EDIBLE: Tassajara Mountain Zen Center teaches how to garden and cook in the wilderness.

Twenty or so of us sit on black cushions arranged in a circle, legs crossed in various attempts at the lotus position. The ceilings are high, the lights low. Ordained Dharma instructor Wendy Johnson lifts a cup-shaped kesu meditation gong and taps it. It replies with a sweet sound so elastic that, as it fades, the difference between when the sound stops and when it’s still going isn’t recognizable. It might still be resonating.

“Settle in,” she says. She starts the retreat with a passage from a book by her friend and fellow monk Zenkei Blanche Hartman, who died 10 days earlier, at 91.

The book is Seeds for a Boundless Life, the passage “Being Home.”

“Find your home wherever you are,” it goes. “This means to realize that wherever you are is home, not to be seeking for some special place, to be making some cozy nest, but to find yourself at home in whatever circumstances you may be.”

~ • ~

The May 22-24 retreat was called “Timeless Spring: Cooking and Gardening in the Heart of Tassajara.” It was anchored by Johnson, a joyful monk who’s been gardening and practicing Zen for decades, and Dale Kent, former Zen center head chef and author of Tassajara: Dinner and Desserts. It’s also one of the first retreats of the summer guest season at Tassajara Mountain Zen Center out in the Ventana Wilderness, well past Cachagua Valley. Dozens more await, including “The Zen of Baking” and “Learning To Sit, Learning To Draw, Learning To See.” (Get the full schedule on the blog.)

Despite the cooking-and-gardening title, we don’t get in the kitchen until 3pm on day two. But that’s OK. This is a retreat, not a class – and the activities that come first bring dimension and depth.

The first, unavoidably, is the drive in. The last dozen or so miles from Jamestown take an hour, tracing dirt roads that rise and fall and twist like rocky water slide. Along the rough road, sticky monkey and Indian paintbrush wildflowers splash color, dense chaparral provides shelter for quail and laurels create tunnels over the road – only to part, revealing dramatic ridgelines steeper than any coastal range on the continent.

That scenery and the roads make spiritual conversations compulsory.

And you’re not even there yet.

~ • ~

Two orders of business upon arrival: sustenance and soaking.

The food at the Zen center proves as memorable as the mountains: things like spicy dragon’s head tofu, lemon-and-lentil soup, celery-carrot-apple salads and chai spice cookies are served family style with legendary breads in a stone cabin above the Tassajara River.

Then come the hot springs. A pool on the men’s side sits against sliding windows that open onto the steep canyon with the river in its belly. The tiled cube of sulfur-rich water is fed by a steaming in-flow current; another stone-encircled tub neighbors a river-stone staircase that descends to the flowing stream for heart-thumping cold plunges.

Next on the agenda: zazen meditation instruction in the zendo temple – how to sit and chant for an hour, how to hold your hands, how to enter the temple, how to (hopefully) begin to erase boundaries between body, breath, and mind.

Then more robust grains and pastas and vegetables, the opening circle session and the welcome night’s rest, carried along by the river’s lullaby.

The deep sleep feels crucial given the tinkling bells that summon guests and students alike to 5:35am meditation.

~ • ~

The Tassajara teas alone might make the trying drive worth it. At 7:15am the razzlemint, Darjeeling and rooibos make the chill of the mountain valley more manageable as our group gathers for a morning hike.

Johnson leads us across the river and around the monastery valley’s rim, up into fields of yarrow, larkspur and hummingbird sage, encouraging pauses for breaths and a chance to “take it all in.”

“The mountains and rivers,” Johnson says, “give us this place.” Later she coaxes us to identify and appreciate the wildflowers, to “learn to see.” Eventually we wind down through Grasshopper Flats to a breakfast beckoning with bowls of hot semolina with banana and brown sugar, savory bread pudding with egg, arugula-tomato salads and bright red strawberries.

~ • ~

The next thing we taste is dirt.

The group has gathered in the upper garden for work in the lush beds of flowers, vegetables and greens.

After an opening offering of incense, we put soil on our tongue.

This is a part of a bigger awareness – “begin by noticing,” Johnson says – that includes identifying any garden’s chemical composition. From there we work in what Johnson calls “the Tassajara way” – “slowly and carefully” – harvesting boxes of zesty arugula, rainbow chard, dinosaur kale, spicy radishes and flowering cilantro. Participants with gloves pull stinging nettle, painful when raw but super rich in vitamin B when cooked. We align drip irrigation and plant jalapeños and exotic tomatoes. We layer in compost and aged oak leaves, pulling weeds as we go.

Johnson often stops everyone to make exuberant announcements, none more enthusiastic than one with a radish in her hand. “It’s beautiful!” she shouts, then quotes poet Charles Olson: “Whatever you have to say, leave/ the roots on, let them/ dangle/ And the dirt/ just to make clear/ where they come from.”

~ • ~

Then, finally – after a lunch break for more glorious food and mineral baths – the kitchen.

Kent takes us through knife skills – how to hold the knife with your forefinger and thumb on the blade rather than the handle, how to make angled cuts on vegetables to create more surface area – and how to use stinging nettle broth as a base for habit-forming miso soup.

We clean arugula (for a salad) and shave radishes (for a wasabi of sorts) while he muses across salad dressings, organic sourcing and all sorts of culinary topics that double as Zen practice.

“Eating starts with what you see on the plate,” he said. “Why not make things beautiful? It may take a little more time. But the world needs more beauty.”

The tasting that ensues approaches spiritual itself, namely what he’s been doing with our harvest: garlic-walnut arugula pesto, mint-cilantro pesto, nettle-pesto and vegan fennel-top pesto among the bright green treats.

Another meal that day brought another lesson. I hiked up to a platform in a tree overlooking the valley with a bag lunch assembled in the dining hall – a pepper jack-pickled daikon-hummus sandwich on olive bread, roasted cauliflower, miso rice rolls. Add in the mountains, the birdsong and the best chocolate chip cookie ever made, and you have Zen heaven.

But then came the bugs, who – like anxious thoughts – won’t stop just because you want them to.

I tried to settle in, to channel Hartman’s comfort anywhere. I remembered I’m no monk. But mostly I hoped for a breeze and felt annoyed.

But that’s OK too. Beginner’s mind is even easier when you’re a beginner. And it evoked what a monk said before our hike: “I’m still working on it,” she said with a smile. “It’s a practice.”

Which is still resonating.

~ QUICKBITES ~

• Crazys Sandwich House (383-1554) opened Tuesday, May 31, in the former Mundo’s on Del Monte in Marina. Cali’s Finest (210-3100) is open at 601 Broadway St. in King City. Restaurant 1833 (643-1833) has a new cocktail menu. Jason Giles is leaving Jacks/Peter B’s, and Peter B’s has a new brewmaster. Get the low down and a bunch more news nibbles on the blog, www.mcweekly.com, or subscribe to the foodEnewsletter at www.mcweekly.com/subscribe.
• Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula has long been a pioneer of healthier hospital food. Now it’s making another major – and historic – step in forming the first formal partnership any hospital ever has with Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch.
• Rancho Cielo’s Drummond Culinary Academy (444-3521) hosts Sunset Jazz 6-8pm June 10, with artists Dick Whittington, Kanoa Mendenhall and Vince Lateano. www.ranchocieloyc.org ; $35 for wine and food, RSVP reservations@ranchocieloyc.org.
• Restaurant 1833 (643-1833) has debuted a spendy new cocktail menu (get more on the blog) and does a Five Marys Farm dinner Saturday, May 28, on the redwood deck featuring Five Marys whole animal roasts (a Chef Jason Franey specialty), endless sides and Ben Spungin-styled dessert with wine pairings ($200) More on the whole animal experience and dinner on the blog soon.
• Coming up quick: Monterey Wine Fest at Custom House Plaza June 3-5, www.montereywine.com.
• Same weekend: The former Artichoke Fest, now Castroville Artichoke Food and Wine Festival, hits Monterey County Fair and Event Center: June 4-5, artichokefestival.org.