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Born and raised with the kind of expectations that often accompany privilege, Jim Lenfestey approached his thirtieth birthday in a state of acute anxiety. A young family and a demanding work life on one hand, and a burgeoning love for poetry on the other.When an independent bookseller discerns Lenfestey's difficulties, and prescribes for a remedy the poems of a Chinese hermit named Han Shan, Lenfestey's life is changed forever. After "swallowing the poems like aspirin" for the next thirty years, a spirited embrace of this ancient poet called Cold Mountain - the poet he has come to see as a guiding light in his life - prompts Lenfestey to travel to China on a pilgrim's search for his cave. Along the way, this quest takes our author first to Tokyo, where he visits with the foremost translator and scholar of eastern poetry, Burton Watson, and from there across China, from the enormous chanting hall of ten thousand Buddhas in Bailin Temple to the birthplace of Confucius.