I sit on the porch of a Skyland Lodge cabin, Shenandoah N.P., VA, July 2001 July 2002 Cabin Diary |
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5 July 2002 -- Not expecting a lot today
There is every bit of the level of humidity in the hollow this morning to remind me of the way it is back in the city at this time of year, only I am satisfied in my placement among the woods at altitude. I guess it is a rather "primitive" camp; something you'd expect to see in a museum's reconstructed historical rendering of 18th century life. The woodwork, at least, is modern enough in its origin to allow for the presence of power tools, though I find a certain solace in that it is, after all, wood. Oh, but what really "makes it" is the roughness of the dooryard and the trailheads, which almost look like they could be a natural formation in the clearing. The Cabin is something of a study in recessed and inconspicuous placement, even with its bright vermilion-stained cedar clapboard siding. The front wall is now taking a fair solar load, only the color has an unexpected way of finding its "niche" among the pines and aspen of the river bottom.
It's warm all right today, but I'm still able to sit at length in the metal porch chair, which will soon begin to throw bits of rust into the back of my clothes if I don't wire brush and paint it soon. I am beginning to hear the cicada noise for this year when I'm outside, and they have a way of curiously marking the duration of the day. There is a fine comfort, to be sure, in occupying this spot and just sitting still. The day has no particular claims upon it, being part of a big "holiday weekend", so I can be here as long as my attention span will permit. The solar warmth that still reaches my lower thighs as the porch roof continues on its daily motion is nothing of an "oppression" in this kind of quiescent scenario--it is instead a gentle and captivating method of fixture, whereby my tired old body is reassured that it has no explicit "mission" to be prosecuting.
I am not sure what of worth I will actually derive from this visit, as concerned as I am that each trip I make, all the way from the city and up the increasingly rugged roads, have something about it that "counts". I look back on the 5-year history of this narrative and see plenty of examples of this added value, only they do not always appear on demand, and they often have to be considered in the context of some larger whole. I certainly would wish that I could live a life that did not have such conditions of achievement expected of it. That's more the way it was when I was a kid, revelling in the social permissions that accord to the months when one might go barefoot, where there is no danger of glass on the ground. I usually like to wear my flip-flop sandals on the rocky dust of the Cabin compound, since the stones there are so incredibly sharp, if caught the wrong way even by a calloused foot.
I have this overwhelming desire to collapse in one of my many interpretations of "a heap", since that "sounds" so good on a day as unencumbered as this. I almost want to go out onto the open ground near the fire ring or the hammock back in the pine grove, rather than assume the more "controlled" resting place of the sofa or my bunk. This place has been carved into a naturally-occurring clearing amid the granite rocks, and I should think I'd do it better justice if I performed my rest fully within it. So I take a walk from the porch at last, around to the area back to the rear of the woodshed and workshop, where I know the rope hammock is still deployed. I know that I have doused myself in enough DEET to be safe from most bugs, so I am not afraid to drop my correspondingly-oily (and not fully washed) body into the outdoor, "camping"-style primitiveness of a simple sling between two trees that happened to be 9 feet apart.
I take a nice, deep breath, as my swinging comes to a stop from having climbed into the hammock. These trees provide a delightful shade on an 80-degree F day, when my physical body has been heated beyond seeking warmth, and onto rejecting it. I hear the river, of course, below this brief escarpment along the ravine, and the proceeds of altitude and downward descent are not lost on me when I note what gravity can do. I am practically tired enough to go to sleep right here, only that practice must be well thought-out, for a man can wake in a state that is nothing like what he'd have preferred. I suppose it's just a matter of chucking one's greater expectations in advance, so that mediocrity does not seem the depravity it usually does to the man seeking a noble result. This is how things truly settle out, for the man who is grateful for just what he does have.
"Bo"
10 July 2002 -- Elevated sufficiently
I have come to the Cabin compound today with one of those rare and exceptional moods. This, indeed, is the one where I'm "happy" with simple existence, no matter what its form. So much of the time I spend, arbitrating between activities, seeking out what must be the empirically and aesthetically "correct" way to use the time I have. But not today. I enter the front door of the Cabin today, having driven those difficult miles of dirt and gravel two-track road from the stone culvert bridge, yet I am resting well upon an added layer of all-too-precious euphoria. I suppose there are two kinds of euphoria, really--the "conditional" kind, in which I know I'm probably shortchanging my life somewhere else, and the "unconditional", in which I really don't care. Somewhere, I'm supposed to endure just enough pain in all of this living to allow me to know the two flavors of euphoria, from time to time, and preferably get a good snootful of the second.
It is rather warm up here today, inside this living room, and I waste no time in opening up the screens to the decidedly balmy outdoors, as it is defined across the clearing and even into the back yard. The solid stature of the wood panelling and fixtures throughout this living space are enough to assure me that I should simply let go, and that I do, landing right on the muslin slipcover of the sofa. This tired old set of fitted fabrics should really get replaced one of these days, I should think, only I recall putting some money into it, as "quality linen". In the mode of the "typical yuppie", I have judged all things according to how much they cost, unless I should happen to know something more about the article of commerce at hand. Somewhere down the line, I became convinced that real wood and those cedar clapboards were worth every bit of what they cost, even if I haven't yet turned this analysis upon my one and only life.
Oh, but I am full of some sort of "spirit" today, of the kind that is unconditional and truly suggestive of the "love" that 1 John says "God is". Though I cannot enter the state on command, this condition of feeling at all "fulfilled" has to be one of the great gifts of God to man, right in there with infatuation and the first bite after a long time of hunger. God, stepping right on down into this grubby old world, is an inspiration that should occupy me a lot more of the time, as I turn those wretched circles in my city living. I have heard the tales of the cult-leaders, who claim that our God is simply "playing games" with his creation, to see just what they'll do. It's as if he goes about every evening to his workshop to crank out another batch of these humans that is his hobby (for they are in his image), then he lets them loose onto the wide and abiding continuum of human affairs. The duration, and especially the disposition during that duration, are the evidence he presents to his lessers in the pantheon, especially that despicable Mephistophelian one. Well, I am riding along now on the better track. I shan't set the scoreboard too far back, if I don't indeed advance it on this visit.
With the windows open, there is that heavy-yet-charged presence of the clearing, moving through this wing of my single room. It has had every good chance to commune with and absorb from the prolific plant life out there, so it is a botanical medium, and more than just "something to breathe". This is how a man should be, it occurs to me, as I live out my part as just another admittedly ornate organism that communes within the same airmass as the truly wild. This is why folks pack up with their hiking gear and head out, for whatever time they can endure. There comes that point where "the land" is more than a place having physical dimensions that need crossing. When all is sufficiently in place, the man who has planted himself as I have today will sense his connections to the woodland surroundings intensify. He will walk in the woods and not faint, as in the prophecy of Second Isaiah. The wild contains its agents of discomfort, it is true, only I have every means at my disposal to enter the land and become its assimilated onlooker.
I want, at this point, to proclaim some thing or another about the kind of God I've come to know. Does he enjoy it, when I can put him in my thoughts in a favorable light during favorable times? Why should God have to worry about "enjoyment", anyway, with all its connotations of the flesh? All I know is that there is a bounding and boundless accumulation of explosively favorable goodwill, and this is the circulatory "stuff of the spirit", as in the Far Eastern Qi. It's a bursting reservoir, almost, from which mortal men are given the extreme privilege of entry for the purpose of renewal and expressions of gratitude. Oh, but it is good, and it is all good. The slogans issue forth, for their very indisputable truth is enough to recommend them. I lay in a heap on the sofa, listening to the river through the back window. God has every power to build upon my currently-hungry spirit. Is it plain old neurology, or does the study of "divinity" indeed transcend anything so "man-made" as physical science?
I say to my King, that this is good. I wonder what he'd have to say at this point, but I am not the issue of man to know true theophany.
"Bo"
14 July 2002 -- Substantially at rest amid all that is
It's kind of a grey day outside today, of the sort that occasionally comes along in summer's variety. Why should a person expect a summer wholly composed of "sun", anyway? I've been generally hanging around inside the Cabin, for fear of being drenched by another of those sporadic rain showers. I've had to limit my attention to what is indoors here, and that would only be a relatively small, pine-panelled room of no more than 500 square feet. In the winter, of course, to send heat to the far ends of such a space seems an ultimate victory over "nature", who would have all things be uniformly cold, only now, it seems that the indoors are some sort of farce, where a man decides that he'll call so much room his "interior". I suppose that I have to concede the value of having a roof over my head when it rains, only I actually can imagine at times what life would be like as one of those creatures, a bird, perhaps, who could live on the greater extent of the land without real concern as to rain or shine.
I suppose my prevailing sentiment on this day is one of laziness. To be lazy, after all means that a man just isn't willing to push himself far. Because the theologians somehow equate this with "sloth", they cast their judgemental spears of disapproval at the idle man, for whom the devil himself is always looking to find work. I think it quite the victory, though, when the overly "civilized" man finds that he can actually "slow down" to such a wondrously-serene pitch. It is just the simple essence of sitting within one's more complete provisions, realizing that the hard duties of the industrial model can be put off, at least for a day. I am well aware that the life spent in constant evasion of these calls to duty would be a pretty frivolous thing, only it would seem that God and the powers on earth together have stated that the Sabbath day should be holy, and this is actually in accord with the substance of a man's more humanistic ambitions, to the extent that they mirror his creator's intentions in the overall building of the model that is man.
I wonder sometimes, on these days off, if God is somehow judging me in the same way he does during my many hours of work down in the human collective. Nowhere that I've read is it written that a man may be as he likes, just because God has not specifically commanded him otherwise. As far as I can tell, duty is always incipient upon the mortal man, no matter what he decides will be his "plan" with the creator. Why, we can't even postulate the presumed "benevolent" God in all of this. We could all be working for a slave-driving despot in these lives of ours, where other allegiances would definitely be more to our advantage. But no, that means we have to abandon the model of the single God, the one who has no counterparts and no realistic competition. Monotheism, it would seem, leaves a man with whatever kind of God was available at the time of the founding convention.
I guess the bulk of what I really want at this point is to lay about in some sort of complacent heap, where I can imagine that all of my work is complete. In this scenario, time continues on, no matter what my strange and irrelevant urgings. I'd suppose that somewhere in the whole mess of things there has to have been a God of some following, who carried along his legions of the lazy. Why, there must have been a grand court and everything, where the king would pronounce, "you are my servants, yet I want of you only the trivial and easily-afforded nominal stamp and sign of your membership and allegiance. After that, my children, you can go and do your many things and proceed through creation as blessed beings". It is quite the thought, to join such a band, only I wonder what the group will ever really have. It's more like I have to find my own fortune right in the set of God and gods I've signed onto, just as this is my hollow and so it will stay.
Still, I like the notion of the empty expectation, where a man can just sit at last, look at what's in front of him, and be nothing more than a man. I suppose this carries with it its share of being bound to the flesh, that flesh that never forgets where someone has forged a victory, no matter how small. Is it enough, anyway, that I keep uttering these allegiances to God? God would seem just as ready to haul my posterior down to earth and whoop me about the track a few times as he would carry me on to the great by and by. Is there something beyond God? Is there some way of full assimilation with all that is, seeen and unseen, that will carry a man somehow farther. I suppose I'm accusing my God here of being some sort of fraud. Still, he is my background and my ultimate reference. I doubt I'd get far without him. There is this man, Jehovah, or Yahweh, or whatever, who has earned a great place and a great many people, and I do suspect I am one of them.
"Bo"
21 July 2002 -- The fullness expected of me
Well, I'm hanging out here, among the lichen-covered rocks, on a day I'm sure would work me into a ferocious sweat, if it were my interest in "working". I really just want to sit in one place and not feel "obliged", only obligation seems to be the better part of valor in most situations. I'm looking up from the base of a tree, towards the far-distant ridge-top and the various peaks that define it. It is gray and hazy today, so I can't really put what I see into the same category as the woodland around me. Instead, I am cast into this 3D firmament at the location I am, and all the rest depends upon the conditions that come along. I sigh deeply, thinking of just what I've become, in the last 20 or 30 years that I've been trying to make my way on this frantic planet. Do I really have any of the claim of the older folks, who state that they can sit idly about, for it is what they've worked their years to achieve?
The Cabin remains, of course, over there to my side, plus the outbuildings, the truck, the end of the two-track road, and all the other features I've imposed upon this land. It's strange, really, how I came to "be" out here--I simply dreamt of an open space with a grassy clearing and rising hillsides, plus of course its well-established and immaculately-maintained living quarters, and I decided I had some "right" to hang around as long as I saw fit. Then, of course, I had to author into being some plausible connection to the rest of what is really "real", this beginning with State Highway 735 and the Village below. Oh, but real land on this scale is an immense thing, and I can imagine I've had to indulge in flights of hyperbole, just to stir something into my heart when I've spoke of imaginary landscapes. As I advance in years, it becomes more the issue, when someone suggests that I might actually walk out of here in an emergency. No, I just count on fortunate placements over time, and that I'll be where I want when I want, out of whatever a 40-year-old man is entitled to have.
There are a number of insects out in the clearing today, and it has taken some time to get used to them. This is especially true for those gnats or black flies that like to "play chicken" in the vicinity of my face and hair. Really, though, it has been remarkably quiet today. There can be few profitable businesses that are explicitly dedicated to the disturbance of men seeking rest--it is only as a side-effect of some other, more erstwhile enterprise that this ever really happens. Since I have offset myself by the several miles of road that are below me, I should not think it an unrealistic rendering that there is nothing impinging upon my senses that I hadn't already acknowledged would be here--like these amazing, annoying flies. I suppose that if I could get this quality of rest for real periods in my real life, I'd be complaining of far fewer stress-related artifacts within my nervous proceedings.
I sigh again, as I look at the vague shape that I know to be the ridge, hiding up there in the haze. I suspect that I'm sweating some today, only I need my shirt at least for the purpose of sitting against this lichen-covered tree trunk, which displays its accumulation the way an aging building might show its many flaked-up layers of paint. For a visit to a "fantasy" world, I have derived a good bit of satisfaction in the real world from this visit. There are few reasons to indulge in the depths that I do. I just don't know. An industrial/information-age man has his share of complicating circumstances, as I suppose the agrarian equivalent of myself might have had in the centuries leading up to the 20th. Sometimes I think I could be well placated by a caring association that does nothing more than satisfy my essential needs as a human being. To be given a fine meal is to know the heart of the giver.
I do suppose that real life will not let me be here long. A life with as many features as this can't let me last long in one that is frivolous and an indulgence in the "fine arts" I ruled out as "extravagant" many years ago in high school. I am sure there is plenty to occupy me in that other life, and plenty more that will occupy me when I realize I've neglected it too long. Is it all just a matter of pandering to fleshly basics, so as to satiate the opponents on that initial battlefront of one's personal demise? The fact that living has been observed beyond hedonism and indulgence means that I have some sort of "additional" heritage I'm supposed to carry on, though no one ever took the time to explain it to me. This obligation is one of those curious things about being human. Few adults care to talk about it, for it just bores the young ones, yet a person who lives long enough will realize that he has the duty, all the same.
It is warm up here, and terribly hazy.
"Bo"
27 July 2002 -- A search for the center
I wonder, perhaps, if I'm really "slowing down" in life, in making fewer visits to the Cabin. I know that one of the principles of erecting the journal of a place is not to leave long gaps unaccounted for, so I suppose I'll be "excused". There's not a whole lot to say about this day, where summer has every reason to feel pre-eminent but must feel threatened nonetheless by the proximity of September. The skies are rather hazy out, but the feeling of "oppression" is certainly not here. I feel the fresh air, every time the breeze chooses to blow, and in the intervening intervals, I am assured of its coming. The bugs have picked up in number, of course, in accordance with the stage of the season, only these "alpine" bugs are not like the ones you'd know in the Siberian taiga or the northern US and Canadian woods. Everything seems to be a shade "dryer" here, perhaps from the lack of good bodies of standing water on these hillsides to breed the requisite populations of mosquitoes.
It is good to have some time off, though, and to think of my solitude as exemplified by the Cabin. Involvements are nothing but a big expense, necessary though they would appear to be in the 4th section of my thesis. If time could just extend outward, without influence from bad habitual patterns from past weekends, I might actually get the kind of "rest" I always claim to be after in this land of many, misshapen and arbitrary trees, bushes and grasses. I don't know...I feel content just to be planted heavily upon the bunk indoors today, knowing pretty much the way things look outside. I feel my mind turn the corner onto some of those truly long pieces of inactive time, in a way that has a fine satisfaction because of the notion of placing myself on a simpler schedule of thoughts and concerns. It's just there, and my physical constitution seems willing to let me live it. Is this not how the assorted creatures in the local "field" occupy their time. A black bear must know his greatest interval when he is fed and free to sleep it off.
I just see myself settling into one of my lower positions, if not indeed the hallowed ground known as "ground state". This is where all the variables of activity are zeroed out, in the somewhat perverse quantum mechanical model. Oh, just to be here! I let my various powers of inquiry examine the limited-yet-unexplored perimeter of this particular crucible of origin, knowing that the paradox of simplicity is never better understood than here. Release of one constraint--to the maddening schedule permits indulgence to a greater extent in another--such as the finer points of a particular set of surroundings. There is something of a "law" between these two, like the one that predicts Planck's constant, only I'm sure there are many other ways of mentally "processing" the same set of facts and experiences. All my thoughts that derive from my earlier school years, I should think, are a misfortune, for a 40-year-old man is too tired to think of picking up amid academia again.
Yes, I am nicely settled today, even with the skies that might even threaten rain, should they grow any greyer. I let myself coast from the position at which I was holding, so as to do my urban duties in real life. The fieldstone foundation of the Cabin and its stout timber framework will not let me down, though the true aspirant to security might have built his home in some sort of cave. I suppose I'll eventually have to get up and obtain some chow here, to the extent that my canned supplies and lack of refrigeration will allow me. I am not so creative as Thoreau, I'm afraid, who cooked countless delicacies from his bargain basement "Indian meal". I'm not dealing in the terms of hunger now, which may actually be disguising some feature of my make-up that is not advancing properly to the fore. I always carry a load of conditions with me, on my visits to the Cabin, so I may be a ways out, still, from anything where the "ground state" would be in sight.
Stripped down to shorts, I'm still sweating a little, though it isn't a truly warm day up here. Maybe the whole trick is to learn to deny physical restraint and impingements, even though they are present nonetheless. Of course, this does not predict a "true" "zeroed-out" condition, for denial is its own active process. But why does it have to be so complicated, anyway? I should have the power to relent in these silly struggles. Oh, and to stretch out, fully satisfied as I nearly am on this bunk! The screens are open, and I hear the cicada noise out there in the grass. The breeze continues to come along, as I'd expect it should. This is a condition that veritably "cries out" for lessened activity and effort, as though it were in its proper role and canon as a "vacation day". I'm sure there are innumerable things I could draw my attention to, only that would not quite "go" with the postulation of inactivity. A mind sure will endure its travels, far more so than the body.
"Bo"
Ahead to August 2002