Open Letter To Sancho and Don


My Dear Sancho and Don Quixote

After many, many months I have finally finished reading Don Quixote. There are a lot of people who start the first novel ever written, but few who finish it. The Don has worked his way into my heart over these thousand pages. The theme of the novel is how he toggles from madman to prophet as he roams about on his futile adventures. Mostly he is utterly mad, but then the clouds break and he becomes a lucid observer of human life and what it means to live with nobility. At his core, he is the most moral man in literature. Faithful squire Sancho Panza is almost as crazy as Don Quixote, and almost as brilliant. His penchant for poorly timed and misapplied truisms is a source of constant consternation to Don Quixote (and humorous delight to the reader), but one out of ten hit the nail on the head.

As they finally approach their village after years of misadventures, Sancho says:

Open your eyes, my longed-for village, and see your son Sancho Panza returning, not very rich but very well lashed. Open your arms, too, to welcome your son Don Quixote, who has been conquered by another’s arm but comes here as the conqueror of himself; and that, he’s told me, is the best conquering you can wish for. I’ve got some money with me, because if I’ve been given a good lashing I’ve had a ride on a good horse, as the thief said to the executioner.

There is a lot about life here, which itself often feels like a good lashing. And maybe DQ is right in the end; the best conquering we can do is to conquer ourselves. If we can also say that we’ve had a ride on a good horse, then all the greater blessing to this whole messy business of life.

An old boy named Grant (62) runs a whitewater rafting business here on the River of No Return, the Salmon River. Like many of the people here in this remote part of Idaho, he works terribly hard making a living doing something he really wants to do, the way he wants to do it. During a recent day on the river with him I picked up this phrase: "…it was a dumbass idea that worked out right in the end." We careen from madness to occasional brilliance, and manage, against the odds, to sometimes get it right in the end.

DQ is going on my “circular read” list; one of those rare books where, after I turn the last page, I will return to the first and read it again and again.
Dave