archived everything

5 files changed, 150 insertions, 9 deletions

diff --git a/published/2018-03-24_old-school.txt b/published/2018-03-24_old-school.txt
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+++ b/published/2018-03-24_old-school.txt
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+There are a handful of places on the planet where the earth has created what are known as coastal dune lakes, fresh water lakes located within two miles of the ocean. They occur in Australia, Madagascar, New Zealand, South Carolina and here in Florida, more specifically, in Walton County. There were a handful of dune lakes at [Topsail][1] and a couple more at our next destination, Grayton State Park.
+
+<img src="images/2018/2018-03-25_142317_grayton-beach-st-park.jpg" id="image-1266" class="picwide" />
+
+These lakes are more than 10,000 years old, and play an important role in making this coastline look the way it looks. Unlike most dunes, these areas have pretty good soil. When it rains hard the lakes fill and the water escapes through what's known as an outfall, which is where the lake overwhelms the berm that separates it from the sea. When that happens fresh water floods out over the dunes, delivering nutrients, along with plants and animals that would otherwise not be on dunes. 
+
+The lakes are also individually disinct, with varying levels of salinity and different specifies of life in each one. Probably the most popular of the lakes, from what I could tell, is here in Grayton, known as Western Lake.
+
+<img src="images/2018/2018-03-25_142654_grayton-beach-st-park.jpg" id="image-1267" class="picwide" />
+
+We were again, somehow, able to get in on some cancellations and spent four days wandering the lakeside and seashore of Grayton State Park. This time there was no RV Park, no pool and the people were mostly like us. One morning some kids from another site wandered over and started playing with our  kids. Eventually the parents came by to check on their children and we got to talking. The mom told me about how she let her son, who was seven, wander wherever he wanted. He'd walked to the beach (about a mile) the day before. 
+
+I was impressed because I often feel like we're the only people who let our kids do that sort of thing. But then the woman expressed my one great fear, that some meddling adult would end up calling the cops or otherwise harrassing our kids about doing their own thing. It's never actually happened, but I'm constantly worried about it given the average American's inability to mind their own damn business. Neither of us had any solution, but it was at least comforting to know that other parents have the same concerns. 
+
+Eventually the other family had to go (our kids have an unfortunate knack for making friends with kids that are leaving that day). 
+
+Not ten minutes later some woman came up to Corrinne talking about some kids she had seen "just walking down by the water" and how "someone should be watching them." Luckily for that woman she talked to Corrinne who shrugged and politely turned away. I'm not nearly as polite.
+
+Another blog I read regularly writes quite a bit about this meddling phenomena in other contexts and has suggested reviving the [Anti-Poke-Nose society][2] in response to people who can't seem to stop from poking their noses in other people's business. I'd love join. And seriously world, if no one's bleeding, just stay the hell out of my kids' business.
+
+Free ranging children wasn't the only old school thing we did at Grayton. One day we even managed to go super old school and spend all day in the sun, like I did growing up, a good six hours of sunshine, back when we weren't scared of the sun. We still aren't. 
+
+<img src="images/2018/2018-03-24_123953_grayton-beach-st-park.jpg" id="image-1260" class="picwide" />
+
+There were plenty of sandcastles built, water fights had, and games of freeze tag played. And yes, we all got a little bit of a sunburn, but I'm pretty sure we'll live. And that night, everyone, even me, was asleep before the sky had even gone dark.
+
+<img src="images/2018/2018-03-25_105857_grayton-beach-st-park.jpg" id="image-1265" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2018/2018-03-25_105301_grayton-beach-st-park.jpg" id="image-1264" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2018/2018-03-24_124021_grayton-beach-st-park.jpg" id="image-1261" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2018/2018-03-23_151151_grayton-beach-st-park.jpg" id="image-1258" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2018/2018-03-24_130858_grayton-beach-st-park.jpg" id="image-1263" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2018/2018-03-23_151106_grayton-beach-st-park.jpg" id="image-1257" class="picwide caption" />
+
+[1]: /jrnl/2018/03/stone-crabs
+[2]: https://www.flickr.com/photos/aemays/5547187616/
diff --git a/published/2018-03-28_forest.txt b/published/2018-03-28_forest.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77c5919
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+++ b/published/2018-03-28_forest.txt
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+When we planned out this trip back through the Gulf we made reservations at a bunch of places we knew we wanted to go but wouldn't be able to just show up and find anywhere to camp. In between those places though we left a month to wander around and see what we found. The first stop in our wander was a free campground on East Bay, which is part of Pensacola Bay.
+
+<img src="images/2018/2018-03-03_174415_escabia.jpg" id="image-1230" class="picwide" />
+
+I've seen more than a few full time RVers complaining on the internet that there's no free camping in Florida or the Gulf Coast in general. I can't decide if I should correct this ignorance or not. I'm going to take the middle ground and say there's plenty of free camping all along the Gulf Coast you, but you do have to know where to look. We've found great free camping in Texas, Louisiana, Alabama and Florida. It's harder to find, that's true, but it's definitely there. And while I'm on the subject, the whole free camping thing is not, at least for us, really about being free. That is nice, but what free camping almost always means is fewer people and wilder places, which is the main appeal for us.
+
+<img src="images/2018/2018-03-02_160656_escabia.jpg" id="image-1228" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2018/2018-03-02_162307_escabia.jpg" id="image-1229" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2018/2018-03-01_143849_escabia.jpg" id="image-1227" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2018/2018-03-13_133929_escabia.jpg" id="image-1233" class="picwide" />
+
+The place we stayed on the shore of East Bay is a small campground at the end of a dusty dirt road made of dried Florida red clay. The rains turned it to mud, but not so bad we couldn't get in and out. Follow the road long enough through the pine flats, bayous and marshes and you'll find a little campground on the bay. There's only 12 sites and a crazy online reservation system that ensure most of them will be unoccupied at any given time (despite being "full" if you look online)[^1]. We stayed a total of 10 nights there in two separate trips and never saw the place full. .
+
+So there is free camping in Florida, plenty of it in fact, you just have to find it. That said, this place is probably somewhat unique. It's a little slice of wild Florida that doesn't seem like it's changed much since the Choctaw were living here a few hundred years ago. 
+
+<img src="images/2018/2018-03-13_133709_escabia.jpg" id="image-1232" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2018/2018-03-13_135006_escabia.jpg" id="image-1234" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2018/2018-03-13_104530_escabia.jpg" id="image-1231" class="picwide caption" />
+
+It was nice to get back to something a little wilder. I love the south, and it does have some very wild spots, but they're fewer and further between than the west. East Bay felt wilder than any place we'd been in a long time, probably since Rutherford Beach.
+
+We first visited the area a week earlier on our way to Fort Pickens. The day we arrived they were doing a controlled burn in the pine flats (our neighbor told me there's a pine around here that only germinates with fire, which could be the reason). The air was filled with smoke and ash rained down on us all afternoon which made the place feel even wilder. That night we had a campfire, but real fire was beyond our camp in the woods. For the most part it was a steady red glow through the trees, but occasionally a dead palm would suddenly bursting into flame with a great crashing roar.
+
+When we came back there were no nearby fires. The first couple days we were there it rained off and on most of the day. The cloud cover never broke. Then one afternoon the sun finally came out and the whole campground turned out. I heard the squeak of Vanagon doors and the zipper of tents being thrown open and pretty soon folding chairs were pulled out to the shoreline, shirts came off and we all sort of sat in silence and enjoyed the sunshine. We do this sort of thing all the time -- just sit and do nothing -- so I think nothing of it until we get to a campground where people are always off seeing the sights, fishing, doing stuff and all the sudden I feel conspicuous in my doing nothingness. I knew I had found my people when I noticed that everyone here was just sitting, doing nothing, staring out at the sea. There was something about the place that seemed to inspire you to just sit and think. Perhaps it was the droop of the Spanish Moss, or the glaring Florida sun, or the dead oaks along the shore, limbs reaching out like gnarled fingers clawing at the sky. Whatever the case, it was an excellent place to simply sit and feel the warmth of the sun. Or have a water fight.
+
+<img src="images/2018/2018-03-15_133349_escabia.jpg" id="image-1235" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2018/2018-03-17_132753_escabia.jpg" id="image-1237" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2018/2018-03-17_134952_escabia.jpg" id="image-1238" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2018/2018-03-17_135008_escabia.jpg" id="image-1239" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2018/2018-03-17_135039_escabia.jpg" id="image-1240" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2018/2018-03-17_135042_escabia.jpg" id="image-1241" class="picwide" />
+
+You had to snatch that sun though. The rain was off and on all week. Mornings started off looking like rain, but by 10 it'd be sunny, which would last until around 2PM, at which point clouds would roll in, the wind would kick up and it would feel like a squall was coming, but then nothing ever made it all the way across the bay and by sundown it was clear enough to watch the sunset.
+
+A couple of mornings a strange warm fog covered the bay, just before dawn the world looked flat and blurred, sea and sky become one and suffused with a blue glow.
+
+<img src="images/2018/2018-03-17_060509_escabia.jpg" id="image-1236" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2018/2018-03-18_063002_escabia.jpg" id="image-1243" class="picwide" />
+
+The gloom burned off quickly once the sun was up and the last few days we were there the weather was perfect, even if the fish weren't biting.
+
+<img src="images/2018/2018-03-17_140330_escabia.jpg" id="image-1242" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2018/2018-03-19_174839_escabia.jpg" id="image-1244" class="picwide" />
+
+[^1]: While we were there the online system was changed a bit and now you're supposed to call when you arrive or you forfeit your reservations and the site is available to walk ups. This seemed to be only about half implemented and unevenly enforced, but they're trying anyway.
diff --git a/scratch.txt b/scratch.txt
index f05f1c8..64a515b 100644
--- a/scratch.txt
+++ b/scratch.txt
@@ -1,13 +1,48 @@
-I've got a couple of those photos where you can count the feathers on the bird's face of laughing gulls. They're everywhere down on the Gulf Coast, sit long enough and they'll come close enough that you'll get something. But that's not how I see Laughing Gulls. I see them from a distance. Not a great distance, but slyly out of reach. Like this photo. Always watching, waiting. Waiting for the humans to give up something. A chip, a Cheeto, a forgotten peanut.
+I'm not going to pretend to know what Wallace Stevens was referring to by the Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is, but it has always reminded me of the fact that there are myriad complex worlds around us to which we are wholly ignorant. Not because we don't pay attention, though that may be part of it, but because we can't pay attention. There are vast existences too small to see with the naked eye. Ponds full of pond scum that have their own version of stressful jobs, political and social situations, and whatnot just as we do. They're just having it all on a very different scale, from us and happen to use chemicals instead of words to communicate. 
 
-Moo Krob Nam Ma Prow
+For all you know that puddle you didn't even notice on your way into work this morning is home to a population of microbes undergoing an extremely stressful existence which they would desperately like to escape just as much as you would desperately like to escape your cubicle. 
+
+By the same token, the nothing that is has also always reminded me that it's entirely possible, likely even I would argue, that there are some beings out there to which our existence is about the same as the pond scum. Not insignificant or unimportant, just too small to really pay any kind of meaningful attention to. After all, pretty much everyone and everything has its own set of problems to worry about.
+
+
+Staring at nothing isn't doing nothing. It so happens that watching the world in silence isn't something our culture considers valuable and so you and I have been trained to casually dismiss it as "doing nothing". But the more I've done it, the more I realized that sitting, "doing nothing" is actually, possibly, the secret of the world so to speak. Whatever it may be, I can say from experience that it's incredibly valuable to me now and has helped me grow by leaps and bounds as a person.
+
+I also think it offers a practical, easy way out of many of the social messes we've created for ourselves.
+
+There's a lot of windbags out there criticizing the internet, especially social media, for fostering narcissism, consumer culture, intellectual bullying, and whatever other social ill gets their particular goat as it were. But it's rare that said windbags have any good ideas on how we can counteracting these forces beyond turning off the TV and internet. 
+
+To be fair, that does work. Especially turning off the TV. Few things will improve your life so dramatically as throwing your TV out the highest window you can find (making sure there's no one below). 
+
+The internet though is more neutral in my view. It can be good, it can be bad, it all depends on you and how you use it. In my case I have to use it, it's how I make money to live this way. And sure I can say oh I'm only going to look up whatever technical thing I need to look up to solve a particular problem, but that ideal is very different from the messy relaity that the internet is full of interesting stuff to stare at. 
+
+\l
+
+Observing nature is not nothing. 
+
+Which is to say all the things we as a culture don't want to talk about right now.
 
-having grown up in mid-twentieth century suburbia — and then escaped! — I have a very low tolerance for the kind of boring world that comes from excess conformity and obedience to authorities. As for ways to sort through the abstractions — ah, we’ll be getting to those.
+You and I find ourselves born into a declining culture. A culture that is what Spengler would call the end of an abstraction phase that will soon start swinging toward 
 
-I wish there was a way to record the texture of a place, the way the crushed gray gravel feels against the bottom of your foot, sharp, but rough, not cutting, or to reconstruct for you the dryness of the grass between your fingers, thin, smooth, like a miniature brown flute that crumbs as your roll it and it's carried off on the wind, or provide a way for you to feel the warm waft of humidity slowly receding through the evening as the sun fades and the temperature drops enough to weaken it, the way it is pushed back by the cool salt air rolling in for the night. 
 
-I can photograph the stars and record the sound of the frogs singing, but there is no way to make you feel the texture of a place. Perhaps that's for the best, lest we have another reason to not get off the couch. To feel a place you must get inside it somehow and when you do, when you've shrunk yourself down into the cracks within it, heard the thin rumor of whispers it says behind our backs, then you know that place, in your own way, and are connected to it forever more. 
+is a bit more complex than that. If you want to still use social media, try first developing humility. One easy way to do that is to create an active practice cultivating humility, for example, pending time in quiet observance of nature. Spend some time realizing that most of life care not at all what humans think, say or do, is helpful in 
+
+seems like it would require an active practice.
+
+
+
+
+But as we struggle through this crisis of legitimacy, what is left over when the abstractions start to wear thin? When I decide I don’t want to become an opiate addict and need to find something else? What about when it’s more serious than just a headache – what if it turns out to be cancer, and I don’t want to follow the standard ‘cut, poison, burn’ protocol? For me, it sometimes feels like there’s only a smoking crater where my brain should be. My mind often feels like it’s just a collection of Other People’s opinions and regurgitated sound bites. Even if I do try to pay attention to my own experiences, what I am able to perceive is limited by my analysis of the information coming in to my brain, which is itself conditioned by the habits of thought I learned from other people and my society. I filter out the information to which I am exposed. So there really is no objective truth out there! -https://www.ecosophia.net/the-truths-we-have-in-common/#comment-17128
+
+! It’s when you realize that most of your opinions and ideas belong to other people that you can begin the central work of an age of reflection — the work of learning how to think your own thoughts, and assess other people’s opinions and ideas and your own with a set of critical tools that don’t depend on checking their fit to some collectively approved set of abstract generalizations. JMG
+
+ipalm fronds, whirls, fans, crisp browned tips, peeling trunks as if the whole tree were some giant alien flower, other with trunks smooth and stalk straight leading up to bunches of fronds that look like pineapples on stilts. The can be so absolutely still when the ind doesn't blow.. The slash pine mixed in, it too has a very stright trunk, shedding its lower branches as it grows so that the long, delicate needles grow in tuffs and clumps of needle fans near the top of the tree. Here and there an oak, never a big one in the palm-dominated areas, but vaguely sickly looking oaks scratching out an existence in this sandy soil.
+
+Twilight is soft yellow that gradually fades up to a cool white that gets cooler and cooler blow as it climbs up the sky until it reachs the rich coblant I see up through the faint waiving of pine tops in the wind, the deep rich blue of twilight, the spirit who guides the stars into the night. The sand looks gray and soft when the sun is gone, the coean grows dark and seems to settle it's restlessness a bit as the light disappears.
+
+
+Moo Krob Nam Ma Prow
 
+having grown up in mid-twentieth century suburbia — and then escaped! — I have a very low tolerance for the kind of boring world that comes from excess conformity and obedience to authorities. As for ways to sort through the abstractions — ah, we’ll be getting to those. - ecosophia, greer
 
 
 > In a home I need walls, roof, windows, and a door that can be opened and closed. I also need a place to cook, a place to eat, a place to sleep, a place for a guest, and a place to write. More space is not better... more space attracts more stuff which eventually means less space. 
@@ -21,8 +56,6 @@ I can photograph the stars and record the sound of the frogs singing, but there
 http://earlyretirementextreme.com/manifesto.html
 
 
-Under the Jaguar Sun
-The Burning Plain Juan Rulfo
-The Labyrinth of Solitud
+The Labyrinth of Solitude
 Juana Inés de la Cruz. Her superb book "Poems, Protest, and a Dream"
 Mariano Azuela's "The Underdogs"
diff --git a/sketches/2018-03-23_texture.txt b/sketches/2018-03-23_texture.txt
index 618eb9a..da401f3 100644
--- a/sketches/2018-03-23_texture.txt
+++ b/sketches/2018-03-23_texture.txt
@@ -1,3 +1,3 @@
 I wish there was a way to record the texture of a place, the way the crushed gray gravel feels against the bottom of your foot, sharp, but rough, not cutting, or to reconstruct for you the dryness of the grass between your fingers, thin, smooth, like a miniature brown flute that crumbs as your roll it and it's carried off on the wind, or provide a way for you to feel the warm waft of humidity slowly receding through the evening as the sun fades and the temperature drops enough to weaken it, the way it is pushed back by the cool salt air rolling in for the night. 
 
-I can photograph the stars and record the sound of the frogs singing, but there is no way to make you feel the texture of a place. Perhaps that's for the best, lest we have another reason to not get off the couch. To feel a place you must get inside it somehow and when you do, when you've shrunk yourself down into the cracks within it, heard the thin rumor of whispers it says behind our backs, then you know that place, in your own way, and are connected to it forever more. 
+I can photograph the stars and record the sound of the frogs singing, but there is no way to make you feel the texture of a place. Perhaps that's for the best, lest we have another reason to not get off the couch. To feel a place you must get inside it somehow and when you do, when you've shrunk yourself down into the cracks within it, heard the thin rumor of whispers it says behind our backs, then you know that place, in your own way, and are connected to it forever more.
diff --git a/sketches/2018-04-02_the-nothing-that-is.txt b/sketches/2018-04-02_the-nothing-that-is.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..943f0be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/sketches/2018-04-02_the-nothing-that-is.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+> For the listener, who listens in the snow, <br />
+> And, nothing himself, beholds <br />
+> Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. <br />
+<cite>-- [Wallace Stevens][2]</cite>
+
+I mentioned in [a recent post][1] that we often spend a good bit of time "doing nothing". Certainly more than we used it. Early on on this trip we ran around and did things. And sometimes we still do, but I would say less than we used to. These days, so long as it's a wild enough spot, we're happy hanging around camp, walking whatever trails or seashore might be around and generally doing "nothing". 
+
+In the post linked above the "nothing" is staring out at the sparkling waters of Pensacola's East Bay, but it could be anything really. I spent hours watching the pine forests of Colorado, the deep woods of Mount Shasta, the deserts of the southwest, the rocky stream beds of Utah, the snowy peaks of the Sierra Nevada. We stare at campfires almost every night. 
+
+Staring at nothing isn't doing nothing. It so happens that watching the world in silence isn't something our culture considers valuable and so you and I have been trained to casually dismiss it as "doing nothing". But the more I've done it, the more I realized that sitting, "doing nothing" is actually, possibly, the secret of the world so to speak. Whatever it may be, I can say from experience that it's incredibly valuable to me now and has helped me grow by leaps and bounds as a person.
+
+It took me quite a while to internalize this idea, even if I might have *said* it from the beginning. Somewhere in that nothing though, I've come to recognize that there's a big difference between saying something and knowing it through experience. 
+
+A couple years ago the National Academy of Sciences solemnly declared that "[nature experience reduces rumination and subgenual prefrontal cortex activation][3], which is inscrutable science jargon for "walking in the woods makes you feel less stressed and happier". The linked article is about as exciting as the title implies, but it is interesting in one respect, not a very scientific respect, but an interesting one nonetheless: just being in nature alters the way your brain works. The subjects of the study reported less rumination, which, in this context means self-focused behavioral withdrawal, or what we would call depression. 
+
+That's nice and the study authors go on to talk about how nature in urban spaces can maybe possibly help with mental illness, which is one of those things that seems self-evident to me, but that's sort what science has become at this point, "proving" the self evident. And really, helping with depression is good, but that's really just scratching the surface of something much bigger. Especially if you consider the reverse proposition.
+
+To me one of the basic realizations of existence is that what makes us feel truly happy and fulfilled as human beings is not at all what our society holds out to us to supposedly achieve those ends. 
+
+And that's not to pick on our particular society. Read through the works of the Greek mystics, Hindu, early Christians and half a dozen other cultures and it's a re-occurring theme in all of them. It may just be that society is not the place to look for what’s supposed to make us feel happy and fulfilled. 
+
+It may be that that's already a part of us if we stop long enough, become still enough and work hard enough to find it.
+
+This notion has immense implications that I'm not going to touch here, but I do highly recommend finding a quiet spot or maybe take a walk in the woods and consider it. If nothing else just being out in nature will make you feel better.
+
+[1]: /jrnl/2018/03/green-sea-days
+[2]: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45235/the-snow-man-56d224a6d4e90
+[3]: http://www.pnas.org/content/112/28/8567