8 August 1997 -- Arrival from the world of agitation
Initial entry. Not a lot of time to sit still here...must put the place
into better shape. The sun is brightly shining today and you can work your
feet in the dust, after shucking those heavy boots for a spell. You consider
the breeze a blessing of sorts, and you wonder what you did each time to
earn your cooling-off.
Why, I ask, do I seek an escape from the commotion of the city and constant
contact with others? Maybe it's because in such settings, you'll always
get set off-balance by something you didn't see coming. Out here in the
open, you can get much better advance warning. Winter doesn't descend all
at once, but gradually, giving you time. When the creek below starts to
rise in heavy rains, at least you know it has been raining and will keep
an eye on the water.
Back there, in the hub-bub, things just smack you right out of the blue
(or should I say, concrete grey?). The old saying "well, I could be run
over by a truck tomorrow" is all too possible.
RB
10 August 1997 -- Learning the secret to life amid
the crowd
It was good to get back out here and sit on the front porch for a spell.
I dealt in real life today with one of the city's principal indignities,
the supermarket, with its overcrowded aisles and continual danger from
the insane traffic in the parking lot. I suppose in real cabin living,
one needs to eat, too, and since I'm not the sportsman type who could live
off the land, I would need to bring out truckloads of supplies from a similar
source.
It would be great to be able to incorporate the spirit of life out here
at the Cabin into my all too plentiful ordinary situations in the real
world. There must be a form of serenity that other city-dwellers have found
that would make my need to seek escape and solace completely unnecessary.
Those "people who need [and can take life with plenty of] people" are indeed
"the happiest people in the world", since good employment typically occurs
in the midst of large crowds.
I don't think I could really live completely without "community", such
as what I know at Good Shepherd Parish.
So, then, if God is to be found in all places, both in natural settings
like this imagined one and in co-existing groups of those made in his image,
it cannot be right to disparage that real world back there simply because
people get in my way and seem like an irritation. The 19th-century western
settlers would most likely have traded problems with me, when they ran
perilously afoul of natural conditions that threatened their very physical
existence.
RB
13 August 1997 -- Evaluating the components of modern
living
It has taken awhile to shake the anxious weariness of the city from
me on my trip out today, so that it may be replaced with the feeling of
being well-worked yet settled.
I have been amazed in recent years how I can spend practically all of
a summer within climate control, scarcely noticing when the heat finally
leaves. At home, in the vehicle, on the job. It seems the ante of standard
American living just keeps increasing. These days, one's home will naturally
have air conditioning. Out here in the woods, you look for a shade tree
or take a trip down to the stream to cool off. City dwellings all have
full-service cable television. People living this far out, of course, erect
satellite dishes.
I'm hoping I don't even need to set up a generator, but old ways die
hard, and there must be some appliance yet to cross my mind that I will
decide I need. You notice the electricity missing most at night, where
it is a lot harder to light up the lamps. Inside, it has been good to have
the lamp burning (literally, burning) next to my bed for reading purposes.
I've started back into one of my all-time favorite novels, Steinbeck's
Grapes of Wrath. This story is interesting because you see a people
who are fully accustomed to (and indeed proud of) what we today call "primitive"
living being forced to accomodate to such modern encumbrances as the automobile.
Connie, the dreamer, abandons Rose of Sharon at her time of need with some
notion that he would learn to repair radio sets. Today, of course, no one
repairs radios...they are simply thrown out; the new models are better,
anyway.
RB
17 August 1997 -- Appreciation of simple sufficiency
I've been here for awhile today, trying to establish priorities and
make "First Things First". I try to back off a few steps from thinking
over a variety of small property-management projects and just think for
a moment about how much I take simply being alive and in no great particular
pain or affliction for granted.
This reminds me of a number of backpacking forays in which I didn't
plan properly for my feet and wound up being blistered. Now a blistered
foot is one of those matters that has a lot of say in an itinerary. You're
simply glad to get back, even if that one farther-out campsite wasn't reached.
Jack London wrote stories on this theme, too, such as To
Build a Fire, where the hiker begins with a concern of reaching
the camp at 4 mph, but ends up fighting for his life.
I don't have the presence of mind very often to contemplate (or appreciate)
the bare fact of life itself. When winter comes to a city dwelling, those
with well-maintained central heat need only pay the fuel bill. Here at
the Cabin, one must forage the nearby woods for that fuel and do more than
set a thermostat to use it for heat. Do I appreciate my relative ease in
keeping up the basics? If only I could! Then there would come an immediate
end to my frenzy of accumulation beyond such need. Then I would not feel
so trapped into working at breakneck pace to pay for it all.
RB
21 August 1997 -- On guard against the unknown
I've had another chance here today to realize that the present is the
only moment I have, and all my fretting over what are in fact trivial matters
is worse than the problems themselves.
Some rain came through here, and up until then, I worried about the
roof. And naturally, this worry built into a generalized anxiety about
how the roof would withstand the entire winter. But wait a minute, I spent
quite some time recently going over the state of repairs up there. I had
every reason to believe that the soundness I observed visually would translate
into real protection. Then the rain came, I sat it out inside without any
leaks, and then my mind had to go hunting for something else to wonder
about.
I think this habit of always needing a problem comes from my real life
in the city and my job in an information-choked office work environment,
where one is never sure about everything going on, so it pays to carry
a generalized state of apprehension. Non-specific fear is one of the city's
greatest assaults upon human beings. It was certainly not a big part of
those first few hundred thousand years you always hear about, when we usually
could see or feel exactly what the problem was. Today, the problems often
cannot be faced because they cannot be identified.
This, perhaps, is where trust in God comes in. To lay a burden like
this in his hands and seek first his kingdom does not mean running away
from the direct pursuit of our worldly needs but instead reducing the set
of needs to just the ones that matter and about which we can do something.
RB
25 August 1997 -- Shedding the artificial routine
Today I go out and walk some in the grassy area around the front door
and sides of the cabin. There you have an opening, full of wildflowers
and occasional lichen-encrusted rock outcroppings where you can sit until
it becomes too uncomfortable in that one position and you have to find
another.
Without the usual scheduled media and human activity inputs of my city
life, I can shed a bit of my routine, which seems so arbitrary now that
I think of it. Oh, the drudgery of the routine! It has at the same time
comforting familarity and the foreboding certainty of those parts that
will simply be harder living than others.
The city traffic puts a major constraint on the layout of the routine.
Too early into the office and there's no chance of doing anything worthwhile
in the evening, dutifully scheduled by others, whose own routines must
somehow coordinate with your own. But try to live their normal lives and
be a conformist, and you're commuting during the rush hour, sharing the
great communal suffering of all those synchronized routines.
All of that is moot, here at the cabin, but so, alas, is the social
part. Sun and season are the two main routinemasters, and the weather has
the grace only to follow the generalized, suggested trend of the seasons.
Here, perhaps, the mind may find a set of constraints that are not just
the makings of human industrial expediency. The question is always how
the mind will accept such release, after its conditioning. Much as we hate
to admit it, we city-dwelling humans are domesticated, too. Those with
urban-survival skills can find and endure work there, and have a chance
at reproduction. Oh well, back to another rock...
RB
30 August 1997 -- Choosing a different set of obstacles
Because of the complexity and interdependencies of my city life, I found
myself on the road again, knowing where I needed to go among the various
scattered retail districts of Alexandria and Springfield, VA, but being
thrown with full force against the hampering presence of hordes of similar-minded
people. Thus, I needed to adopt the continuous-apprehension mode
while I was driving...when you least expect it, expect it! I wanted
to raise my point of "least expectation" to one of considerable vigilance.
I stopped to think about how much I would appreciate having access at
all to some of the things I was seeking, here at the Cabin, as I wandered
about the tools, parts, and supplies at the home center. I then realized
that there are two differing styles of obstacle in acquiring what is needed
in the wild and what is needed (or badly-enough wanted) in city living.
The people on the American Frontier, for example, had to travel long
distances to reach trading posts. These trips could be impossible
or involve severe hardship. City-dwellers have obstacles just as
real, but instead from traffic and (most importantly) the related factor
of time crunches.
I would like to shift my experience of city-style obstacles to the coping
style of those for whom distance and natural conditions were the main opponents.
Then, I could sit behind the wheel of my truck, waiting out those interminable
times until the traffic breaks and I can move on, just as people in earlier
times might wait out weather conditions until travelling was easier.
Such factors, clearly, are something over which I have no control, and
I need to have the wisdom to know it.
RB
Ahead to Sept 1997
