Focus, Focus, Focus

I haven't been updating this or spending nearly enough time outside.

I have, however, decided to re-structure my priorities. Trees and train tracks are to replace people as my top priorities once more...

Just as soon as I finish my finals and papers.

Mobile Posting Demo

Testing, 1, 2, 3.

A Glorious Occasion Indeed!

Today marks my first forest double-adventure.

Colleen and I walked across the road and followed the train tracks to a place where last week I sat and wrote poems in my journal. We stayed for about half an hour and walked the tracks to the bridge.

As we got across the road, I noticed that the vines on the ground kept getting caught in my shoes. They would get all tangled around my foot and it was as if they were trying to hold me down or retake me completely. I found it to be a fitting setting for the thoughts that I was having, but ended up just thinking about how nature will overcome everything eventually. There was a special on the Discovery Channel a few years back about life after people. I remember watching it and deciding that, should the rapture come and I be left somewhat alone, I would go to the Hoover Dam and scrape the barnacles out of it so that power would continue to be generated. I think that, were something to happen now and I be left alone, I would just raid the bookstore for non-perishables and band-aids and start walking.

I sometimes wish that I'd gone to a hippie school somewhere. California or Oregon perhaps. I have these grand mental images of living on the coast and farming and reading old books. Not much of an education, granted, but I think there is something to be said for that. As it is now I'm working on an English degree that will get me...where exactly? The Peace Corps, if I'm lucky, and then grad school (to continue to an even more specified, less useful doctorate) or to any job that I can find in the area I'm going to be moving to. I have ridiculous dreams of finding a nice little used bookstore or record shop to work in, but really there's no need for an English degree for either of those. Even if I decide to follow through on my House work and become an assistant, I won't have learned my skills from my degree so much as from experience and watching Kate. Really, when you think about it, this is a fairly pointless endeavor.

So, I suppose my point is that we should all break the shackles of society and return to the forests?

No, that doesn't seem right... Oh well, I suppose a point isn't completely necessary. This is the internet after all.

Setting the Tone for Yet Another Blog

Allison and I were talking about exploring yesterday, more specifically about whether or not it was important. She was talking about her thesis and how much work she had left, taking the view that wandering about was at least somewhat of a waste of time. I understand what she means, but I can't help but think that anything that feels as wonderful and natural as walking through the woods and unearthing old treasures must be necessary somehow. Perhaps not for everyone, as I'm sure there are many people who would not enjoy spending two hours digging up a giant (and completely buried) Episcopal Church sign, but at least for me.

Other than reading, I think that wandering was my first real hobby. When I was nine my mother and I moved to Franklinville, New York and I was surrounded by woods from then until I graduated from high school. From the time I was fourteen until I was about sixteen we rented an old farmhouse that sat on 160 acres of land. There were some fields and quite a large yard, but the majority of the land was forest and a winding creek and I would spend most of my free time walking around and planning to run away and live in the wilderness. I had stolen my step-father's backpacking and hiking book and had elaborate plans involving lean-to's and taking a homemade raft down the (looking back, far too shallow and far too slow-moving) creek and to freedom. I buried survival kits in the woods, zip-lock bags with things like matches, band-aids, and crudely drawn maps that I was going to pick up on my way out. I never did run away from Mom's (I ran away from my father once, but there was only one road leading away from the house so he found me as soon as he realized that I'd gone) so I'm sure that the bags are still buried out there. I hope that someone digs them up one day and at the very least finds my (lack of) cartography skills amusing.

I abandoned my exploring for quite a few years, but found it again recently. I've always had the urge to go, to leave everything behind and run off to new, interesting places where I can start over until I get the urge to leave again. For the most part, I ignored these urges. I realized at a certain point that running away would not be a good choice and decided that I'd wait until I was older and capable of financially supporting a life of wandering. But I took a walk with Kilowatt after our St. Patrick's Day party and we started talking about how we both feel like we need to keep moving and find new things. We decided that we would start going on adventures and I suppose that night counts as our first, though we only walked down the green, up the sidewalk to Morgnec, and back through Harford. A few days later Allison and I found ourselves with some unexpected free time and a beautiful day. We decided to explore part of the train tracks (from Morgnec to the bridge) and I realized that my life had been sorely lacking in adventure.

At this point, I've explored the train tracks from where the trees open up (around where the college's property ends) all the way across Morgnec to the point where the brush got to be too thick to continue. I've also been to the fields across Morgnec and in the brush that separates them. Not a ridiculous amount of terrain covered, I know, but I'm working on it.