music: Bob Dylan- Blood on the Tracks
What can you depend on absolutely? What in this world is so rock solid that you’d never give it a second thought and always count on it being there? Quite literally, I suppose that rock ranks pretty highly on this scale. Not the music (although that has always been there for me as well) but the geologic substance. The stuff underneath our feet. The stuff upon which our homes are built. The stuff that makes the dinosaurs look like wet-behind-the-ears newcomers to creation. For my entire life I have taken the earth beneath my feet completely for granted, assuming that it would be strong enough to support whatever weight i might pile on top of it. All that was thrown into question for the first time last friday, around 4:40 AM. I was shaken awake - again quite literally - by an earthquake.
I’d felt minor tremors since moving out here, but they were mostly weaker than the sensation you might get from standing next to the highway as tanker trucks fly past. I also remember thinking as a kid how ludicrous it was to build and enormous city right on a major fault line. (I’m still not completely over the apparent oversight, but now that I live in the Bay AreaI can understand why people would want to put a city here.) This one was worthy of some attention, a 4.2 on the infamous Richter scale, and centered somewhere in the Oakland hills. Nothing like Japan’s quake of last week, but enough to wake me up and completely freak me out. The whole thing couldn’t have lasted more than thirty seconds start to finish, and all my books are still right where I left them on the shelf, but it was enough to make me reconsider my relationship with the earth below.
We humans take a lot for granted. It’s a mental adaptation, I think: were we to consider and reconsider every single variable we might encounter during the course of a day we’d be paralyzed, unable to properly weigh the relative risks and rewards of certain actions and interactions to the point where we do nothing at all. through some incomprehensible calculation, the human brain has determined it a very safe bet to assume that the ground isn’t going anywhere. This allows us to walk upon it, dig holes into it, move piles of it from one place to another, build things upon it, get on with our lives. But assuming something to be a very safe bet isn’t any sort of guarantee that it is 100% dependable. And out here, near the San Andreas and Hayward faults, “very safe bet” looks something like a major rattler every 25 years or so. The last one, baseball fans will remember, was in 1989, which means we’re overdue. Suddenly our assumptions about this essential consideration shift. I’m beginning to pick this up. What do I know of it? I’ve been living in Wisconsin, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts for my entire life.
I was not overly concerned for my safety, but the earthquake freaked me out. Like being caught in a mountain lightning storm, coming face-to-face with a bear, taking a small boat over serious whitewater, feeling the sting of a -40 degree winter wind, or being sucked under by a Pacific wave, an earthquake reminds you that nature does not carry one speck of concern for my individual well-being, and that I need to be incredibly respectful of its power. The earth is a dynamic entity, slowly shifting and morphing. Continents move, given enough time. Sometimes the earth feels the need to high-five itself. Sometimes the earth belches out its insides. Sometimes the earth needs to readjust its crust a little too quickly for human comfort. But the earthquake also made me reconsider my operating premises. What do I take for granted? What do I assume that maybe I shouldn’t? What am I prepared to deal with? How will I act when taken completely off guard? And what, when it hits, will shake me wide awake?
music: Sigur Ros- Agaetis Byjun
I’m doing laundry now, which is probably way overdue, and as I’m moving my clothes from the washer to the drier I notice that the clothes really aren’t all that wet. Rather, they aren’t as wet as I remember clothes being after a wash cycle. They are damp, there is evidence of water being involved at some point here, but they really should be more wet than they are. Then i realize that all of the clothes I’m moving from washer to dryer are made of plastic. Capeliene, polypro, nylon/lycra blend, duofold, bergelene…and the only clothes left out of the wash cycle are my gore-tex jacket and my windstopper fleece jacket. Granted these are my travel clothes, the small handful of garments I’ve been wearing ever since I rolled out of Boston on July 1, and when I consider all the clothes I own the picture changes. But still.
No-correction-my socks are a blend of wool and synthetic (40% wool i think), and my bandana is made from 100% cotton. So there’s that.
But still.
What happened to plants? Or animals even? Scientists working in high security research bunkers have managed to turn used milk cartons and tennis ball fuzz into such a wonderful facsimilie of plant fiber and animal hide that we’ve forsaken plants and animals altogether. Now our outdoorsiness manifests itself in brightly colored plastic clothes. We think of fleece in terms of the newest North Face or Patagonia garment, but often fail to remember that fleece originally referred to sheep hair. My ‘fleece’ jacket doesn’t have that barnyard smell to it (I take that for granted), and it is very light, packable, and due to some space-age laminate completely windproof. But here’s the kicker: I wear my jacket around town and people look at it and probably think “wow, that guy is really outdoorsy, really into being in nature.” Only when i cover myself in plastic, apparently.
I wonder what the environmental impact is of all the waste chemicals pouring out of the Gore labs…
Perhaps we’ve gotten too far ahead of ourselves as a culture when something so clearly synthetic, so clearly made by chemicals in a factory becomes the symbol for outdoorsiness or an affinity for nature. Maybe it’s just really good marketing by the gear companies. But it shouldn’t be so. Wool and leather, still quite acceptable materials from which to make clothes, should really be the marks of the nature-lover. Cotton is still a wonderous material, despite being a poor insulator once it gets wet, and there’s all sorts of alternatives like silk, hemp, or beech. These are all truly natural fibers, and would be better symbols of the nature-lover than the dryer full of plastic in the next room.
(Something similar could be said for food, but I’m not going to get into that right now.)
music: Spanish Pop Covers at the Cafe International, San Francisco
If we are lucky enough to live to age 80, we have 960 months of life to fill. Most of them are split minimum 5:2 with school or work. There’s a good run at the start where you spend a lot of time drooling and sleeping. On the whole, though, of these 960 hypothetical months that we are given to fill we rarely spend even one doing one thing, especially one thing that we want to do. I chose to spend one of my months of life walking in the mountains, and it was a solid month of walking. From July 18 until August 16 I found myself once again with a big green backpack, but this time strolling through one of the largest roadless stretches in the continental United States. By the end, I had walked an estimated 280-300 miles, had risen 36,000’ and had descended 40,000’. And now I can say that I am a thru-hiker alumnus. I’ve completed the High Sierra Trail and John Muir Trail in succession.
I’d like to say that the whole thing was pure, unadulterated glory. Certainly there were moments of transcendence and beauty such that I have not encountered in my previous 332 months of life, but there were also moments of pain and agony. It’s tough business carrying a pack through the mountains, and doing it every single day for 29 days. My pack, I estimate, weighed anywhere from 30-55 lbs. depending on how much food we had. The first couple days left me completely spent and hurting while I built up the callouses on my hips and the muscles in my shoulders and back. Ibuprofen was part of my hardly-balanced breakfast. On day 6, in a mad dash down Mt. Whitney, I tweaked my left ankle something fierce and endured shooting pains up and down my leg for the next 6 or so days. The nights were cold; it dropped below freezing frequently when we camped above 10,500’. It rained every day for the first eight days, something that any sierra hiker would swear their life against happening. The mosquitos swarmed in plagues of biblical proportions. This was an encounter with Nature in its most raw, primitive, and uncaring state. Natural paradise has no concerns about your comfort or well-being. I learned that quickly. But there were also moments of indescribable beauty, and they were plentiful.
The journey was, in very simple terms, a long walk. So while the sightseeing afforded to us by alpine lakes and mountain passes was the reason why we decided to walk where we did, the walking itself took center stage. Have I ever done anything so physical for so long and for so many days in a row? Probably not. After my body stopped rebelling and settled into the reality of 10 or so miles up and down every single day walking became less some necessary painful experience required to get to the next campsite and more something that would induce a very quiet meditative state. Meditation is often depicted as a sitting affair, but there are also forms of meditation in which the practitioner walks. And walks. And walks. And walk I did. By the second week the struggle of walking subsided. Uphills became less arduous, downhills less jarring. Speed gave way to rhythm. I had so long to walk that there was no sense in being in a rush. In some great paradox time passed more quickly because of it. I found that my thoughts slowed and for a few short moments I reached moments of what buddhists would call something like “clear mind” or taoists would call “not-thinking.” And when I came to I found myself in some of the most amazing natural scenery that I’ve had the fortune to see.
The High Sierras themselves are dynamic. The path led us through high mountain zones that looked like what I’d imagine the moon to look like, and down into small glades bursting with plants and greenery. There were waterfalls and quiet lakes, trees literally older than Jesus, and scenic vistas around almost every turn. The JMT is called the most scenic trail in the country, and that could very well be possible, considering how long it is and how it just doesn’t stop being positive (although there’s a couple shorter trails in Utah and Hawaii that could possibly give it a run for its money in terms of raw wonder). That I find myself so close to the Sierras out here is a huge plus; Yosemite has replaced Franconia Notch as my weekend warrior destination.
And Yosemite is something to behold. While Sequoia and King’s Canyon are enormous in scope with ranges of jagged spires in all directions, Yosemite is rounded and polished, mellower, but not any smaller. The trip ended with a sunrise ascent of Half Dome and a subsequent mile descent into Yosemite Valley. Then motorized travel back to civilization proper, replete with fast food burgers, beer, ice cream, and other tasty food that doesn’t have to be rehydrated. I admittedly missed some food (and after 2 weeks even my food cravings diminished), but other than that I didn’t miss much about city living. And I was out for long enough time to get it all out of my system that it now seems foreign and slightly abrasive to me as I scurry about San Francisco and Oakland trying to find a new place to live. Maybe I shouldn’t habituate to the smell of rotting garbage, car horns, mobs of people packed into buses. But maybe it’s unavoidable. I could only make this hike happen because of civilization, having done it all with my fancy camping trinkets and gadgets and plastic clothes and inflatable lightweight mattress and dehydrated meals and water treatment system. By most people’s standards, one month of life spent walking the John Muir Trail is something unfathomable. But consider John Muir himself, spending not one month but upwards of 50 years walking through the High Sierras with nothing more than a blanket, some tea, some salted pork, the clothes on his back, and the shoes on his feet. That’s a Wisconsin Boy done good out West.
After spending one glorious month of my life hiking the trail named after him, I guess it’s time to see how I do out here.
music: Sound Travels on 89.9 WERU, Maine (webcast)
Last year’s April Vacation took the Monkey Wrench Gang (me, TMO, 1ey, and Montana) to the South of Utah. This year, with incredibly open-ended travels on the horizon, I decided to stick it out in Boston and make some effort to investigate the universe locally. Original plans for the opening of break were to take off to the White Mountains to enjoy the first 70 degree days of the year, but due to events related to Jesus and bunnies that lay eggs this weekend I was left stranded. I went through the usual list of outdoorsy co-conspirators but nothing panned out.
I recalled late on Thursday night a shot in the dark that 1ey and I attempted a couple years back that turned out to be genius: a post on craigslist for some wayward souls to blindly join up in an expedition. Last time we found Matt, renegade writer and Harvard Senior, and the three of us headed up to Montreal and Quebec city for a long weekend. Criagslist has found me music gear, housing, and bandmates; why not some people who want to go camping this weekend? It was worth a shot, and worth 5 minutes before hitting the sack. The call went out:
weekend backpacking trip to NH
Reply to: davidtaus@anize.org
Date: 2006-04-13, 11:31PM EDTso i was planning on doing an overnight hiking trip to NH but my friends bailed on me. I’m still really pumped about getting some time in on trail this weekend but not pumped enough to go at it solo. been there and done that, but it’s much more fun (and safer) with other people. anybody out there up for a weekend of hiking?
(hiking here means > 25 lb backpack, elevation gains and losses, probably 5+ miles per day in the whites, sleeping in a tent, water purification, carry out your waste, all that stuff. not quite a stroll through the city park.)
me: 27/m, teacher for boston public who has friday off, would much rather spend a night out-of-doors this weekend than in his apartment. i have a car, tent, stove, maps, and knowhow. you hopefully have a a proper pack, sleeping bag, raingear, warm layers, a good attitude, and are not an axe murderer. because i don’t like camping with axe murderers.
drop an email if interested.
* this is in or around somerville
thanks-
david
* no — it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
There was a smattering of responses, mostly “I can’t go this weekend, but let’s go some time” or “I don’t have the gear for it but it sounds interesting!” Too little, too late, it seems. But among the apologies and rain checks, I find an email from John Muir in my inbox. Which is a big deal, because 1) it’s freakin’ John Muir! and 2) I though he was dead. Anyhow, here’s what ol’ Johnny had to say:
TO: davidtaus@anize.org
DATE: 4/14/2006, 11:57 AM
FROM: jmuir@trailhead.netDear David —
A few minutes ago I chanced up your message. At that moment every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring winds, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease. I, too, hunger for a return to the wilds. I yearn to cast off the shackles of the city and take to the hills and glens. The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.
If you’ll allow, let us climb together into the mountains and get their good tidings. Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul. I am sorry to learn that your friends “bailed” on you. I recall a hike in California where, to my dismay, my compatriots bailed the murky waters from the prior day’s coffee pot onto my snoring face. The grounds stayed interwoven in the fibers of my beard just as the song of the kestrel on a frosty morning is woven into my very being. I could still taste coffee when I began our descent into Yosemite. It was good and I smile now to think of it.
Shall we discuss provisioning? I have several pounds of salt pork and pemmican, stout rope, malt beer and a trusty axe—though I am not an axe murderer ;-) I hope it is not your intent to make this a hunting expedition! I consider that foul pursuit to be the very business of murder and will protest most vehemently and spit on you.
I am please to hear that you are “pumped about getting some…on trail this weekend”. I would be sad to see you go solo. I can promise that even though we may fag out after a long day toting our gear, I will still be “up for it” the next day. May I inquire as to your response to this parable? If you woke up in a tent and had mayonaise on your hindquarters would you tell anyone? I pray your answer is a resounding “NO!” and then we shall go camping.
May the road rise to meet you, fellow wanderer! And may we rise to this occassion as brothers in arms and hearts.
Sincerely,
J.
Genius. Craigslist comes through again.
John, if you’re out there, tell your boys down at the Sierra Club offices that the check’s in the mail. Also, if you could, put in a word with the good folks running the Mt. Whitney Trail Lottery for me come mid-July?
I opted for a hike around the Fells yesterday instead. It was really an attempt to break in my new hiking boots and test out a pair of trekking poles I picked up. I figured that on a 7 mile day hike over more or less flat terrain that I could get away without duct tape or moleskin. Stupid stupid. Today i’m nursing blisters the size of silver dollars. A pain in the heel for me, but probably a commonplace second thought for the likes of John Muir. Maybe I’ll ask him about blisters next time he writes.
music: Grateful Dead- 4/11/1978
The Ides of March are behind us, the Equinox directly in front of us, the full moon just past, the end of Daylight Savings is nigh, and the days are lengthening. Time once again for our hero to fix his eyes on the horizon and stumble over things directly in front of him.
Teaching is a Faustian bargian of sorts: you essentially give up the majority of your weekends from September through June, but get all the time back all at once in July and August. I’ve maximized utility on the summer front for the past two years: 2004 involved driving around the American West, hiking, and playing music with AJM. 2005 took me overseas to Australia and Hawai’i. Each of the previous two years involved a lot of distance and a wide variety of activities. Plans for 2006 have been in the works for a couple months, and the plans involve something much more focused and restricted as far as distance. 211 miles, to be exact about it. This summer AJM and I will be hiking the John Muir Trail.
I’m one of those that likes to put 50 lbs (more, sometimes) on my back and walk up and down mountains for fun. This is more or less unfathomable to people who don’t do it, but whatever. I’ve done some pretty wild hikes and have pushed me and my backpack past the point of common sense on occasion, but nothing I’ve done will measure up to this. The JMT is rugged terrain, snaking thorugh some of the best scenery the High Sierras of California has to offer, but it’s remote. We will be out for a total of 26 days. We will be several days’ walk away from paved surfaces for most of it, dependent on food cache drops and prearranged resupplies every 5-7 days. We’ll be doing anywhere from 7-15 miles on any given day, plus elevation changes of up to 3,000’. And we’ll be doing all of it above 7,500’ until we descend into Yosemite Valley and wrap the thing up.
This is an intimidating undertaking. I’m rarely nervous when it comes to hiking trips, but this is one for which I have a very healthy respect. No matter, we’re going to do it. Everyone I’ve talked to that has done it says it was one of the highlights of their life. We have the experience, we have the training, we have the gear, we have the motivation, and despite the advice of many distance hikers, we have the travel guitars to write a song about it as we go. This weekend I finished the first draft of our itinerary and with it the ideations about doing the JMT this summer have become much more real. The wheels are in motion for a very different sort of adventure this summer. Next up: dates, permits, gear lists, training…gettin’ there. as always.
music: Gillian Welch- Hell Among the Yearlings
The Appalachian Mountain Club offers a killer training: teach youth workers, especially urban youth workers, to take kids camping. There might not be anything I was more cut out to do. So when school’s guidance counselor mentioned the opportunity at a meeting, I jumped at it. I spent the last 5 days hiking around the White Mountains of New Hampshire neck deep in my first outdoor leadership training since leaving Camp Minikani.
I knew parts of it would be frustrating for me. The program was geared towards people who have never slept in a tent and who have never gone more than a day or two without showering, so much of the preparation bordered on excruciating in terms of content and depth. Can I set up a tent? How about a tarp? Do I know how to tie a bowline and a taut-line? Can I work a whisperlite? Can I pack a backpack (accessibility, balance, compression)? Can I use a topo map and compass? Do I know the principles of layering? Can I recognize the symptoms of dehydration and hypothermia? Check, check, check, check, check, and then some. After so many years of camp counselorhood and my own minor obsession with camping gear the real problem was that the AMC was forcing me to leave my gear at home and use their backpacks and sleeping bags.
The hard skills were necessary, yes, because most people in the group had never had the experience of using a map and compass or setting up one of those four person Eureka tents. Fine. But the soft skills, the emphasis on leadership and group dynamics, were sometimes equally as frustrating. We had instructors, and excellent instructors they were (one had summitted Denali among other accomplishments) but at a certain point I didn’t buy in when I was assigned to be a leader of the day. Too much was already decided and taken out of my hands that leadership in this training was totemic, was a hamster-wheel hoop-jumping exercise, and I didn’t want to play. I also have to question leadership decisions to stop a group on-trail and do a mini-lecture about lightning drills in the middle of a thunderstorm. I also have to go. Beyond it being incredibly patronizing to treat a group of professional adults like kids, I didn’t feel the need to prove myself to the people who were actually in a position of uniformed authority. Adolescence rears its ugly head, even after all this time. I stepped back, opting for a more transparent (read: uninvested) leadership style as a group member, and let my co-leader take the uniformed position up front. As a result the group got lost and interpersonal dynamics suffered. I was fine with all of it, but my co-leader and the instructors were not happy about it. Fine. I enjoyed the bushwhacking. And at the end of a long school year I don’t really feel the burning need to be the adult when I don’t have to. At least we were hiking.
Hiking, though, is a relative term. We didn’t hike; we plodded. It was easily one of the slowest hikes I’ve ever done. We covered about four miles in just over 8 hours. It was mostly due to one of the participants who was not in shape the way he thought he was. He came on the trip to challenge himself, and challenge he got. By the end of the trip my pack weight had gone up 10-15 lbs and his empty pack was being carried by someone else. While it was nothing short of amazing to see him struggle and succeed in making it through the terrain, it was an enormous test of my patience. Our route was cut short. We hiked ourselves off the Kinsman Ridge on the last day for the sake of one of our group members and missed the final participant celebration. A hard way for someone to learn their limits.
Perhaps patience was one of the lessons meant for me in this training. After all, where did I really have to be? And how important was it to actually get to where we were told we were going? Apparently I bought in to the training enough to have this cause concern.
All negatives aside, it was an important thing for me to do. I had amazing bouts of nostalgia for the Explorer staff trips at the beginning of the summer. This training went so far as to have a little vesper at the end of the night. The group, a dispirate bunch who never would otherwise mix, coalesced around the very issues that would rub people raw: a painfully slow hiker, the weather, leadership who withholds enough decisions that matter to render the training itself a simulation. Adversity and challenge made our experience out there explosive in its unadulterated humanity. Between the requisite inside jokes that came out (see title) we were all fallible, we all had needs to varying degrees and couldn’t manage by ourselves, and while some of us pulled through ok, others struggled greatly. The rewards of the experience went to the strugglers. I enjoyed my time in the White Mountains and took to the group despite my difficulties being a participant, but I’ve been there before. I’ve backpacked and been a part of groups enough to know exactly what to expect from the experience. My new friends who experienced it all for the first time felt the Earth move, were shaken and awakened, and watching that happen might have been the greatest part of my trip.
This training marks the beginning of my return to what I realized I really believe in: giving others experiences with nature that change them for the better. The teaching I’m doing now is really an attempt to bring the water to the horse, but I can’t help but wonder if I could accomplish all my goals so much more effectively in the Cathedral of the Pines. This training brings me one step closer
I slighted myself out there in my impatience. I left the training with lessons of my own, the foremost of which is one that has been with me since the sixth grade: learn from all people. I shut off from much of what was offered because this was my self-proclaimed area of expertise. I would have been better to remember that even experts (of which I’m not sure I am) can get something out of the same experience if they remain open to it. Yes, camp prepared me well for the outdoors and leadership and working with youth, but to fall back on that as a gold standard is to limit my growth. I seemed to forget camp’s most important lesson. I will be humble, for I know my weakness.
music: Townes Van Zandt- Live at the Old Quarter
I caught myself trying to do nine things at once today: laundry, troubleshooting the electronic crackle in my guitar amp, purging unused clothes from my drawers, pulling down three concerts from archive.org, boiling ravioli for dinner, fixing a zipper, checking my bank statement against my receipts, unloading the dish rack, and worst of all, making a list of all the things I had to do tonight (check about the table hockey game I ordered, go grocery shopping, write a quiz that the kids are taking tomorrow, write a rent check and drop it off, call a guitar technician I know about amp repair, refill migraine prescription).
Ridiculous.
This is the time of year when things gain momentum. School is sliding into its final days. I’m beginning to think about summer. The warmer weather (whenever it comes) catalyzes all life’s reactions. There’s a lot to get done and a short time in which to do it all.
Some people are able to handle having thirty things going at once; I can handle it as well but not happily. I’m the type to order my obligations by relative importance and then run down the list, checking them off one by one. It’s a sign of my mental health when I crave order and productivity enough to start up with the lists, but these days lists grow long and untended. And even though I work my way through them they seem to grow longer such that I never seem to make much headway.
In the midst of all this personal entropy I started to reorganize the cookware cabinet because it was pissing me off how the lesser-used stuff ended up in the front and the big mixing bowls were balanced on top of the smaller ones. I stopped about 30 seconds into the exercise because the ravioli was done and the shows finished downloading and I resigned myself to the fact that in three or so days things would be in a similar state of chaos.
In doing nine things at once I don’t really get any one thing done well. This life of mine has me turning in my hamster wheel something fierce.
Part of the crush I experienced today was because I skipped town to go hiking in the Green Mountains this weekend. The trip to the backcountry afforded me some time and space to meditate and ruminate, to let my mind process so many backed-up thoughts. In high school I made a point to take about an hour before bed every night to sit with a cup of tea and just think-let my mind wander here and there, let it delve into corners of my psyche that needed attention-but there just isn’t time for that sort of thing anymore. Quiet unstructured thinking time has become an extravagance. Hiking, however, provides me with that opportunity again. Hiking itself is a meditation for me-an amount of physical exertion mixed with a self-sufficient philosophy put to practice and a very, very long path to walk as slow as I please. There is no thrill to hiking the way there is to rock climbing or whitewater paddling; you just walk. You walk the path and think. Sometimes after struggling uphill you catch a nice view, but there is no opportunity or reason to do more than walk. Spending time walking through the wilderness gives me that space to let my mind grind and digest all the stuff that it needs to.
It usually takes about three days to acclimate to the backcountry lifestyle, to clear my head of the bombarding demands of regular life, to have my ears stop their city-noise-cancelling ring and be able to actually listen, to get used to sleeping on the ground, to drop into a calm and focused and crystalline mental state. By the third morning of the weekend I was approaching this goal but had to cut off the exercise and come back to Boston. I spent a good deal of yesterday nursing an incredible migraine and spent most of today mopping up all those little details of post-post-modern living that I left scattered last Friday.
This is a time of transition, which doesn’t make things any easier. But my transitions are more internal and seasonally routine than others. I spent my time in the mountains with two friends: one from Boston who won’t be here much longer, one an old roommate from college who I don’t see nearly enough. We three had a positive time, but in our conversations and in my own meditations while hiking I was reminded how much is in transition right now across the board. Jojo is moving to a new and unfamiliar city for a boy. Evan just graduated law school. Each had their own reasons and needs to be up in the mountains and meditate, perhaps more reason than my pedestrian lists of errands, but from my perspective it was good to spend some time with my friends. They are two examples of this flux in my extended circle: another college roommate just received his M.D., and another is off to become a Broadway actor. My sister just shed the majority of her material possessions and is now making her way out of the deserts of Arizona to start her adult life. Things are afoot at home as well- one roommate has already moved out, with at least two more on the way out by summer’s end. What of the countless other individual lives out there swinging through transitions of all kinds this time of year?
We all walk some sort of path, but most of the time we’re so distracted by computers and dirty clothes and bank statements and boiling ravioli to realize we are — right now — in the middle of our journeys. Given the chance to simplify and literally walk the path, the more basic terms of our journey comes into focus for a brief moment. I walk up and down mountains and canyons with 50 lbs on my back, in part, to work myself into this perspective. (That and the chance to catch a view of some fantastic scenery.) The rest of my time on the path is spent oblivious that there is a journey beyond what has to get done for today or tomorrow. And here again, late into Tuesday night, a good hour and a half after I would have liked to be in bed, I’m scrambling, trying to go nine directions at once, not keeping up with my own lists, trying to make these microtransitions as smoothly as possible, stumbling over myself, stretching for that mental place I cultivated nightly in high school and daily on-trail, and trying to remember the lesson from this past weekend in the woods: all I have to do is walk.
music: Bob Dylan- Bringing It All Back Home
Now that the trip to Utah is less than a week away, I can safely start to let myself get excited about it. The south of Utah is one of the most incredible places I’ve ever been, possibly one of the most incredible places on earth. The drainage of several of the major rivers of the West have created some mind-boggling rock formations and hundreds — perhaps thousands — of canyons. The Grand Canyon is a prime example. It is of course the largest and most famous of the canyons of the Southwest. Its hype is well-deserved; the Grand Canyon is indeed a staggering thing to take in, and I’m sure the millions of people who drive up to the edge and snap a quick photo will agree.
But some of the lesser-known parts of canyon country hold the most wonder. The tributary to the Grand Canyon occupied by the Havasupai Natives, for example, is a bona fide desert oasis, complete with hanging gardens and the most spectacular waterfall I’ve ever had the fortune to see. And while the natural wonders of places like Zion, Bryce Canyon, and Arches are well known and recognized, I can’t help but wonder what some of the lesser known corners of canyon country might hold. My friend Molly, who visited the south of Utah this past winter, gave the sage advice to spend more of our time in Canyonlands. The lesser-known (and much bigger) national park is home to a handful of smaller canyons carved out around the confluence of the Green and Colorado rivers, and is often passed by in favor of those parks whose paved roads lead directly up to their main attractions. Canyonlands NP, however, is still a highly-trafficked area. The undiscovered magic of canyon country, I’d wager, lies outside the bounds of the National Park system.
Unfortunately, one of the most spectacular canyons of the American Southwest is under water. What we now know as Lake Powell was once the Glen Canyon, a stretch of river-carved rock that was apparently one of the most beautiful places on earth. The story of the demise of Glen Canyon went something like this: the government, in an attempt to meet the water demands of the American southwest in the 1950’s and 1960’s, decided to dam rivers, which would flood certain canyons and turn them into reservoir “lakes.” They were considering flooding the Grand Canyon, but environmentalists convinced them otherwise. One of their suggested flooding sites, the Glen Canyon, was not as well-known largely because it was not heavily explored (aside from John Wesley Powell, namesake of lake Powell and allegedly the first white man to float the Colorado through the Grand Canyon). After the legislation was passed, David Brower, the leader of the Sierra Club took a trip to Glen Canyon, immediately realized what a horrible mistake he had made, and spent the rest of his life trying to restore the Glen Canyon. What was so inspiring to him and the handful of others who had the fortune to visit (including Edward Abbey) was submerged under the backflow of the mighty Colorado river. Lake Powell and its immediate tributaries is now supervised by the ironically named Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.
In planning our trip to Utah we thought only of the National Parks: Zion, Bryce, Canyonlands, Arches. Until, that is, AJM forwarded along a little piece of news: because of the drought and demand for water, Lake Powell’s water levels have dropped off significantly, revealing some of the all-but-forgotten features of the original Glen Canyon. One of these features is the Cathedral in the Desert, a natural sandstone ampitheater with sandstone walls, hanging gardens, and a waterfall of its own that is supposed to rival any natural wonder of the world in terms of scale and beauty. It has been under water for over 40 years, but this spring it has resurfaced. The catch is that when runoff from the Rocky Mountains makes its way into canyon country, Lake Powell will rise again and the Cathedral (along with hundreds of other canyons) will be resubmerged for an indefinite amount of time. They are saying this will happen by the beginning of June.
It appears, then, that we’ve planned a trip to the south of Utah in the short time window that these uncovered remnants of the mythic Glen Canyon will be available to explore. While it’s uncertain whether or not we will be able to reach the Cathedral itself on foot, there will be other recently exposed nooks and crannies in canyon country to explore. And explore means just that; this is as close to unexplored terrain as we will ever come to. There are no maps here. Rather, on all the maps you can buy (and I bought a map of the Rec Area today) it just shows water. But no more, at least not for the next couple of weeks.
In a paper I wrote last year, I made the argument that humans can no longer truly experience the wilderness because the frontier is no more. Everything has been discovered and mapped out. How many places have we gone in our lives that have not been quantified by cartographers? Even in our “wilderness” travels, how many times have we forsaken maps and walked from the path into unknown land? For a few short weeks it will actually be possible to walk off the edge of the map in a corner of Southwest Utah, and it appears that 1ey, tmo, and I will have a chance to do just that.
music: Paul Simon- Concert in Central Park 1995
Despite my philosophical meandering about surviving on air alone, my stomach was quite upset with me this morning. Physiology calls, and I answer. I had breakfast and made plans to go food shopping. While I wheeled a big cart through the ailes of the local grocery store filling it with consumables, brushing by enough food to sustain me for at least two lifetimes, I grew even more upset with the idea of food. The way it’s done for us supermarket style is dangerously convienent. I see this a lot more clearly with my students, who really and truly can not connect their kung pao beef in styrofoam with those enormous bovines that, they are told, graze in these mythical big open spaces called fields. Nutrition, to them, is trying to occasionally eat something that was not synthesized in a chemical plant. It’s a step in the right direction, and it’s honest. For those of us who are a little more mindful of the food we eat, I think we have a lot of misconceptions to get over regarding our own consumption.
I found myself spending the majority of my time and money today in the produce section: onions, mushrooms, bananas, orange juice, pears, an avocado, and the like. After that it was to the dairy aisle for butter, cheese, milk, and eggs. A little here-and-there with bagels, pasta, and pita bread and a few assorted house favorites thrown in like olives, teccino, and heady corn chips. I don’t think I bought any meat products today which is fairly standard for our house; even though none of us are vegetarians we have no burning need to eat meat on a regular basis. I looked at the contents of my cart during checkout and pegged myself as a fairly socially and environmentally responsible consumer.
But how true is that? I’m sure no self-respecting environmentalist would choose a hamburger over a banana, but the more I think about it the more i am unsure of the logic that goes into such analyses. Bananas are good food, fruit from the trees, unprocessed, full of good stuff you need. But there are no bananas growing where I’m from. This means that bananas have to be brought here from very far away, which involves harvesting, sorting, checking for quality, shipping, distrubiting, and stocking. I can’t easily imagine the life of a banana once it is picked off the tree; all I know is that bnanas appear in mind-boggling abundance in grocery stores and bodegas all over the Great White North, even in the winter months. There’s a lot of energy put into getting those bananas fresh on the produce aisle: people energy, a good amount of gasoline energy, perhaps some other energy keeping them fresh. When it is all added up, does the energy needed to bring one bunch of fresh bananas to my kitchen come out to less than the energy needed to bring a steak cut from a cow in, say, vermont onto my plate? Or a lobster from Maine? Even with biomass calculations I’d wager that it’s closer than most people think. The point here is that it could be that real social responsibility lies more in an effort to localize consumption as opposed to taking for granted that things like bananas, orange juice, avocados, and other food from other parts of the world just appear at the local Stop n’ Shop. Even though it’s not really talked about, there are some real problems with drinking orange juice in the dead of winter in Boston. But then again, who among us in New England are going to stick to cranberries, squash, alfalfa, lobster, and venison?
JZ forwarded a link around a week or so ago: it measures your ecological footprint. I scored an 11 acre footprint on the quiz (meaning I require about 11 acres of usable land in order to sustain my lifestyle, which is significantly below the national average of 24 acres per person. I can feel good about my social and environmental consciousness, I guess, but at the bottom of the quiz it said that “if everyone lived like you we would need 2.4 planets.” Uh oh. So much for my socially responsible ways. And, interestingly but not surprisingly, the category that required the most amount of space was the food category. Even with a car factoring in, even with big city living factored in, it really came down to food. The take home here is that one should be more than mindful about one’s own consumption; one should be mindful about the ways in which one’s society has set up and limited our means of consumption. I believe that it begins and ends with food, and today in the supermarket I had the unpleasant realization that the seemingly innocuous activity of stocking up on food for the 1-2 is built on premises that are inherently unsustainable. I say all this, of course, with a glass of fresh orange juice by my side.
music: The Slip- 2/11/05, Matt Murphy’s Pub
I’ve had this past week off from work and it’s passed in a slightly dissociative haze. Sleep has been adequate, but not of good quality and I found myself waking up much, much earlier than I wanted to. I have been doing a lot with music as well: went to two concerts, played an acoustic open mic, had a second jam session with the guys from last week, and wrote a new song. All the playing and listening has been wonderful, but it’s put me into a dream-like state, floating easily in and out of my own thoughts and the more objective reality surrounding me. I’ve also decreased my food intake this past week, partially because I haven’t needed to expend as much energy, but also because I’ve been dealing with a pesky cold and have stuck mostly to juice, soup, and tea. The predominantly liquid diet caused me to be fairly hungry all week as foodstuff passed through me more quickly. I’ve thought a great deal about the nature of food this week as a result and decided that while I really like food, I don’t really like the idea of food, as food is quite possibly the most important limiting factor in a human’s life.
Psychologists call food “the universal motivator.” Almost every religion on the planet manipulate the intake of food in some way in order to achieve some spiritual ends. Daniel Quinn points to food as the source of a need for economic and political systems. Biologists, in a slightly more compelling argument, consider food to be absolutely necessary for life. It is clearly a thing of great importance to us, I think because it is the unsolvable problem. We need to eat whether we like to or not; we are ruled on a very basic level by the very thing a lot of us socially conscious types don’t want to hear: “Consume Or Die.” I’ve hit this conclusion before. I’m pulling the topic off the mental shelf again because of something Chelsea dropped on me during our weekly dinner (yes, dinner; the irony is not lost) last week: Breatharianism.
The science teacher in me laughs at it enough to dismiss the idea all but completely. The ever-so-slight sliver of interest left over comes from my hope that there is part of us that is not bound to the human condition. It seems that if one were to solve the problem of hunger, if one were able to survive without needing to eat anything, then there would be something about us that transcends our own humanity. We would also have the key to solving the larger problem of consumption. Breatharians offer exactly that. And from their own reports, such things seem almost possible. There is the case of the Indian mystic who stayed under complete supervision for 10 days without consuming anything, after all. There are claims of similar feats from various sources. It can’t be coincidence that restriction of food is an integral part of the holiest events of the big three western world religions (Lent, Ramadan, Yom Kippur), or that adherents to Eastern religions commonly practice a form of fasting or purposeful restriction of food intake. Buddhism teaches that the source of our suffering is craving, and it seems that the most basic and common form of craving is hunger. Solving the problem of hunger, then, is a step on the path to enlightenment.
At this point, though, I’ll take a good breakfast over enlightenment. The world I live in is more commonly about making it through the next 24 hours than worrying about transcending the human condition. Time and energy are more precious commodities now. Modern living has got me firmly by the neck and I’m running in my little urban hamster wheel enough to afford myself a fairly comfortable mortal existence. It probably doesn’t help the breatharian cause that the most popular Breatharian guru comes across as a quack and that one of her followers died following her teachings. It also doesn’t help that our (very human) common sense tells us that this is all a pile of crap.
Still, if I were given the choice between living as I am now and somehow surviving without eating or drinking anything I think I would choose the latter. Food is a utilitarian function these days-I’m eating purely to keep fuel in the tank. I know full well that we can’t run on nothing, that our energy can’t just be created, that it needs to come from somewhere, and that there is a finite amount of energy in the universe. But that there is even a whisper of an outside shot that the tank could be kept full by something as simple as the air we breathe and that the problems of consumption could be solved in one fell swoop has enough philosophical appeal to keep me, um, hungry to know more.
music: Indigo Girls- 1200 Curfews
We got our annual winter pounding this weekend. Estimates are anywhere between 24 and 38 inches. It was hard to tell exactly because of all the wind, but there is a lot of snow. A lot. The big city was brought to its knees; city and state governments closed down, businesses (save McDonald’s, Starbucks, Anna’s Tacqueria, and the liquor stores) not bothering, school cancelled for two days. Two days! It reminds me of my own freshman year of high school when we had a blizzard the weekend before first semester exams and they were delayed for two days. If this were Wisco, though, we’d be in school today. Boston gets snow, sure, but Boston doesn’t know how to handle it. There’s literally no room to put it all.
I don’t like snow all that much. If I skied I might like snow a little more but I don’t. There aren’t many mountains where I grew up. People in Wisco mostly ski on landfills and I never got down with it. And now that I’m closer to some more legitimite mountains I can’t bring myself to get into another expensive hobby, especially one where you replay a controlled tumble downhill over and over and pay for it. Gravity works. Clearly. No, money and time is better spent on musical instruments. Plus I’d rather strap 50 pounds onto my back and walk up the same mountain all those skiers are falling down. It’s questionable which one is more idiotic.
I also think that I don’t like snow because it means shoveling. I remember attacking our brick walkway back home, chipping off little flakes of red as I hacked through the frozen snow. I had a respite from shoveling during college with no real property that needed my attention, but was back at it with a fury this past winter at the 1-2. Yesterday was epic. We were out back, six strong, digging out of almost three feet of snow. The hardest part was that the wind had blown giant snowdrifts up against the fence at the back ends of our parking lot. At least three of our cars were completely buried, as in you couldn’t see any car at all, and only the top of my car was visible. We got a little help from the plow guy, but then threw our backs into three or four hours of shoveling. All told we probably put in 20 man-hours of work yesterday, but it paid off. We carved out our backyard parking lot and driveway, now a sizeable snow fortress with an eight car capacity and seven-foot walls on every side. Kudos to my housemates, who didn’t stop shoveling even when they felt like quitting, who saw the job to its end, and who were selfless enough to dig out everyone’s car, including JZ and Upstairs Chuck, neither of whom were there to help. Digging out of a blizzard is a test of physical endurance, but it’s also a test of character. Do you just dig yourself out, or do you think of those with whom you share living space? Your neighbors? The work ethic and selflessness at the 1-2 was encouraging. I will say, though, that I’ll be pissed when Jimmy (local pizza joint employee, apparent 1-2 parking lot lesee, and confrontational prick) rolls into our parking lot in his Lincoln Aggrivator as if we dug out a parking space just for him and his big black obscenity of a vehicle. I’ll hand him a shovel and tell him to get to work without much guilt.
So after an epic effort we at the 1-2 are dug out. I can’t speak for the rest of the city, but from what I’ve seen around the neighborhood people are putting in their shovel time. The city is a surreal place with these giant piles of white placed in every and any available free space, but the visual curiosity of it all isn’t enough for me to like it. Snow still means shoveling, and I’m sore today. Sore, dug out, and at such a point where the recounting of the weather occupies the forefront of my mind. Waiting for the thaw…
music: Garcia & Grisman- Shady Grove
We dissected chicken wings in class about a week ago. We were examining bone structures with the goal of drawing parallels between human limbs and chicken limbs. Being the aspiring model of conservation, I told the kids to save the meat separately from the other waste. They complained that the lab wasn’t being done with KFC the whole time (although I’m not quite sure if it’s chicken to begin with), and what a waste the wings were raw they were hungry, and on and on like that. When they asked why they were pulling the meat I said that we had to dispose of it in a different way. They asked how. I said ‘stir fry.’ they half thought I was joking which was just as well because I 10% thought I was joking as well. But I guess I wasn’t.
Tonight I unfroze all the saved chicken pieces and fried them up with some onions, garlic, ginger, and carrots. A little coriander and anise (anize??) to top off the operation. It looked like things would work out well, but about 1/3 of the way into the operation things went belly-up. I’d left too much fat on the meat and the stir fry began to leak greasy liquid. There was way too much gristle. I got frustrated and called the plan (as fully conceived) off-back went the broccoli and bamboo shoots, saved for a more legitimite stir-fry. Better to cut one’s losses in a situation like this, only waste a half an onion, a couple of garlic cloves, and a carrot or two on the biproduct of a high school dissection.
I kept simmering the creation, applied soy sauce liberally, even some lemongrass and pepper. The end result was something you might find in the dirty chinatown kiosks only known to the locals: greasy pan-friend chicken with garlic and soy sauce with a lot of gristle. Not all that bad, all things considered, but not all that good either. Never mind that the rice was far too sticky. I had a bowl of it, more to prove to myself that the little conservation project was not for nothing than to actually make something out of this pile of meat for myself. Part of the unappetizing part of it might be the image that kept popping into my head of dozens of teenaged hands tearing through chicken wings on dissection pans.
I’m tempted to bring in the stir fry for the kids just on the basis of another important topic: the food chain. So much of the food these kids (and we in cities) eat comes under cellophane. Hell, this chicken came under cellophane, but at least it was on the bone. I think it’s important for people to understand where their food comes from, that everything they eat was at one point a living thing, in the case of meat a thing that was born, raised, and killed for the express purpose of human consumption. Even though the chicken came from Stop and Shop there still is something more to these lumps of flesh; they were used as exemplars of bird anatomy and now they are being eaten. There is a powerful message in here for the kids: we are not separate from the system of life on this planet.
We do, however, have the advantage (or disadvantage) of keeping a tupperware full of fatty chinatown chicken stir fry in our refrigerators so our roommates can eat it. Dig in, guys. Sorry about the gristle. And the rice.
music: Bobby McFerrin- Circlesongs
I went rock climbing for the first time in years last Sunday. I got the call from my teaching buddy Doug, who has all the necessary gear, and two days later we were down in the Quincy quarries finding toeholds. It was easy as falling off a granite monolith, even after all these years.
My first climbing experience, formally at least, was on Minikani’s first AC wall, where I harnessed up and climbed a fairly easy wall, learning snazzy commands like “ready to rock” and “ready to ride.” It was a very easy wall in retrospect, but enough challenge for me at age 11 to really feel accomplished getting to the top and ringing that bell. What was harder, I remember, was the rappeling. I climbed here and there since: expeditions to Devil’s Lake, a route randomly here and there, and most recently a quick ascent and rappel on my Outward Bound course in Colorado. Considering I hadn’t been on the wall for a while, I did reasonably well.
Climbing is an incredibly personal practice, a meditation in balance and willpower and a study in microcosmic space and minutae. Every millimeter matters, every ounce of weight matters, every muscle matters. It feels, when it’s done right, that you can do the impossible. It always amazes me that I can climb certain routes successfully and never put weight on my rope, yet depending completely on the safety the rope provides to feel comfortable being up there 20 or so feet clinging by my fingertips to a small crack or outcropping. Granted, I’m not climbing 5-12’s or anything like that, but still from afar some of the climbs I did looked like flat wall from the ground. Climbing at all is tough, tougher on the mind than on the muscles I think, but such good discipline. The routes at Quincy weren’t all that big, but provided enough verical space to make my universe a simple and dazzling clear challenge of how to get from here to there.
Doug and I had a time of it. Niether of us had been out in a while, but we did well. We both remembered enough knots to anchor and tie in, how to belay, and all the rest. We both got a little scraped up around the knees and elbows, a little tired and hungry, but glad to be out on a nice Sunday in late September. A lot of climbers were out, so we got to enjoy a little climber culture as well. It was a great way to spend some free time on a Sunday, and I was Ready to Rock for school on Monday. Rock on.
music: Pink Floyd- Wish You Were Here
It started snowing here in Boston last night around 10:00pm, and it’s still going, not to let up until late tomorrow night. We’ve gotten 17 or so inches thus far, and it seems that we are only half done. Cars are plowed in, stores are closed, civilization is slowed to a more reasonable level. And schoolchildren (and teachers!!) are screaming injustice everywhere that this didn’t happen on a Tuesday or Wednesday.
Lots of people I talk to think snow is fun or pretty or something like that. Clearly they didn’t grow up in Wisconsin. Snow, to me, is pretty until I inevitably have to shovel it. Snow is fun as long as I don’t have anything to do or anywhere to be. But the minute I have something to do, snow gets in the way. Which is a funny way of looking at it, snow being a natural occurrence, indifferent to the fact that I am there, or that a whole city is there. And being in a city full of people who do not make plans according to the weather, snow has really thrown a wrench into things. People, in their infinite genius that progress and technology has brought them, wage war with the snow, investing millions in clearing the streets. People panic about how they don’t have enough food to last the storm when their pantries are full, and better yet, if they will have rented enough movies to last through the storm. People assume that they will be able to get from here to there just as easily, and are plain wrong. I don’t think it’s impatience, or even a sense of entitlement; I think it’s that most people, especially people who live in cities, place humanity at the top of the natural order of things, refusing to accept the fact that we are subordinate to the greater forces of nature at work on the planet. People that live outside of cities, generally, aren’t so disillusioned.
Personally speaking, snow sets off the hibernation instinct: don’t go anywhere, relax, curl up, be still. I had a great moment at about 2:00 AM last night sitting next to the window in my bedroom with a mug of tea watching the snow fall outside, all being stark and white. Somehow, because of this “setback,” things become a little more sane. Life slows down to human speed (walking, no cars), people aren’t as wasteful in their energies or actions, but if you’re really lucky, you can go sledding.
Two days of continuous snowing is one hell of a way to start the winter. Boston is not a city equipped to handle this sort of thing well, and it’s kind of nice to watch things try to work around almost two feet of thick white stuff covering everything and not really succeed. I think the secret is nowing the limits of possibility, trying not to do too much. Even the mighty metropolis must bend to the demands of all this snow. I’m inconvienced, I’m annoyed, I’m slowed down, and I’m glad for it. Now if only the power would go out, we could really get down to what this sort of thing is all about.
music: Sound Tribe Sector 9- Seasons 01
I bought a bonsai tree about a month ago and pruned it for the first time tonight. It was getting bushy, a little too unkempt. This small tree that I bought, of course, was sold to me as a bonsai. Which is stupid. It’s just a small tree now, and won’t really be bonsai for some time. Perhaps years. But now that I’m actually treating it like a bonsai and less like a decoration, it’s on its way.
The road to bonsai, I’m told, is not one clearly defined or exact. All I know is that one starts with a small growing tree, pots it, and maintains it. With time, skill, care, and patience, the tree takes on the essence of bonsai. It’s a long process. It’s something that runs counter to our American habits of thought and action-bigger, better, faster, more-this is a discipline more than anything else. It’s a lot like watching the minute hand move on a clock. If you stare at it continually you don’t actually see the thing move, but if you glance at it and then glance at it again some time later, you see that it has moved a great deal. This is the way of nature. I’m dealing with a living thing, after all.
The pruning process was a little awkward, it being my first time. With so much foliage, cutting away was a bit like shaving the uncarved block. I suppose all practices lead to the same lesson in Zen; it doesn’t matter whether you are pruning trees, drinking tea, arranging flowers, shooting an arrow, or fixing a motorcycle revealed a branch structure that looks fairly unnatural. It seems that the farmers who grew this little Juniper tree contorted the branches for market value and visual appeal, then let the leaves grow over the strange branch contortions so you couldn’t see it. Plus, the branches are drooping more than I thought they were originally. This little tree was abused as a kid, and I just lifted up a pants leg to find bruises and scars. Now that it’s in my care, I’ll do my part to remedy things, bend branches back to a more natural position, keep it watered and in the light.
It’s a good lesson to care for bonsai, especially as i live a life that requires me ot be everywhere at once. It’s nice to put my hands on a living thing and work with it, apply light yet steady pressure over long periods of time to change its form (sort of like teaching, no?). Tonight was a big first step down the path towards this tree becoming a bonsai. It’s looking barren and unnatural and almost sickly now, like when the dog gets completely shaved at the beginning of summer, so I’ll be sure to keep an eye on it for the next couple of days. But the pruning is necessary. It’s part of the process; it’s the teacher of this particular lesson. In cutting some of the branches away the tree is beginning to uncover its essence, its tree-ness. Right now, though, it’s looking pretty beat. But patience. There is no immediate gratification. These things take some time.
music: Martin Sexton- Black Sheep
Whomever said that the ends justify the means has never been hiking. Anyone who has strapped on a backpack and set foot to trail could tell you that it’s very, very rarely about getting anywhere. Instead, it’s about how you get there. I had the good fortune to spend my Monday on the trail in New Hampshire with 1ey, Duncan, Amy, OGD, and friend C., hauling ass at a reasonable speed for the top of Mt. Monadonock. Now that I’m back down, out of the woods, and back in the big city, I realize the whole process was rushed for the sake of reaching the top, then reaching the car. The situation was framed by extraordinary time constraints. Yes, I walked the trail and could be given credit for doing so, but while doing so there was not a lot of good time spent enjoying and learning from that particular experience.
Hiking is not about getting anywhere. It’s about process, how the getting is handled. Because, of course, the only thing waiting at the end of a hike is no more hiking. A strange paradox, but one that we learn over and over in many avenues of our lives. We work on something, work towards something, only in the end to have it not be something that requires our attention anymore. It’s a model based on negative reinforcement.
I’ve had a hand-wrenching time writing papers due this week. They are turning out to be concise little exercises in distilling vast amounts of information. I am pretty certain that I do not have nearly enough information to adequately address some of these topics I’ve been asked to tackle, and yet I am faced with the prospect of handing in some of my supposedly well-developed thoughts to the foremost authorities in the field. I am not allowed to remain agnostic here. And so, like my hike today, I am much to preoccupied with getting it done and really not enjoying or learning from the process of doing it. Hardly something exclusive to written assignments; I have been more worried about getting all the reading assignments done than concerned with actually getting something out of the readings since this whole graduate school ordeal began in June. This is the way it always has been with schools in my experience. I can’t help but wonder if this is an absolutely horrible way to go about things.
The hike today was actually a great time. It was only meant to be a day’s worth of walking in the woods with some friends, and in that, it fulfilled all my expectations. But taken in a larger sense, it made me realize how quickly we move from one thing to the next, how great a priority is placed on getting things done. As I forge through school assignments, I fight the urge to simply get things done as much as possible. I think that if I had it my way, I’d tend to linger more, walk slower, read closer, relish a little more in the process of becoming instead of moving as quickly as I can towards completed.
music: Keller Williams- 4/5/00
Today was set aside for a great quantity of reading and schoolwork. Instead, I took Doug up on his offer to take a bunch of us kayaking on the Charles River. I chose wisely.
It was a small gathering: myself, Doug, G-Phatty, tmo, tmo’s roommate C., and friend M. We put in at the Charles River Boathouse, all the way out at 128 and The Pike and paddled upstream for a good two miles until we hit Newton Falls (really just a dam). The trip was hardly exhaustive, although it did take us under county, state, and federal roads, and weaved us in, out, and around some rarely seen angles of the Charles River. At certain points, we were almost out of eyeshot and earshot of the city. It was enough to do the trick for the afternoon.
It drizzled all afternoon, but that didn’t really matter too much seeing as though we were in the water. Some more than others; Guy fell in twice and M. once. We paddled in and out of brush, lillypads, and small docks left to rot. We practiced bracing, hit a little blue ball back and forth, and generally had a grand time of it.
There is something about being on the river that is distinct from travelling on land: there is an ease to it (although my shoulders and back don’t think so right now), a purity to gliding over water on humanpower alone. Rivers are wonderful in that you are headed somewhere and you can not get lost. The scenery, generally speaking, is beautiful and dynamic, there’s a lot of life happening all around you, and there’s no noise or traffic. It’s a simple and glorious life on the river. Reminded me of the weeks I spent on the rivers of Northwestern Colorado and Utah last May. How glorious it was to carry all your necessaries with you on your boat, to paddle with current and through rapids, and to dock and sleep on beaches next to such a splendid liquid path that cut through the bottom of some jaw-dropping canyons. While the Charles in Massachusetts couldn’t quite match the Yampa and Green in Colorado, it served. And then some.
Above all, the quiet time spent paddling today brought with them a perspective shift. The Charles, most of the time, is a wind tunnel, an obstacle that separates Cambridge and Boston. Today, it was the path that cut through all others, the frame of refrence from which I saw all else. And it was not buildings that I saw; on this particular leg of the Charles, there were trees, shrubs, turtles, fish, even a Heron or two. Quite nice, considering it was not more than 2 miles away from the interstate.
And afterwards, we saddled up and motivated a sizable crew to Tacos El Charro. Added to the fray were Peet and new companion M., Doug’s girlfriend, the two Neumanns, and J.Z. 11 total, and quite a time it was around that long table with the Mariachi band playing at half strength. We ate, drank, and were merry.
I finally got back home around 9:30. Far later than I wanted to be home workwise. I’ve been measuring my time in terms of schoolwork productivity and completion as of late, and by those standards, today was a complete failure. But it wasn’t. Not in the least. Ten years from now, it’s not the hours I spent reading that I’ll remember. Hell, I can’t even remember all that time I spent in the SciLi during undergrad. But marked among those things I do remember were trips shared with friends of the type I had today. And surprisingly, when I sat down to work this evening, I had a much easier time of it than I had this past week. I would do good to remember to temper my work with spending time on what is important.
music: Garcia, Grisman, Rice- The Pizza Tapes
I attended Camp Minikani’s final closing campfire tonight. I haven’t been at camp in over two years. It was well beyond beautiful: it was just about religious.
I brought my purple rag from Boston, stowed it in a very secure pouch in my backpack so I could wear it at the campfire. It’s been a long time since I’ve put my purple rag on, been a long time since I’ve seen anyone else wear a rag. At closing campfire, of course, nearly everyone had their rags on. As it should be: a community of individuals dedicated to the goals they set for each other, not ashamed to show it and bolster each other’s efforts.
The campfire itself was a lot more loose and sloppy than I remember. The acts, save a guitar duo from Trangy and Drayna and a solo performance from Jason, were mediocre at best. Skits were not nearly as funny as I remember, Boys Unit disappointed by combining their skit with the Girls Unit (I don’t care; BU skits are always much better). But to be surrouned by those people…there is nothing better.
The ad-staff is now primarily composed of my old LT3s, people I mentored in the art of counseling. They are now running the show, white rag and all. Amazing to think about, even more amazing to watch in action. But the real treat, the real passing of the torch, was to see my former campers as counselors. A scarce few were second year counselors — explorer counselors in Nortwest Territory no less — but the newest crop, I realized, were all my campers as well. It turns out that all five of the first year counselors and all but one of the LT3s I had in my cabin at some point, sometimes more than once. I hung back for the most part, tried to remain the detached observer to the whole process, but inevitably each one of my former campers found me, came supplied with a big hug (or two…or five), and sincerely thanked me for doing what I did way back when. And tears. And hugs. And more tears. It was the final closing campfire of the summer, after all.
Some I hadn’t seen since they took off on the last day of their session in 1999. Tonight they were counselors in their own right, fully responsible for a set of kids of their own, assumed the position I once held. The LT3s received their candles and their due applause upon completing the leadership training program; the first year counselors self-assured after a full summer and in control of the most important work at camp, arguably the most important work there is. Yes, my campers were making it happen all over again. Just like I made it happen, just like my counselors made it happen.
I saw very clearly tonight that a powerful lineage exists at camp, a sacred lineage of some of the most extraordinary young people I have ever met. I was proud to be one of them, but after tonight, realize that I’m more proud to have helped produce so many of them. Besides their direct thanks, they are paying homage to that lineage by carrying on the work of a counselor at Minikani. And from my (in camp time: ancient) perspective, from the blessed feedback they gave to me in the form of hugs, kind words, and tears, my campers carry the spirit firmly, solidly, aptly, proudly.
After spending a couple hours among the woodlands and rolling hillsides, I remember so much of what made camp such a defining experience for me. The place reeks of personal history, but at the same time, it is now for me an artifact. But because of my campers, now counselors, I can go about the rest of my life knowing that my little contribution is not forgotten, that I have touched lives for the better, that the spirit is alive and well, that my work has paid off, that my job there is done.
And perhaps more importantly, that my job is far from done. As only camp can do, I am recharged, refreshed, ready to do that important work for some time to come.
music: The Motet- 12/13/01
Finally I have time to go to the park and read a book of my choosing. Today I took full advantage of this realatively enormous space of time: procured a copy of Abbey’s “The Monkey Wrench Gang” and sat myself down on the grass in order to do some reading. It was quite nice, except for a group of teenaged girls nearby laughing loudly and carrying on like teenaged girls do.
The peculiar thing about these girls is that every single one of them had a Nalgene, which of course is positive. They all were carrying rain jackets as well. Strange, it was a fairly clear day. And they all wore a blue plastic whistle around their neck. Curious…reminds me of…huh. What sealed the deal was when they all got up, organized in a circle and began to lead each other in various stretches. At this point, it could only mean one thing.
I watched the group for a while doing their teenaged thing, thinking how strange a patrol of Outward Bound’ers would choose the Boston Common to hold a stretch circle when Thompson Island was much better suited to that sort of thing. But still, it was nice to watch, and know that these teenagers will soon be knee-deep in mud, covered in cuts and bug bites, and have aching backs and calloused hands. Although my own OB trip wasn’t that long ago, it made me homesick for those rafts floating down the Yampa in the midday heat and the cool nights out in the Colorado and Utah deserts. Funny that I should be reading Abbey at that very moment…
So I guess the group thought I was some sort of sicko because I stopped reading and was staring a bit too much. One of the girls waved and started to greet me, and the instructor (the one, obvious now, with the buttpack and no whistle) asked if she could help me.
“Outward Bound, right?”
“Uh..yeah. How could you tell?”
The girls were clearly impressed that I could pick them out like that, and knew enough to deduce that they weren’t in the Army. Gossip and whispering ensued.
“Who else would be doing a stretch circle with matching whistles, nalgenes, and raingear nearby?”
“Good point.”
“Have a great trip.”
That was that, and they were off to untold adventures. I went back to my book, but with a much closer tie to its message, having lived it not three months ago. There’s a little pin on my buttpack to remind me of it, a length of p-cord tied around my ankle to remind me of it. And today, there was a group of teenaged girls, from the looks of them very much new to the whole wilderness thing, who reminded me what going to the wilderness is all about. Besides the clean air, the lack of city noise and claustophobia, the scenery, that is. The wilderness, for we civilized, is a challenge, a departure from comfort, a sensible self-denial. Abbey thought that wilderness was essential to the psyche. However, Abbey said, one did not have to be in the wilderness to reap its benefits, they only had to know that it exists. Seeing the fresh group of young Outward Bound’ers doing their stretch circle in the middle of Boston today affirmed all of that and more. Worlds of the wilderness I experienced in May and the urban teaching I’ve been doing since collided, and revealed to me with precision and lucidity that not only are these two worlds related, they are inseperable.
music: Particle- 6/11/03
Today would have been my last ultimate game of the summer season, but it started to pour about half an hour before the game was to start and when i got there, it was pouring, the fields were mud puddles, and there was nobody in sight. So I did the only logical thing I could: stood outside and basked in the downpour for a while.
It was glory.
Too often we find ourselves very isolated from the natural world. When it rains, we have been conditioned to take shelter. This is probably a smart move most of the time, but every now and then in the summer months, it’s quite necessary to stand in the middle of the storm and let it hit you. Jump in some puddles. Practice your slide into third base, even though there’s no third base an you haven’t played baseball since high school. As I ran around like a lunatic on that big empty completely soaked field this afternoon, I realized that the last time I did this I was a counsleor at Minikani. There were brief runs down Bolster Street in the summer of 2001, but nothing on this scale. I missed it. Felt downright beautiful.
It was one of those warm, muggy afternoons, and you could feel the cloud pressure building all day. The rain was a big release, a giant celestial orgasm. As I was aimlessly running around and splashing and generally getting soaked, I had a bigger smile on my face than I’ve had since, say, my time on-trail in Colorado. It was the type of rainstorm that was teased during the first afternoon of my Solo. It was, to quote a friend’s song, ‘warm summer rain’.
The song was about camp. Ironic that today while I was teaching my ankle bracelet fell off that I put on in August of 1999, during the last days of my last summer at camp. It’s good to know I can still love standing outside during a downpour, good to know that in feeling that water in the sky can connect me with something greater.
Up above my head
there is music in the airUp above my head
there is music in the airUp above my head
there is music in the airAnd I really do believe
there is a heaven somewhere
music: Phish- Fukoka, Japan 6/14/00
It struck me today how much I’ve habituated to city living. It’s almost comical. Two years ago, in the throes of a painfully hot summer in the attic of Chowdahaus, I knew for a fact that I was not cut out for city living. I worked in the inner city, a landscape of concrete, broken glass, auto body shops, and convienence stores. I sought refuge in the vast expanses of New Hampshire, Vermont, Western Massachusetts, and Maine that summer. Tried to avoid the city as much as I could manage. Did not look towards the urban social rituals of clubbing, barhopping, or even movies for solace. I was almost extremist in my stance; damnit, I needed my quiet open space.
And now, two years later, I’m enrolled in a program that is training me to teach kids in impoverished urban environments. Basically, I’m in boot camp for city living. What happened?
Two years is certainly enough time to habituate, to know that the car alarm is going off but cease to really hear it. Two years are enough to understand that there are pockets of quiet open space out there, and that I have access to them. Two years are long enough to recognize the positives about living in a bustling city environment. Now I take for granted that there are so many options at my fingertips, so much within one hour of where I am sitting right now. One of the biggest reasons that I’ve stayed is that the music scene is nothing short of phenomenal here. With the exception of five or six other cities in the country, anywhere else I move will not have nearly as much music. (And I’m pretty confident that nothing in the country could match Murphy’s on a Tuesday night.) This is stuff that can not be found in the Great Outdoors.
But I have gone far beyond just being comfortable with the city. I have enrolled in a program that trains me to be a part of the city, to reach kids who live in cities, to work with special issues surrounding urban youth. Framed like this, it’s quite a shift. And slightly paradoxical to my general tendencies, I must say. It’s a topic worth thinking about.
I returned to Boston in early June having never felt more comfortable in the wilderness in my life. Two weeks of sleeping under the desert sky will do such things to a body. Even now it seems so far away, and even as I returned the city seemed so natural, almost like a default setting. I quickly grew accustomed to the construction going on across the street, the garbage collection, the loud drunk pedestrians. Checking email. At this rate, I’ll have a cell phone before New Year’s. Right? (Proabably not.)
I think it’s less that I like spending time in the wilderness and more that the wilderness brings out a mindstate and lifestyle that I particularly enjoy. Too much in the city is based around cheap sensory stimulation and short attention spans. The wilderness allows me to focus and concentrate on certain things for long periods of time. I worry about nothing but the basics: What will I eat? Where will I sleep? How will I get from here to there? These are really the important questions. And moreover, these questions are answered directly through personal action. There is no intermediate step (money) between me and food in the wilderness. I carry all that I need on my back, and nothing more. I produce very little waste, all of which I am responsible for carrying as well. This is what Thoreau meant when he said “I went to the woods to live deliberately, to front the essential facts of life”.
This sort of thing is not a challenge in the wilderness; it is a necessity. In the city, living in such a way is a challenge. I guess you could say it is my current challenge. But in deciding to teach urban kids, the challenge expands. Soil here is rocky, infertile for the most part. Lessons learned when confronted by the magnitude of the natural world (which, to me, are among the most important lessons one can learn) are now to be brought into high school biology classrooms in the heart of the urban experience. Seeds are to be planted in this soil, in these minds who have never seen a night sky not filled with streetlights.
I miss the wilderness a lot of the time. But I don’t miss the minute-to-minute toil and discomfort of that mode of existence. Rather, I miss the intuitive connectedness I find out there. As Abbey said, it’s sometimes enough to be aware that the wilderness is out there. It is almost too comfortable in its starkness. For now, the challenge lies here. The city is where help is needed most.
_music: Phish- 11/17/97 Denver, CO_
It’s been a very intensive three weeks of reading, teaching, and not sleeping. I’m about to head up to Vermont for the night. This city is a very intense and demanding place right now, and given a night in the Green Mountain State, hopefully I’ll return with a rested mind and some of that essential extra energy needed to work my way through all the stuff here.
I’ve been slipping on my reading at work and coming up next week we are taking a module with a professor whose stuff I’ve read and whose class and assignments will have much to offer. Plus the papers are starting to be assigned and teaching continues to demand some good time from my schedule. The situation at ABFree worstens by the day. And I miss my friends.
No delay. Northward Ho!
