Dispatch #24: "Everything Is Caroline"

The One-Year Anniversary of the Death of a Beloved Community Member

This is a statue of Quan Yin, a Buddhist saint, who hears the cries of the world. It was fashioned by Caroline Meister from white clay.

Dear Spark Zen Readers, Today is the one-year anniversary of the death of Caroline Meister, a 32-year-old woman who died in a tragic accident while hiking near the monastery. Those of us who knew her are honoring her memory by planting tree seeds, holding a memorial service, and gathering in a sharing circle. Rituals to memorialize the loved ones we have lost can heal us individually and collectively beyond words. Below is the original story I posted about her death. Bowing from the valley of creeks, rocks, and trees, Rev. Shōren Heather

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Yesterday morning, I strode to the bathhouse in the rain. I intentionally left my umbrella behind. I wanted to feel the rain pelt my face, hair, and hands. I wanted it to drench my jacket and pants. I wanted to not resist getting wet. I wanted to not feel separate. I wanted to be out in the open. To feel the elements without protection. To be an animal that does not know about past and future. An animal that does not fear death.

Thoughts of death have saturated my heart-mind-body since last Tuesday morning when I learned that a beloved member of our Tassajara community had not returned from a hike she embarked on Monday morning. On Friday morning, we learned that Caroline Meister, who was just 32 years old, was found lying in a pool at the base of a waterfall.

This heart-crushing news came after four days of intensive searching. Before the search and rescue (SAR) teams descended upon the monastery, many Tassajara residents had already searched the two trails she had most likely trekked. They searched day and night to no avail.

The SAR teams arrived in full force on Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning and set up their ops command outside the monastery gate. They brought dogs, drones, helicopters, and infrared planes that fly at night to detect heat signatures. The first overlook on the mountain road become a heli-pad. Drones buzzed overhead like large insects. Helicopters thwacked through the azure sky.

They searched the vast Ventana Wilderness with keen eyes, hopeful hearts, and granite-like stamina. They shouted Caroline’s name, hoping for a faint cry or rattling of a branch. They scrambled up mountains and bushwhacked through the chaparral. They searched hundreds of acres of wilderness by air and ground, by day and night.

The infrared plane detected a heat signature moving before dawn on Tuesday morning. SAR rushed to the site over the Tony Trail and down to Willow Creek, but they saw no sign of human activity. A few SAR members thought they heard a woman’s voice by a campsite early Wednesday evening. Hope glimmered in the dark like a phantom. Four nights passed with no sign of our beloved Caroline.

We clung to stories of miraculous rescues after people were lost in the wilderness for much longer than Caroline and in much harsher conditions. We clung to the sensation of hope welling inside us each morning as the SAR teams arrived in their yellow shirts and orange jackets. We clung to the thoughts that told us she was still okay.

We clung to each other.

On Friday morning, a crew of rope technicians rappelled into an area at the base of a narrow waterfall. It was a place no one could see from the trail. No one without ropes could access. And there is where our sweet Caroline’s body was discovered. The coroner told her mother that Caroline hit her head and neck when she fell. This gave some of us some relief—knowing that she wasn’t lost and injured in the wild waiting to be found. That death came suddenly and unexpectedly.

Grief feels like a large, opaque bag filled with unknowable items. Stuff that I don’t know what to do with. I feel like I can’t set the bag down or keep carrying it. It keeps ending up on my lap even though I want to get rid of it. I want to throw it into the creek and watch it float away.

Our dear Caroline beaming like a full moon.

At the community meeting we held on Friday evening, we gathered in a somber circle. A feather from a blue macaw that Caroline had on her altar was our “talking stick.” No bird can fly with just a single feather. But hundreds generate flight.

We each tried to give voice to the dark distress inside. To the shock stuck in our throats. To the anguish in our eyes. People told stories about Caroline. How patient and kind she was. A bright light. A flower walking through the valley.

One person mentioned sitting next to Caroline in the courtyard a couple of days before she disappeared. He asked her, “What would you do if you knew you only had 24 hours to live?”

“I’d go for a long hike alone in nature.”

The altar we created for Caroline’s memorial service. Her Buddhist name means: Ancestral Kindness, Diamond Root.

Song for Caroline written by a few Zen friends

When our friend was lost; we searched high and low

we felt our love for each other grow.

While the days went on and she was still gone,

we sang her name from the mountain tops.

We had to say goodbye, so that we could find

that everything is Caroline.

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