Death-Birth Continuity.

…" [By the time Mark Twain] had mastered the analytic knowledge needed to pilot the Mississippi River, he discovered the river had lost its beauty. Something is always killed. But what is less noticed in the arts...something is always created too. And instead of just dwelling on what is killed it’s important also to see what’s created and to see the process as a kind of death-birth continuity that is neither good nor bad, but just is. .. We pass through a town called Marmarth but John doesn’t stop even for a rest and so we go on.“

Bad Lands around Marmarth, ND. In the above passage, the narrator dwells on death and killing, which (Metaphoric Bridge Connection), “fits” this surrounding very real harsh terrain.
…And here, ALSO notice how the town atmosphere, and town’s evident abandonment (MBC), fits the Narrators description of the surrounding harsh terrain and the “death-birth continuity” of above passage. … Even the name Marmarth poetically sounds (Metaphoric Bridge Connection), malicious, maladaptive, plus rhymes with harmful.

…Moreover, You Should Study How The Lived Road Experience Of The Narrator, Chris And The Sutherlands, reflects and poetically amplifies the painful telling of this terrible wrenching desolate portion of Phaedrus’ life, as follows =>
…At the end of these 7 pages, in this "heat is so ferocious. …. old, bad highway.“ we are told => " And a slip of paper from the probate court telling me that some person was committed as insane. Did they mean me? “

…The ZMM passage above is part of ~7 pages, where there are multiple Metaphoric Bridge Connections (MBC)s, that Author Robert Pirsig has placed for us. AND in the reader’s minds, let the awful landscape “stage set” the corresponding conditions in "the rational, analytical, classical world of Phædrus.“ AND also always implied is the reverse.
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(Photo = 104-0458c ...... ZMM Page = 071 After ...... WayPt = 079`|w|' ft)