Reading Wendell Berry is satisfying to me beacuse of his acute specificity of articulation when it comes to complex issues. Many of the problems he mentions in plain speak take other academics pages and pages to excogitate. Part of it is his brazenness is fearlessness to state his opinion, and to state it as blunt argument. We need to get closer to the land, and localize our farm industry, or things are going to get worse. He doesn't waver on this. His distaste for big business and the overarching 'fall from Eden' feeling invoked by his writing are easy to get behind.
I liked how in class we challenged its applicability to our day and age. Not only is he still right about what is happening, but it has gotten so much worse that we are at a point where we are much more helpless to it, and it is much more ubiquitous. His arguments have bounced around for forty years, and have been fleshed out ad nauseum and even more articulately by a sleu of geniuses, yet the changes have not taken place. Capital greed has won the day, and our (humans' and the land's) health has suffered because of it. We didn't come to a fruitful conclusion on what to do, though giving up certainly wasn't the answer.
This brings me to Thom Riser's presentation. He also suggested we don;'t become discouraged by the state of the world. It is strange, he seemed to blend work and play while keeping them separate at the same time. His work was very different from his play, and it seemed to take president over other things. For instance, he didnt start doing art or have kids until he was stable financially. He also didn't skateboard while in college. It seems like the work ethic point was his strongest. He just worked really hard at Math and Engineering, and put that work ethic into the rest of his life when it was available to him. He definitely kept his free attitude in life, but he also had a stable and specific business handed to him, and focused on security. (going to school again immediately after Guilford, for example.) That part worried me a little. It implied that if we want to do something of that calibur we need a lot more schooling. I guess thats true. There is just an overarching feeling for me that he is a poster child for the status quo. He went to school until he could be a big part of production, and he sequestered his creative side to the household. He felt wierd about his art being public, for example. He reserved enjoyment for the home, and balance of work and play was still balance of separate things. Also, he didn't go very far into how he made his business more positive on the world/more sustainable. Perhaps he didn't. Taking it full circle, he seems to imply that we shouldn't worry about those wider issues to where it keeps us from enjoying life. That is true. He did talk a little about fostering communication in his neighborhood. But it wasn't a promising story. anyway....
Yvon Chouinard was a total badass. That is unquestionable. I loved his life story, his growing up and trying everything he encountered, tending towards the challenging and extreme. But I agree with most of the class that the book left a lot to be desired, and that it became a sort of advertisement. We must, however, place his story in its proper historical context. He was the first to use organic cotton, kind of invented maternity leave, and was good to his workers *(managers, not foreign labor, as we talked about)... But overall I found his outlook very positive. The way he held sessions with all his managers about the philosophy of the company was really good. There was no compromising quality and stweardship for profit. And it bears repeating, he was a total badass.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Monday, March 1, 2010
Uwharrie
Day one: My excitement builds as we review the materials we had packed out on Wednesday. Helping people load their packs into the van, I remember. My camping spirit is invoked; it never went anywher
e. Catoctin songs start echoing back into the twilight backroom of my consciousness as we make our way into the middle of nowhere/NC/somewhere! The group is an interesting mix of quiet and louder personalities. Everyone is getting excited; everyone is sliding to the more out side of themselves. We’re finally experiencing what we’ve been reading about in Abram for weeks. Its time to go out into the sensuous Other and escape our dusty hunch-backed thought-trapped angsty worried-about-nothing college minds into the vast voice of nature’s fresh flux. Time for time. Time for air. The tenor of the group felt like an orchestra before a play. Tuning up, smiles peek out from the corners of trailmix munching mouthes. Sillyness sprouts from sullenness sleepily spiraling upward and outward; forward. 
My first leap of faith was asking the group to play Big Booty with me. (Maia, if you haven’t played it before, ask me and we’ll play next class. It’s great) At first, people were very hesitant to learn. I felt like the whole excursion would hinge upon the success of this first gesture. It worked. I persisted, taught, and we played. Soon lots of people watched and laughed at us and with us. It was a fine beginning.
Once we got underway, got some trail underfoot, I quickly realized that Reed and I would spend a lot of time together. He shared the unbridled earth-sign mammalian fervor that I felt welling up inside myself. We cast along ahead of the group, scouting, bounding, exploring. It was great to have somebody who wanted to go even faster than I, because I was worried that I would be the hurried one on the trip. At one point Carly said that one could only miss the beauty of nature going so fast, but there’s something to it, just like there’s something to wharfing down a well drooled-over meal in seconds. You may not feel the flavor as long, meditate on it as much, but there is something to it, and the only way to see it is to do it. G
o full throttle--actually, thats a bad metaphor, because it implies pushing. This was nothing but releasing, allowing, freeing the warrior spirit inside. There was such a biting-at-the-bit at hand. Reed would have sprinted the twenty miles if I had let him. But keeping that in check was almost a better way to honor it than heeding it completely.
The first campsite was a score. I remember deciding if we should camp at the first mediocre spot, and choosing to go just a little further. Jessie was behind me, sunset-bathed trees in front; we sank into a stand of brush on a steep hill, and he said there was no way that this was getting better than the spot before. I said that there was no telling what will come arou
nd the next bend or on the crest of the next hill. Looking skyward, I beheld an eagle. Well, It may have been a vulture, or a crow, but for all intensive purposes, it was a giant Himalayan eagle, soaking up the setting sun. I consciously hailed the bird, asking where a good place to sleep was. He answered the obvious and simple question with an ambivalent flap of his wings. It felt like my question had been answered with a “duh” or something. Looking down again, I saw our spot. I had asked, and it was given. Every face creeping into camp accumulated another smirk of accomplishment and decadence. We were lucky. A view, a glow, flat parts, a fire circle, all in the nick of time.
Laying in my hammock looking at the full-enough moon and the more-than-usual-but-not-enough stars, Carly and I squoze each other as we hadn’t in months. Legitimately tired, needing warmth, groping at a highly bundled form. There was an ambiance to the campsite, a palpable energy. More than the glow of the firelight and the moon. It was us, the laughter hovering in the evening air, the realization of our freedom. The evening to us, nowhere to go. Little itinerate satellites lighting towards poops-in-the-dark, marshmallow bags, journals, cameras, most of all, warmth!
Waking up to the sunrise on the other side of the ridge was equally, and totally obversely beautiful. A beginning again, but this time a continuation. Laughing about all our odd dreams, (often elicited by a change of place) we gulped down some fast-cooling java and chocolate, and pushed on. The campers liked having me hike point, so I kept on leading. I would have nothing but path in front of me for the rest of the trip. Path in front, and Earth sign behind. He was earth sign, I was Lupine, named for my wolf-like exploits that I recalled on our journey.
Once upon a time, I liked to bound through the Guilford woods barefoot, hunching low, pulling my feet in close to hop over brambles while ducking under the lowest branches. I was the horizon. Looking down I realized that I was on a deer path, complete with fresh hoof prints, and then looking up I was aghast yet somehow drooling to realize that the deer were right in front of me--and fleeing me! I had somehow called upon my very predatory instincts and was literally on their tails before my mind caught up and reminded me: what would i do if I caught them?...So I was Lupine.
Earth Sign and I bequeathed the Wizened staph of Forgotten Callings to the trail herself, and future passers by. There was a definite middle earth feeling as we kept slipping into roles: “Beware the Uwharrie, who dwell in this place. They know we are here, though it may be days before they make their presence known. If you are unfortunate enough to be grazed by one of their arrows, fear not, for if we can find a rare purple flower within the hour we shall counter their poison and you shall live...”
It always surprises me how quickly the human legs move us along. One moment I’m looking at a mountain and the next im looking down from that point. As I wrote in an earlier journal, hiking alters time and space. I feel larger while hiking. My presence covered ten miles yesterday. My reciprocal being was implanted upon and imbued with every step and every smell and every breath of the trail. I grew by necessity. Eating a hill like the super-steep one we devoured that day made my blood and chi and reality flow. I was really really there! And the peace I felt when finally at the top was unequaled. The only thing I could think to do once that hill was out of me, and in me was to make art. I balanced rocks in impossible ways, took pictures of them, saw divinity in every unique form of warped root. Finally pushing through the last four and a half miles to Eric, who had been more-than-patiently waiting for us, we desperately needed to make camp.
The spot was practically the opposite of the first, being at the bottom of a valley, with cloud cover. But it was great. Lauren and I started to make a fire together, and I joked about how she had beginners luck, since this was still the second fire the had ever made, the first occurring the night before. But I was right. There was something very special about building that fire for her. Perhaps the fire demons felt like she needed to see just how perfectly a teepee fire design could work; maybe my experience only amounted to something when it serves another; maybe I was showing off by being especially careful. Anyway, It worked better than I had ever seen, just as I had talked it up to her, one tiny ember growing within a minute into a roaring blaze. The fire flew up the center of the teepee, forming a rocket engine pointed skywards, hovering above the ground. It needed to be rooted to earth, or it would simply take off! But rooted it was, and marshmallows followed, to ease the return of sweep’s long day.
Later, hearing Jim’s talk, I naturally compared aspects of his experience with my own. Where would I be in the next two years? With Carly while she goes to grad school? somewhere else? Would I be happy not following a career path like her? I had talked to Jim thoroughly at lunch about all kinds of things I had tried in the last few years, from a run in with a cult, to woofing, to roughing it in Peru. We laughed together as we duct taped our sorry feet across the creek from the summer sausage-devouring group. He is a good listener, and a good speaker. Hearing his path made me feel better. Just, in general.
The return day was great. It was kind of anticlimactic, but still great. I pushed myself up the last hill I could, finishing my roll of film, and feeling my mind more empty than I have in a long time. There was just me there. The experience alone. Upon arriving back at Guilco, Carly and I drove away, and rolled the windows down, without even thinking about it. We had changed. It was chilly. But everything is relative. Of course the windows were down. It was sunny; it smelled good. And it was not really cold. Not like we had experienced in the previous days. We felt hardened, rough, like a pomace stone that can only be produced in areas once explosive like Uwahriee. 
All in all, I had a great time. just being in a tent, or sweating at the top of a hill, or hearing people talk and joke for the sake of keeping themselves going. These are gems in my experience of life. And to have all that take place in the context of a senior-level college class is right on. I feel reminded of what is important to me. Being in touch with my body, with The Body of the Earth. Being Real.
e. Catoctin songs start echoing back into the twilight backroom of my consciousness as we make our way into the middle of nowhere/NC/somewhere! The group is an interesting mix of quiet and louder personalities. Everyone is getting excited; everyone is sliding to the more out side of themselves. We’re finally experiencing what we’ve been reading about in Abram for weeks. Its time to go out into the sensuous Other and escape our dusty hunch-backed thought-trapped angsty worried-about-nothing college minds into the vast voice of nature’s fresh flux. Time for time. Time for air. The tenor of the group felt like an orchestra before a play. Tuning up, smiles peek out from the corners of trailmix munching mouthes. Sillyness sprouts from sullenness sleepily spiraling upward and outward; forward. 
My first leap of faith was asking the group to play Big Booty with me. (Maia, if you haven’t played it before, ask me and we’ll play next class. It’s great) At first, people were very hesitant to learn. I felt like the whole excursion would hinge upon the success of this first gesture. It worked. I persisted, taught, and we played. Soon lots of people watched and laughed at us and with us. It was a fine beginning.
Once we got underway, got some trail underfoot, I quickly realized that Reed and I would spend a lot of time together. He shared the unbridled earth-sign mammalian fervor that I felt welling up inside myself. We cast along ahead of the group, scouting, bounding, exploring. It was great to have somebody who wanted to go even faster than I, because I was worried that I would be the hurried one on the trip. At one point Carly said that one could only miss the beauty of nature going so fast, but there’s something to it, just like there’s something to wharfing down a well drooled-over meal in seconds. You may not feel the flavor as long, meditate on it as much, but there is something to it, and the only way to see it is to do it. G
o full throttle--actually, thats a bad metaphor, because it implies pushing. This was nothing but releasing, allowing, freeing the warrior spirit inside. There was such a biting-at-the-bit at hand. Reed would have sprinted the twenty miles if I had let him. But keeping that in check was almost a better way to honor it than heeding it completely.The first campsite was a score. I remember deciding if we should camp at the first mediocre spot, and choosing to go just a little further. Jessie was behind me, sunset-bathed trees in front; we sank into a stand of brush on a steep hill, and he said there was no way that this was getting better than the spot before. I said that there was no telling what will come arou
nd the next bend or on the crest of the next hill. Looking skyward, I beheld an eagle. Well, It may have been a vulture, or a crow, but for all intensive purposes, it was a giant Himalayan eagle, soaking up the setting sun. I consciously hailed the bird, asking where a good place to sleep was. He answered the obvious and simple question with an ambivalent flap of his wings. It felt like my question had been answered with a “duh” or something. Looking down again, I saw our spot. I had asked, and it was given. Every face creeping into camp accumulated another smirk of accomplishment and decadence. We were lucky. A view, a glow, flat parts, a fire circle, all in the nick of time.Laying in my hammock looking at the full-enough moon and the more-than-usual-but-not-enough stars, Carly and I squoze each other as we hadn’t in months. Legitimately tired, needing warmth, groping at a highly bundled form. There was an ambiance to the campsite, a palpable energy. More than the glow of the firelight and the moon. It was us, the laughter hovering in the evening air, the realization of our freedom. The evening to us, nowhere to go. Little itinerate satellites lighting towards poops-in-the-dark, marshmallow bags, journals, cameras, most of all, warmth!
Waking up to the sunrise on the other side of the ridge was equally, and totally obversely beautiful. A beginning again, but this time a continuation. Laughing about all our odd dreams, (often elicited by a change of place) we gulped down some fast-cooling java and chocolate, and pushed on. The campers liked having me hike point, so I kept on leading. I would have nothing but path in front of me for the rest of the trip. Path in front, and Earth sign behind. He was earth sign, I was Lupine, named for my wolf-like exploits that I recalled on our journey.
Once upon a time, I liked to bound through the Guilford woods barefoot, hunching low, pulling my feet in close to hop over brambles while ducking under the lowest branches. I was the horizon. Looking down I realized that I was on a deer path, complete with fresh hoof prints, and then looking up I was aghast yet somehow drooling to realize that the deer were right in front of me--and fleeing me! I had somehow called upon my very predatory instincts and was literally on their tails before my mind caught up and reminded me: what would i do if I caught them?...So I was Lupine.
Earth Sign and I bequeathed the Wizened staph of Forgotten Callings to the trail herself, and future passers by. There was a definite middle earth feeling as we kept slipping into roles: “Beware the Uwharrie, who dwell in this place. They know we are here, though it may be days before they make their presence known. If you are unfortunate enough to be grazed by one of their arrows, fear not, for if we can find a rare purple flower within the hour we shall counter their poison and you shall live...”
It always surprises me how quickly the human legs move us along. One moment I’m looking at a mountain and the next im looking down from that point. As I wrote in an earlier journal, hiking alters time and space. I feel larger while hiking. My presence covered ten miles yesterday. My reciprocal being was implanted upon and imbued with every step and every smell and every breath of the trail. I grew by necessity. Eating a hill like the super-steep one we devoured that day made my blood and chi and reality flow. I was really really there! And the peace I felt when finally at the top was unequaled. The only thing I could think to do once that hill was out of me, and in me was to make art. I balanced rocks in impossible ways, took pictures of them, saw divinity in every unique form of warped root. Finally pushing through the last four and a half miles to Eric, who had been more-than-patiently waiting for us, we desperately needed to make camp.
The spot was practically the opposite of the first, being at the bottom of a valley, with cloud cover. But it was great. Lauren and I started to make a fire together, and I joked about how she had beginners luck, since this was still the second fire the had ever made, the first occurring the night before. But I was right. There was something very special about building that fire for her. Perhaps the fire demons felt like she needed to see just how perfectly a teepee fire design could work; maybe my experience only amounted to something when it serves another; maybe I was showing off by being especially careful. Anyway, It worked better than I had ever seen, just as I had talked it up to her, one tiny ember growing within a minute into a roaring blaze. The fire flew up the center of the teepee, forming a rocket engine pointed skywards, hovering above the ground. It needed to be rooted to earth, or it would simply take off! But rooted it was, and marshmallows followed, to ease the return of sweep’s long day.
Later, hearing Jim’s talk, I naturally compared aspects of his experience with my own. Where would I be in the next two years? With Carly while she goes to grad school? somewhere else? Would I be happy not following a career path like her? I had talked to Jim thoroughly at lunch about all kinds of things I had tried in the last few years, from a run in with a cult, to woofing, to roughing it in Peru. We laughed together as we duct taped our sorry feet across the creek from the summer sausage-devouring group. He is a good listener, and a good speaker. Hearing his path made me feel better. Just, in general.
The return day was great. It was kind of anticlimactic, but still great. I pushed myself up the last hill I could, finishing my roll of film, and feeling my mind more empty than I have in a long time. There was just me there. The experience alone. Upon arriving back at Guilco, Carly and I drove away, and rolled the windows down, without even thinking about it. We had changed. It was chilly. But everything is relative. Of course the windows were down. It was sunny; it smelled good. And it was not really cold. Not like we had experienced in the previous days. We felt hardened, rough, like a pomace stone that can only be produced in areas once explosive like Uwahriee. 
All in all, I had a great time. just being in a tent, or sweating at the top of a hill, or hearing people talk and joke for the sake of keeping themselves going. These are gems in my experience of life. And to have all that take place in the context of a senior-level college class is right on. I feel reminded of what is important to me. Being in touch with my body, with The Body of the Earth. Being Real.
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