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 Mailing address: bo@bo-hemian.com |
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3 March 1999 -- Away from my obligations
There have been quite a few balmy days recently, and I've seen some hint of what might really be spring in a few more weeks. Thus begins the "season of mud" that I recall from last year, as the snow suddenly seems out of place and past its prime. The river behind the back porch has picked up substantially, as one might predict, and since it has been warmer, I have had a chance to step out and listen to it at length. Various songbirds are also present in numbers that cannot be ignored, and some day I'll know all their names.
I am still not to the point of seeing this setting as something to be appreciated for all it contains--I dwell instead on the parts of city living it does not contain. The woods display their greatest merit when they do not jump out at me with still more that I "must do". My greatest joy is when I am left alone by those trees, rocks, birds, and scrub-plants. I think for a moment of this unfortunate preference, born of desperation and weakened "nerves", as I sit on the back porch chair, hearing the noise of a river that flows just the same, whether I'm here or not. The ravine back there does not levy conditions upon me because I choose to sit on its edge.
Keeping to a rigid schedule and attempting to do what I say I'll do might earn me respect and put me on various marketers' prospect lists, but does that really do me any good? I wonder at times what keeps me from actually leaving that life of accomplishments that only seem to benefit others. I sure do talk a lot of running to a place like this, but sadly, I cannot walk such talk. I can't even seem to take the first step. Maybe it's time to be quiet about it, since I obviously have not learned anything that could be of any use to anyone else. If I want to be cut out of the lives of others, then I need only hole up wherever I am, and stop all this empty talk that attempts to clothe cowardice with some mantle of nobility.
But it is hard, most of the time, to settle myself down to the way it might truly be, were I alone in real backcountry. I note that my phone is still plugged in and the instant message and e-mail channels stand at the ready. Indeed, I almost feel a certain shame when I have finally achieved prolonged solitude, believing that it further stigmatizes me for the "anti-social" side that so often wants its way. It is as if I have joined some rebellious and seditious force, though it is hardly effective in any real "revolution" with only one rank of one column, as the Beatles song reminds us--"I ain't gonna make it with anyone, anyhow."
So then, I should just shut up about pointless resistance and go down the hill, playing along with those who would have me until a real real life appears. Since I must still remain true to my own self, I shouldn't try too hard at vain, unsustainable efforts at spontaneity and good cheer, for in my weakened state, I only let them down when I must turn and run. There are some who say I have no justification by plain works alone when my faith in humanity's underlying goodness is so low, but works are about all I'm any good for right now. The city's schedule is running, right now; the time ticking away without me. They must be wondering as I write why I am not at my familiar rounds. Nothing hurts so much, at the times I return, than to "be behind". Perhaps this acute sense of obligation betrays a latent and unfelt "faith" that will one day be expressed where I can see it, so that I might live a contented life among the others, rather than a resentful one I only wish to escape at any given moment.
RB
7 March 1999 -- Encamped in familiar surroundings
The melt-off of snow has been put on hold for a few days by the return of a spell of bitter cold one would expect to see here in January. Today I am crashed out on top of the down comforter on my bunk, watching the last few hours of daylight enter through the front and rear windows. I think to myself of how this lying around is so often seen as a lack of moral character by those others, the ones with lives that extend to partners and dependents; the ones who are irretrievably plugged-in. But as long as my socialization has left me alone, I will not hesitate to drive up here and exercise this option of the unattached.
It seems such a shame that I have to remove myself from their midst to find such peace. I suppose I should be down there with them, taking my very own licking at the hands of gridlocked responsibility, for there is no doubt that the fully-integrated life is the marginally better one. I have observed how they draw on sources of strength that remain to me a mystery because I haven't the courage to walk as they do into the teeth of uncertainty. How small is my faith!
I look across to the familiar rough-wooden furnishings and interior surfaces of the Cabin; those pegs upon which my coats have always hung; that table near the sofa where I might set down whatever I'm reading. By the decree of pure imagination, I could keep that fieldstone hearth and its timber mantel just as they are, and for as long as I choose. The seasons change, of course, but these have their yearly familiarity as well. The winter is on its way out; on that I can depend. Yes, it is a solace to rest as I please, in this sameness, so long as I do not dwell on my inherent failure to move forward in maturity and develop for myself a suitable legacy that might make my life on earth mean something to someone other than myself.
My escape to a set of known, settled and quiet surroundings is a rather cowardly act, I finally conclude, as satisfying as it might feel at the moment. I am swallowing a blatantly false bill of goods when I extrapolate momentary pain and hearbreak into a necessary consequence of lifelong misery. Real life doesn't really work that way, and I know it. I need to study the ones who look so peaceful in the midst of turmoil that would lay me flat in an instant. Our common humanity must mean that I can develop similar skill for myself. I only wish I knew what undertakings I had a chance of successfully completing and which would fail, in advance. Like the pickers of stocks and those who bet on teams at a sports book, I'd rather wager the remainder of my ability and strength on sure things. The ones I envy, out there in the "normal" mainstream, must have put hopes on a fair number of losing propositions--how did they recover?
As I continue in this collapsed state upon my bunk, with the fire at the opposite end of the room enabling me to be here indefinitely, I try to dismiss some of my internal defensiveness and see myself for who I am and what I can really do. I look to the front window, where I see a light snow begin to swirl about. Typical March weather. I then think to the vastness of human society and its dealings, which I place under the same labels of "unlivable" and "unsustainable". There are places where I should be, ones where I would not fail. I could be swept into that web of commitment and find it a very pleasant place indeed. As the hymn tells me, it is time to "taste and see" what so fully nourishes the ones who might actually have me as a member.
RB
11 March 1999 -- Staying put for the moment
The winter wears on, in a scene that has seemed so much the same for the last 3 months. I tend to forget those warm spells that have come by, when significant amounts of snow have melted and spring was almost in the air. I hardly remember those birds I've recently seen perched in the trees of the ravine, ones that had not been there during the hard freezes of December and January. But do I now run away, in utter disgust over an imagined land of true peace that has its share of hardship after all? Could I really shut everything down because I spend most of my time here indoors by the fire?
It occurs to me that I have felt similar disillusionment over my city life, the one that seems to drag for days on end with no prospect of change to a more habitable set of circumstances. I think to the ones who cite my unwillingness to stop "letting myself" feel that way, as though I actually had any say in the matter. They wonder why I do not share in the rich life they know while similarly occupied. They walk the same loud and impersonal city streets to the same demands of work, then go home to their many thankless acts of service to others, yet they claim to have joy. They call out to me, almost as if in a taunt, "can't you see the good life? You're right in the middle of it, but you're throwing it all away with that...attitude of yours".
I must create a spectacle of sheer amazement when I talk of walking out the door of such a Paradise. Well, I guess I'm not walking out today. I think to the challenge that would immediately face me, should I try something like that. I admit that the cost of maintaining my place is not really all that hard. They don't want that much of me at any given moment. They're not demanding payment of my debt in full today; they just want a small installment.
Well, if I'm stuck in such a spot, I shall accept its instantaneous joy on faith, and then the time should pass until I actually see it and feel it. I'll keep my position, my respect in the community, my place in the social order. With such resolve, I begin to look about inside the room here at the Cabin for ways to live these months in that same wonderful style of the three warmer seasons, when all is open and free. Though it is a hard experience now to hike into those surrounding hills, nothing stops me from looking at them out the front window.
I try to see myself now, as I am planted on the slipcovered sofa, in the larger continuum of the hollow, which goes on the year 'round. It is all out there, waiting for me; indeed, I have never really left it. Nothing has moved; this summer I'll again return to the Summit and sit out by the fire ring at night watching the stars. I have my spot marked out; it has tolerated my presence now for 19 months. There is no giving up on the provably livable. It would take too long to get a new start. I begin to understand what long-term commitment is all about when I think of my time up here at this place. It has grown on me, and holds me in ways I am far too hasty to shrug off as superficial. No, I am not leaving any of it, not today. I settle a little deeper into the sofa, and let more time pass, since there is little else to do.
RB
14 March 1999 -- Visibility is low today
The world of the clearing is damp and grey this afternoon, with a misty freezing rain combining with the vapor rising from the melting snow on the ground. I am thinking to the days soon to come, when the abundance of greenery and flowering plants will justify these times. It is almost as if the splendor of the forest in full foliage would be lost on me without something so completely different to set it off. I have seen how easy it is to lose sight of the value of one's surroundings, once they can be taken for granted.
This Cabin itself is a place I've visited so often that I can forget how hard it is to know similar serenity in my city life. At times, I even lose sight of the profound peace I first felt up here, back at the time of the dream, when I knew such joy at being in this quiet, pine-panelled room above the stream. I had actually done it--I had escaped the incessant demands of the routine and the ones to whom I am obliged, and could not imagine a better way to finish life after 35 years than leaving it all behind for good. What I failed to appreciate then, however, is the sense of achievement and rightful pride I could sustain at the conclusion of a hard day's work. Though it threatens the quality of my life with the early onset of degenerative disease and the degradation of my nervous fortitude, it is, after all, the Good Fight. Without such a preceding period of trial, the time I spend here alone appears hollow and unmerited.
Thus I come upon the requirement in my living that I constantly cross a partition between the collaborative and the solitary. I cannot have all one or the other, and it so often seems that I have little say about when "I'm on" and when "I am free to go". The routine makes arbitrary demands of my attendance and dismissal, on the basis of the scheduling of others. But then, maybe I am really not the one to call my own shots. I see so many situations that I have botched at my own hands in the past that it just might be time to let a higher-order scheme take control. Then, when I get to come to the woods on these outings and resume my residence, I will have inherited the honor of the larger corps to which I still belong. I will be on R & R, and not a deserter.
I realize I have probably spent more time here this weekend stretched out on the sofa or lying on the bunk than I should have. Especially with the inhospitable cold and wet surroundings, I seem to have lost my sense of purpose in getting away. Well, there is a simple solution to that problem: just let time pass. Soon enough the clock, which regulates my life, will demand my involuntary participation. Then, of course, I'll wonder how I took all that time alone so much for granted. Even without any real grass to look at out there among the boulders, I'll be thinking of the greener side of the fence on which I now stand.
While serving the others as I occupy my desk at work, my mind shall think only of my own relative misery. At that time, it will not look so improbable that I could exist as an island, yet highly improbable that I can do much real good in my repetitive and mundane rounds. Knowing full well that it will seem curious when I'm back on the other side of the fence, I pull my watch from my pocket and note how much time remains before I'll need to be to work tomorrow. I have finally become saturated with this sameness; it has lost its novelty. I am thankful that it is not my ultimate destiny.
RB
18 March 1999 -- A steady wind has appeared
It was good to see the sun return in such force today as I got out of the bunk and started under way. The scrub-bushes and matted down remnants of last year's growth, though just hinting that there will be another season in which they shall flourish, have a completely different character in such illumination. After I complete what little there is of a real morning ritual for me up here at the Cabin, I lace up my boots, take my spring-weight jacket from its designated hanging peg, and step out onto the front porch.
The snow is now rapidly melting; I would estimate the temperature to have reached 45 - 50 degrees F. already at mid-morning. My feet sink woefully into the mud that makes up even the beaten dooryard area, and I think to myself of what the truck will be like after the next time I drive down to the village. A goodly breeze has started from the west, sweeping in over the low ridge behind the river. It qualifies fully as the return of Zephyrus, as I remember from last year and also from two decades back, when I had to read Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in high school. Even the mud seems halfway livable with such a source of drying capability immediately at hand.
I step out past the re-emerging rocks of the fire ring and stop amid the boulders, to look back at the buildings and feel the insistent breeze in my face. It is as if it carries a directive; that I breathe in deeply of this new air, and become, literally, "inspired". I realize I have found one of the first good days of 1999 to open up the windows and flush a bit of staleness from my indoor living space. I look down at the snow that remains and consider how it forms such a fine layer of hydration, when its job is complete as an insulator against the bitter winter's cold.
Maybe spring for real has not truly arrived; maybe I'll see a few more spells of protracted freezing, but at least I can no longer deny that the sun is running its course dutifully. It is not bound by the cruelty of atmospheric circumstance to stay in its retracted state. If only life as a general principle could carry with it such certainty of redemption after hard trials! It is general knowledge that the evil will prosper while others of higher repute are left to an end that does not contain similar compensation. It is the rare moment when I have such serenity as to accept the hard times with the good. I long for the ability to carry on during the harshness that so often characterizes my journey.
I stand out here in the steady breeze of the clearing, looking back upon the vermilion stained siding that is now brought to brilliance against the dark brown shapes in the ravine that will soon return as proper trees. So many were the days that I sat in there, biding my time, with the same set of tired thoughts accompanying the familiarity of those walls and my interior "decor", if it can be called that. A mind that turns inward upon itself, with no external newness blowing upon it in the manner of this wind, is certain to have its share of lifeless stagnancy. To the ones down there in the city who take the onslaught of daily upset as an essential part of human experience, this should be no secret. Those enlightened ones, though their lives appear to be continuous harassment, do not have time to think of how much they are sacrificing in their struggle. Despite their losses, they are on their way with conviction towards the glory I still do not quite see. What they lose, they probably didn't need anyway. It will take me a long time, if ever, to build up their momentum in living, for I see how still I have stood and how large is my inertia. I must lighten my load somehow.
RB
22 March 1999 -- Trying my best to be still
After enduring another of my necessary forays into interdependent real-life intricacy, I have finally found a chance to drive out the 4 miles of mud and rocks, to a place where I might go over "what really matters". I admire the ones I see making such discernments reliably in the midst of their troubles in "responsible" living. Maybe they are not able to leave it, even if they wanted to, since they are on constant call from employer and family alike. I do not compare favorably with the typical hardiness seen among my so-called "peers", so perhaps I have done well to keep my life as simple as it is. My "human nature" is not drawn as readily to the trappings of social collaboration as it is to the release I can find in this woodland of my own making.
I arrive at the parking place on this overcast yet bright afternoon of early spring, and I stand for a moment outside the truck, looking about into the stillness of the clearing. The river has picked up as expected with all the recent snowmelt, but its action is fully predictable. I find solace in living with a notable absence of the standard agents of stress among the buildings or out in the woods. They do not wait to descend upon me as would those innumerable tormentors I must face as I go about my routine back in the city. I finally have a chance to open up when I'm here; to let down the guard.
It is cold, though, and I must close up my coat against the wind that follows me all the way to the front door. Inside, I look over my carefully-selected essentials of kitchen, hearth, living room, and bunk. There is nothing here that I haven't consciously chosen to bring. That is the beauty of having had time to think it over. I make myself a cup of tea, sit on the sofa, and begin my usual lamentation over the haphazard arrangement of things and obligations I have tried for years to simplify in my other life. I still wonder at times why it is so hard to make any headway on that. I have blamed the media, corporate salesmanship, and my own carelessness in further acquisition.
The problem, I really think, is that I am dealing with a moving, changing target. Even in my single setting out here in the woods, I cannot fix my gaze long upon the true sources of my anguish. It should be so easy, I keep saying to myself. I should be able to impose a single, rigid scheme upon those affairs and "freeze the design" of my life as readily as I have posited the compass direction and altitude of the high summit on the distant ridge. But such a solution is not at hand. It is not at my hand, at least, I remind myself, as I begin to make the inevitable acquiescence to trusting faith.
Since it is the unique and impressive ability of God to be "in the details", and these are very many, I know when I can no longer make my life what I would have it be. Things will begin to drift toward their "correct" arrangement, the moment I let loose the controls. This, I realize, must be what the others know down there in the city. They do not fight battles they cannot win and have no reason to fight in the first place. For the time being, however, my reactions to that world are just too critical and untrusting, and this serves as my sorrow, for it can't possibly be that bad. Yes, I need to be in the stillness for now, with only the sounds of the wind and the stream below in the background. It will take a long time to see things their way.
RB
26 March 1999 -- Slowing to the familiar halt
Back to myself, up in the woods, I have settled in to spend another night at the Cabin. Since it is still fairly cold, I do my best to heat things up with the fireplace, though I have read of what a notorious waste of fuel this accessory can be. I suppose I should one day replace it with a large wood-burning stove, but there is too much of the city-dweller in me to do away with the atmosphere of the open hearth.
Tonight, as the sun finally chooses its place of dismissal behind the western ridge and the stars return, I spend a moment outdoors in the darkening twilight and growing chill, getting myself ready for the process of going to bed. I am impressed by the ones I know who can crash out and be back up on a moment's notice; their respective morning and evening events must hold far greater significance to them. I am one who needs a long, lingering spell to slow down, and a similar one to get under way the next day. It is as if I carry a large internal "inertia", and with my limited powers of motivation, become bound by analogy to Newton's Laws. I don't know if it would be better to shed load, build up force, or give up on attempts at acceleration altogether.
At times, I consider most of the compendium of triviality with which I am burdened to be disposable. But when I actually lose some of it, I realize it is about all I have as an identity. Since I am more content to spend my evenings and early mornings alone, I have little else that will follow along with me. It seems few others have interest in entering the expanse of my internal edifice, so I generally maintain it for my eyes only. This evening, as I head back inside to tend the newly-built fire, I realize how my real life contains stretches of time similar to this. Communication then with the outside is so halting and sporadic that I might as well be absent in a place like this hollow.
I must be a sorry sight, every time I retreat from one side of the stage when I've had all I can take, then find myself thrust hesitantly back when I know the show out there must go on. I begin to understand the utter exposure felt by every unwilling person who is made the victim of a "spectacle", though it is beyond any standard of hyperbole to compare myself to the ones who were sacrificed for the entertainment of Caesar in those celebrated Roman events. Yes, it is a disservice to liken the generally-forgiving crowds I know to the unthinking beasts driven by unthinking men to attack Christians or enslaved gladiators who had finally met their match. It is certainly not the intent of my assorted few social contacts to find mastery over me.
I suppose I enter into a morass of strange psychological history if I try to understand why I live as a refugee from the "normal" so often. Maybe I'm just afraid of the intensity of feeling there really is in those meetings they take as a daily given. Life in the mainstream can sweep me away sometimes, and to be carried by a flow, rather than making headway under my own power, is a rather unsettling, "helpless" condition. I haven't yet the faith to trust in the overwhelming predominance of good in the average population. I go now to stretch out on my bunk, to cover up with an infantry poncho liner, as though I were holding out in a besieged position. The fire is burning, just for me. It will, of course, be depleted of fuel when I am not here to stoke it, and nothing but what I carry inside of me will remember it. Though it is a rather vain way to live; these hours and days to myself, at least I know where I am and where I'm about to go.
RB
30 March 1999 -- Returning upstream to camp
With March departing as the typical lamb on this brighter and warmer day, I've once again reached the end of the River Road down by the village with a new load of supplies for my Cabin outpost. I turn left after stopping at the "T" and pass over the stone bridge, elevation 1945 feet, where the usual fellowship of die-hard sportsmen continue with their fly rigs in the runoff-swollen river. I then spot the familiar-yet-unmarked location on the right, where only my previous tire tracks and an inconspicuous rock cairn betray my passage so many times before. I have no mailbox there, and not even one at the village post office.
After I've opened the steel gate in the way I've so often imagined Park Rangers doing as they attend to their official duties, I begin the 4.1 miles of steady, predictably-uphill road along the river to the right. The two most notable features are at about midpoint, where earth-and-steel culvert bridges span the tributary streams that arrive from the two neighboring hollows to the north of "mine". I notice that both of these rivers are as high as I've ever seen them, in view of the sudden arrival of spring-like weather this year.
I decide to stop just short of the upper bridge, at 2850 feet elevation. I set the parking brake and step out into the soft, earthy-smelling ground, in my heavy leather boots. I do not think the bridge is in danger of being washed out any time soon from flow like this, but it is clear that the river would rather not have it be there. My study of the lay of this land makes me realize that this very confluence forms the beginning of the sweeping ridge that encloses me, more than 900 feet above at the Cabin. I look across this smaller yet respectable stream into the woods, which are beginning to show solid signs that they will grow back to full summer foliage, and I can see the land steadily rising to the left of the road ahead.
I return to the truck and cross this last bridge, watching the wall of the ridge as it becomes more and more of a defining feature. There is a sense of "zeroing in" as I enter the last mile of the road and catch the occasional glimpse of one of the high, rocky summits ahead. It is as though I were touching down to a remote landing site, such as the fanciful scene from 1968's Space Age of what travel might be like in 2 years when Heywood Floyd finally reaches the Moon in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Then--the clearing appears through the trees, a sooner sight than in summer, and I'm there, at elevation 3765.
Things are so bright today, though it will take much weather like this to drive off that persistent moisture in which it is very difficult to get something dried out. I have "stepped free" of the towns at last, from that city that is my real life to the village that provisions my pantry and woodshed supplies. I step out of the truck cab, into the wet grass, and listen to that sound of the river, the one thing I share with the folks below. It reminds me of the B.A.S.S. bumper sticker I once saw, which read: "Everyone Lives Upstream". This world out here has finally begun to return to a place that might actually support my idea of "life", though the typical campground in such country waits until about a month from now to open. The sun is no longer a curious and taunting presence, to be seen through frosted Cabin window glass; it is now something that offers direct hope of life, if I only stand by and wait awhile more.
RB
