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| -rw-r--r-- | books/beyond-the-blue.txt (renamed from beyond-the-blue.txt) | 0 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | ko-kradan-wally.txt | 4 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | leopold-essay.txt | 6 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | published/2018-11-17_lets-go-ride.txt (renamed from go-for-a-ride.txt) | 8 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | published/2018-12-14_mary-wild-moor.txt (renamed from navidad.txt) | 0 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | sketches/singing-on-the-bayou.txt (renamed from singing-on-the-bayou.txt) | 0 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | unused/culture-shock.txt (renamed from culture-shock.txt) | 0 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | unused/downsizing.txt (renamed from downsizing.txt) | 0 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | unused/ennui.txt (renamed from ennui.txt) | 0 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | unused/mileage.txt (renamed from mileage.txt) | 0 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | unused/one.txt (renamed from one.txt) | 0 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | unused/television.txt (renamed from television.txt) | 0 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | unused/why.txt (renamed from why.txt) | 0 |
13 files changed, 9 insertions, 9 deletions
diff --git a/beyond-the-blue.txt b/books/beyond-the-blue.txt index 911634a..911634a 100644 --- a/beyond-the-blue.txt +++ b/books/beyond-the-blue.txt diff --git a/ko-kradan-wally.txt b/ko-kradan-wally.txt index 241b50c..2ae4344 100644 --- a/ko-kradan-wally.txt +++ b/ko-kradan-wally.txt @@ -10,9 +10,9 @@ I sat down on the sand and smoked a cigarette. I figured, worst case scenario, I The guidebook I had claimed there was a trail to the other side of the island, and somewhere over there were a couple of guesthouses. It took me ten minutes to find the trail and another ten to make it to the other side of the island. The rain held off longer than I thought. The first place I encountered was Wally's Paradise Lost. -He offered me a room, but at this point I had been in southeast asia for nine months, no way I was taking a room from the first farang I met. I might have literally been fresh off the boat, but metaphorically I was too cynical to take Wally up without surveying the island first. I set off for the other guesthouse on the sidea which was down on the beach. +He offered me a room, but at this point I had been in southeast asia for nine months, no way I was taking a room from the first farang I met. I might have literally been fresh off the boat, but metaphorically I was too cynical to take Wally up without surveying the island first. I set off for the other guesthouse on the island, which was down on the beach. -The rain hit at the edge of the tree line on the leeward beach. I followed a couple of dog deeper into the trees for shelter. A woman walked up off the beach and came into the thicket. We chatted for a while and she talked me out of even seeing the other guesthouse by describing it as “more of a refugee camp.” I did later head down there and that was in fact an apt description. +The rain hit at the edge of the tree line on the leeward beach. I followed a couple of dogs deeper into the trees for shelter. A woman walked up off the beach and came into the thicket. We chatted for a while and she talked me out of even seeing the other guesthouse by describing it as “more of a refugee camp.” I did later head down there and that was in fact an apt description. I went back and got a room at Paradise Lost. Wally seemed entirely unperturbed by my snub and reversal; I trust he had seen more than few of my kind -- there's no shortage of self assured dumbasses in Thailand. I would not have blamed him for being a bit standoffish with me, but he was in fact the opposite. That night he pulled some ribeye steaks out of the freezer for me, as well as Tony and Zoe, the only other people staying there are the time. Sure, I paid for the steaks, that's not the point. They weren't on the menu. diff --git a/leopold-essay.txt b/leopold-essay.txt index a9487e4..70b4534 100644 --- a/leopold-essay.txt +++ b/leopold-essay.txt @@ -2,7 +2,7 @@ One of Thoreau's most quoted phrases claims that "in wildness lies the preservat If that's true we're screwed. -Fellow conservationist Aldo Leopold seems to have written much of what he did to let us know not so much what we could save as what it was already too late to save, the wildness we had already lost. The last grizzly killed in Arizona. The jaguars disappearing from the banks of the Colorado as it snakes it's way through the Grand Canyon; the ways countless birds in Leopold's say still clung to existence in the islands of native prairie that speckled his home country of Sand County. +Fellow conservationist Aldo Leopold seems to have written much of what he did to let us know not so much what we could save as what it was already too late to save, the wildness we had already lost. The last grizzly killed in Arizona. The jaguars disappearing from the banks of the Colorado as it snakes it's way through the Grand Canyon; the ways countless birds in Leopold's day still clung to existence in the islands of native prairie that speckled his home country of Sand County. All that was gone long before I was born. Or mostly gone. When I was young there were still small pockets of wildness to be found. Buy enough 7.5 topo sheets and you were bound to find some relatively blank spots. The Superstition mountains. The chocolate mountains. The Chihuahuas. The Dragoons. For a kid who grew up in the decidedly not wilds of southern California, the southern edge of Arizona, the borderlands in more ways than one, retained pockets of wildness here and there. @@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ My father and I made frequent forays into such places. He always looking for sna It wasn't just wildness though. Or not wildness in the sense that we westerner's tend to think of it -- roadless natural areas that are inaccessible. Accessibility is after all, very relative. Could you have driving a 4x4 up the wash to the base of the butte where I sat? Possibly and that alone is enough to destroy the kind of wildness that Leopold wrote about. A kind of wildness that ceases to exist not so much through the loss of land -- though that certainly doesn't help -- but through the growth of technology. -Leopold writesWhen I call to mind my earliest impressions, I wonder whether the process of ordinarly referred to as growing up is not actually a process of growing down; whether experience, so much touted among adeults as the thing children lack, is not actually a progressive dilution of the essentials by the trivialities of living. +Leopold writes when I call to mind my earliest impressions, I wonder whether the process of ordinarly referred to as growing up is not actually a process of growing down; whether experience, so much touted among adeults as the thing children lack, is not actually a progressive dilution of the essentials by the trivialities of living. "When I first lived in Arizona the White Mountain was a horseman's world. Except along a few main routes, it was too rough for wagons. There were no cars. It was too big for foot travel; even sheepherders roade. Thus by elimination, the coutnry-sized plateau know as 'on top' was the exclusing domain of the mountaed man: mounted cowman, mounted sheepman, mounted forest officer, mounted trapper, and those unclassified mounted men of unknown origin and uncertain destination always found on frontiers. It is difficult of this generation to understand this aristocracy of space based upon transport." @@ -25,7 +25,7 @@ We brought the thing home amid belches of smoke and accidental peeling of the ne And so we did. -Grandpa eyeing the truck. My mom did not come. This was before cellphones when a modicum of danger still existed in travel. +Grandpa eyeing the truck. My mom did not come. This was before cellphones, when a modicum of danger still existed in travel. The drive in, building our own road over the ruts with split fire wood. Piling rock in the back of the truck to weigh it down so the rear wheel drive tires would have some bite/purchase in the rutted dirt. diff --git a/go-for-a-ride.txt b/published/2018-11-17_lets-go-ride.txt index b302007..381b63d 100644 --- a/go-for-a-ride.txt +++ b/published/2018-11-17_lets-go-ride.txt @@ -13,9 +13,9 @@ Instead we were handed a bus ticket in Mexico City, and then we sat back and cha <img src="images/2018/2018-11-18_130447_quad-ride-sma.jpg" id="image-1783" class="picwide" /> -We have been to the botanical gardens at the top of the hill a couple times. It offers a pretty good view to the north and east. The kids an I once road the number 10 bus to its end point in the neighborhood of Malanquin, where we found a playground atop a hill with really good views to the south, but otherwise my sense of the lay of the land is very vague. I know roughly where various neighborhoods are, but no sense of how they connect, and hardly any sense of what the surrounding country side looks like. +We have been to the botanical gardens at the top of the hill a couple times. It offers a pretty good view to the north and east. The kids and I once rode the number 10 bus to its end point in the neighborhood of Malanquin, where we found a playground atop a hill with really good views to the south, but otherwise my sense of the lay of the land is very vague. I know roughly where various neighborhoods are, but no sense of how they connect, and hardly any sense of what the surrounding country side looks like. -That's one of the reasons, when my friend Mike suggested we rent ATVs and go riding, I immediately said yes. The other reason was, even if it's not a motorcycle, at least I'd be riding an engine again and I never pass up the chance to climb on some steel and see where it takes me. +That's one of the reasons, when my friend Mike suggested we rent ATVs and go riding, I immediately said yes. The other reason was, even if it's not a motorcycle, at least I'd be riding an engine again and I never pass up the chance to do that. Right off the bat we drove through a neighborhood I'd only heard of from seeing for rent ads on Craigslist. I quickly realized why I hadn't been there --it's the suburbs, and rich suburbs at that, not my part of town, but I'm glad I know where it is now. We quickly rode on through and down to the lake shore past this crazy Gaudi-esque house that came up so fast and was so close I couldn't get a good picture, but it's on the list of things to get back to, eventually. @@ -34,7 +34,7 @@ I'd like to do another trip, slower, maybe on a horse, and bring an archaeologis After a while at the church we rode on, at one point, for the sheer fun of it, we road through water deep enough to flood the engines, which somehow did not die. Still puzzling that out in my free time. -We went past little town, clusters of houses really, always with a small tienda where everyone, and every dog, seemed to be gathered to talk and relax on a Sunday afternoon. I would have like to stop in a few, buy a Coke or a beer and talk to the people, but we kept on. We went past enormous restaurants that seemed far larger than was necessary given the nearby population was near nil, but perhaps people come out from San Miguel, who knows. I filed that, alone with many other questions away for another day. +We went past little town, clusters of houses really, always with a small tienda where everyone, and every dog, seemed to be gathered to talk and relax on a Sunday afternoon. I would have like to stop in a few, buy a Coke or a beer and talk to the people, but we kept on. We went past enormous restaurants that seemed far larger than was necessary given the nearby population was near nil, but perhaps people come out from San Miguel, who knows. I filed that, along with many other questions away for another day. At some point we passed an RV, a beat up old thing, probably a late 80s or maybe early 90s model. It was clearly functional though, and hooked up to both sewer and water in the middle of nowhere. I filed it away to think on later and punched it over the railroad tracks. @@ -43,7 +43,7 @@ We stopped for some water and a huge flock of either ravens or crows came circli <img src="images/2018/2018-11-18_122458_quad-ride-sma.jpg" id="image-1780" class="picwide" /> <img src="images/2018/2018-11-18_122519_quad-ride-sma.jpg" id="image-1781" class="picwide" /> -Eventually we circled back around, up past the train station I knew must be around -- we'd heard the trains -- but hadn't see yet, and finally up the hill with the giant cross. When I said that to some people who have been here a few years they looked at me like I was an idiot -- which hill, which cross? Right, every hill has a cross. In this Catholic, yet not quite Catholic, world every neighborhood has a church, every hill has a cross. Oh, you know, the one with nice views of San Miguel and the lake. +Eventually we circled back around, up past the train station I knew must be around -- we'd heard the trains -- but hadn't seen yet, and finally up the hill with the giant cross. When I said that to some people who have been here a few years they looked at me like I was an idiot -- which hill, which cross? Right, every hill has a cross. In this Catholic, yet not quite Catholic, world every neighborhood has a church, every hill has a cross. Oh, you know, the one with nice views of San Miguel and the lake. <img src="images/2018/2018-11-22_qF68qFJ.jpg" id="image-1785" class="picwide" /> <img src="images/2018/2018-11-18_130458_quad-ride-sma.jpg" id="image-1773" class="picwide" /> diff --git a/navidad.txt b/published/2018-12-14_mary-wild-moor.txt index f8dd25d..f8dd25d 100644 --- a/navidad.txt +++ b/published/2018-12-14_mary-wild-moor.txt diff --git a/singing-on-the-bayou.txt b/sketches/singing-on-the-bayou.txt index 03fbe8b..03fbe8b 100644 --- a/singing-on-the-bayou.txt +++ b/sketches/singing-on-the-bayou.txt diff --git a/culture-shock.txt b/unused/culture-shock.txt index fe552b5..fe552b5 100644 --- a/culture-shock.txt +++ b/unused/culture-shock.txt diff --git a/downsizing.txt b/unused/downsizing.txt index f09b598..f09b598 100644 --- a/downsizing.txt +++ b/unused/downsizing.txt diff --git a/ennui.txt b/unused/ennui.txt index c5c0036..c5c0036 100644 --- a/ennui.txt +++ b/unused/ennui.txt diff --git a/mileage.txt b/unused/mileage.txt index 623734b..623734b 100644 --- a/mileage.txt +++ b/unused/mileage.txt diff --git a/television.txt b/unused/television.txt index 1821506..1821506 100644 --- a/television.txt +++ b/unused/television.txt |