diff options
| -rw-r--r-- | 2018-03-14_green-sea-days.txt | 2 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | published/2018-03-07_island-sun.txt (renamed from 2018-03-07_island-sun.txt) | 0 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | published/2018-03-14_green-sea-days.txt (renamed from escabia-bay.txt) | 15 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | scratch.txt | 2 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | the-nothing-that-is.txt | 38 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | unknown.txt | 17 |
6 files changed, 51 insertions, 23 deletions
diff --git a/2018-03-14_green-sea-days.txt b/2018-03-14_green-sea-days.txt deleted file mode 100644 index a0dc1f8..0000000 --- a/2018-03-14_green-sea-days.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,2 +0,0 @@ - -Moo Krob Nam Ma Prow diff --git a/2018-03-07_island-sun.txt b/published/2018-03-07_island-sun.txt index f41d4ab..f41d4ab 100644 --- a/2018-03-07_island-sun.txt +++ b/published/2018-03-07_island-sun.txt diff --git a/escabia-bay.txt b/published/2018-03-14_green-sea-days.txt index e7bdd97..b76bea8 100644 --- a/escabia-bay.txt +++ b/published/2018-03-14_green-sea-days.txt @@ -2,7 +2,7 @@ When we planned out this trip back through the Gulf we made reservations at a bu <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 in 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 things 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. +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" /> @@ -19,9 +19,9 @@ So there is free camping in Florida, plenty of it in fact, you just have to find 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 just a steady red glow through the trees, but occasionally a dead palm would suddenly bursting into flame with a great crashing roar. +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 just 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. +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" /> @@ -32,11 +32,18 @@ When we came back there were no nearby fires. The first couple days we were ther 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 and just before dawn the world looked flat, blurred, sea and sky become one and suffused with a blue glow. +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. + +People say there's no free camping in Florida, but there is, you just have to know where to look. That said, the campground at East Bay is 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. + +People say there's no free camping in Florida, but there is, if you know where to look. That said, the campground at East Bay is unique, a little slice of wild Florida that doesn't seem like it's changed since the Choctaw were living here a few hundred yea diff --git a/scratch.txt b/scratch.txt index 01ddc74..6bfaf0c 100644 --- a/scratch.txt +++ b/scratch.txt @@ -1,4 +1,6 @@ +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. I wish there was a way to record the texture of a place, the way the crushed gray gravel felt agaist the bottom of your foot, sharp, but rough and not cutting, or 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 is 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 weeken it, and 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. to feel a place you must get inside it somehow and when you do, when you've shrunk yourself down into the cracks of it, heard the thin rumor of whispers it says behind our backs, then you know that place, in your own way, with in it. diff --git a/the-nothing-that-is.txt b/the-nothing-that-is.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3c15bc6 --- /dev/null +++ b/the-nothing-that-is.txt @@ -0,0 +1,38 @@ +> For the listener, who listens in the snow, +> And, nothing himself, beholds +> Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. + +-- Wallace Stevens + +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. + +But watching the world, observing the natural environment around you isn't really doing nothing. It took me quite a while to internalize that, even if I might have *said* it from the beginning. I've come to recognize that there's a big difference between saying something and actually knowing it through experience. + +Staring at nothing isn't doing nothing. It so happen 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. + +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 + + +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. + +spending time in quiet observance of nature is one practice that helps me. I would be curious as to your opinion of which habits of religion or culture–intentional or not–led to greater humility. + +[1]: diff --git a/unknown.txt b/unknown.txt deleted file mode 100644 index cb3d3f5..0000000 --- a/unknown.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,17 +0,0 @@ -I mentioned in a recent post that we often spend a good bit of time doing nothing. In that post it's staring out at the bay, but there have been other things we've stared at -- the pine forests of Colorado, the woods of Mount Shasta, the deserts of the southwest, the Sierra Nevada and so on. And naturally we stare at campfires quite a bit too. - -But that whole thing is sort of lie. Staring at nothing isn't actually doing nothing. It just happens to be something our culture doesn't consider valuable and so you and I casually dismiss it as "doing nothing". But the more I started to do it, the more I realized that just sitting, "doing nothing" is actually perhaps the most active thing you can do. - -and observing nature is not nothing. It is in fact everything. - -Which is to say all the things we as a culture don't want to talk about right now. - -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 - -There's a lot of windbags out there criticizing social media for fostering narcissism, consumer culture, and intellectual bullying, but none of them seems to have any good ideas on how we can counteracting these forces beyond turning off the TV and internet. That works, especially TV, you should throw your TV out the highest window you can find (making sure there's no one below), but the internet has its upsides and I like using it. It's currently the best was I know of to communicate with large numbers of people - -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. - -spending time in quiet observance of nature is one practice that helps me. I would be curious as to your opinion of which habits of religion or culture–intentional or not–led to greater humility. |