I don't have any black & white film anymore, nor my really cool darkroom. I have software and the barely refined sensibilities of a zen photographer. The Zone System, as a photographic device, so refined, so elegant, seems now like an out-of-phase anachronism, at least to the way I approach photography today. But are there not lessons we can still take from it? I think there are.
The process broke down light into nine distinct, measurable units of gray, proceeding from pure black to pure white, with graduating shades in between, each predictably metered. You controlled where you wanted a particular shade (and of course its corresponding degree of detail) to fall in the print by controlling how you developed the negative. Selecting paper grade and other considerations were mastered as well, and this is but a light glossing over of the system, but you get the idea. If you were paying attention, what you learned was not so much about light meters and chemistry, but indeed how to look and really see. And what you saw was what light is, and what it does.
Chance, as Adams and others have said, favors the prepared mind. Without understanding and appreciating what light is, and what it does, there is no serendipity, no moment to capture alive and breathing. The magic of light, all of it -- tones, values, textures, mysteries and whispers -- resides deep in my soul. The Zone System taught me this.
It's my Zen System.