Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
Pg. 73

“Up out of the orange glow of our fire you cold see immense systems of uncountable stars, either as individual blazers, or in low Venus droppers, or vast Milky Ways incommensurate with human understanding, all cold, blue, silver, but our food and our fire was pink with goodies. And true to what Japhy had predicted, I had absolutely not a jot of appetite for alcohol, I’d forgotten all about it, the altitude was too high, the exercise too heavy, the air too brisk, the air itself was enough to get your drunk ass drunk.”

Ray has filled the void. Finally Ray doesn’t feel the need to drink, but instead he is doing something that he enjoys which not only fills the void but it also positive and healthy.

Pg. 83

“ I nudged myself closer into the ledge and closed my eyes and thought, “Oh what a life this is, why do we have to be born in the first place, and only so we can have our poor gentle flesh laid out to such impossible horrors as huge mountains and rock and empty space.” And with horror I remembered the famous Zen saying, “When you get to the top of a mountain, keep climbing.”

Ray is climbing the higher mountain with Japhy, as Ray gets closer to the top the path becomes smaller and steeper. He then decides to stop and just let Japhy continue. Ray stops at a spot where there was a place to sit a little further back from the edge, as he is sitting in the crack of the mountain wall he thinks about his accomplishment for the day. Ray knows that throughout life you are meant to have challenges that are going to be hard and some you might not think you will make it, but those challenges are what shape your character and give you strength for later. In life even though the obstacles are hard you need to push through them and even when you reach your highest point and feel secure where you are at if you push further the next accomplishment will feel even better then the one before.