient realities.”

That was written 40 years ago. So what has happened since? Boats and their gear have steadily been evolving back to what they were originally trying to move away from, mimicking, or just plain stealing, the tools of modern civilization — complexity, modern systems, technologies — to reduce much of the human elemental challenges. Soon, we may just send our boats sailing or motoring, while just reclining in the cockpit, as in a self-driving car.

I’ll admit, I’m an anachronism. A relic. Or Elsa, my boat, is anyway. She’s pretty elemental. I’ve yanked out the water heater, replaced the pressure-water system with foot pumps, put things called “blocks of ice” in the ice box to cool my food, use a sun shower for hot-water washing…well, you get the idea.

Pretty elemental, as Pirsig said, “like air, sunlight, wind, water, the motion of waves, and the patterns of clouds before a coming storm.” For me, Elsa’s a dream come true…and for a few precious summer months, I’d rather leave modern civilization behind.

Dave Roper’s new novel, “Rounding the Bend: The Life and Times of Big Red,” will be published this year.