Way up at Box Canyon Lake, Idaho, two idiots with a pellet rifle and a plan to spend the night made their way up a steep scree field to a ridge. It was only the third mile in their three and a half mile hike, but the last half mile was straight up the side of a mountain with loose rocks. Seventy-five percent of their way to the ridge, after hundreds of feet of switchbacks, standing on ample footing among the steep pitch, they looked down at the expansive view of the canyon below them. When they reached the top of the ridge they could now see Upper Box Canyon Lake. They began to slide as if on skis down the scree on the other side of the mountain towards the lake. Much more fun than trudging up it.

        As they reached the lake they set up camp along the bank. It was a bright blue day with a few clouds. The air was thin as they stood a thousand feet below “The Box,” an eleven thousand foot peak above the lake. After packing their knap-sacks into their tents, bored, they decided to walk to the boulder field with their pellet rifle.

The boulder field was a terrific green meadow with a small stream leading into the lake. The idiots were surrounded by four peaks; The Box, Long Ridge Peak, Lower Box Peak, and Iron Mountain. The peaks basked in the sunlight. All around the meadow, little pikas scurried around their community. One pika had an orange flower in its mouth. Two other Pika’s chased each other through the rocks. One pika stood proudly on a jagged boulder, inspecting the intruders of their community. He stood on his hind legs on the highest rock forty feet away, asking to be shot by the idiots.

       But what the idiots didn’t know was that the Pika was a master of Zen, and did not fear them. The idiots set up the rifle, took a shot, and missed. As the shot rang the Zen Pika dipped out of sight for a moment, but then immediately perched itself back on top of the jagged boulder. The idiots took ten more shots and the Zen Pika ducked and popped back up each time.

        Then the Pika started to mess with them. The Pika kept coming closer and closer, the idiots kept shooting and shooting. After 30 attempts to shoot the Pika, the Zen Pika was now only twenty feet away from the idiots. In a darting motion the Pika charged at them, one idiot yelped to the other with the rifle, “Shoot him! Shoot him! He’s right in front of us!” The pika ran right up in front of them, about a foot and a half from their feet, and the idiot took ten shots at him from point-blank range, missing all of them. The Zen Pika disappeared and they never saw him again.

        The idiots walked back to camp and began setting up a fort with a fire-place with scrap wood lying around in the forest. They brought a hack and chopped thick branches off of trees. They lugged the wood back to camp. As the sun went down they built up their fire in their wooden structure. Then the stars came out, bright and clear, and they sat by the fire in the night.