Rambling Josh

A handful of times over the past few years I’ve had to drag my aging body in to be inspected by various medical professionals for the evaluation and treatment of various minor medical issues. Garden variety pre-elderly type issues that tend to crop up when something was used to much when it was new. So it begins. So it goes.

Though each of the issues varied, one thought came to mind each and every time I encountered one of the various medical professionals, “How old are you?” It seemed as though all of my appointments over the past few years happened to fall on “Bring Your Kid to Work Day”, but the parents were nowhere to be found.

Don’t get me wrong, kids have been doing a wonderful job running movie theaters and bussing tables for years, but hospitals? “Sonny, I have complete faith in your ability to slide that straw into my 32oz Orange Fanta, but kindly stop waggling that colonoscope around and go fetch the doctor.”

I’m more comfortable with the grizzled vet, someone that has seen it all and won’t be traumatized by the sight of anything I need seen. The issue seems to be that when one reaches the grizzled age as a patient, the grizzled vets of the medical world have hung up their stethoscopes and are doing all they can to unsee all that they’ve seen.

“Who’s your doctor?” Until about 5-years ago I proudly answered that question with, “I don’t have one.” I have one now. I have a doctor. He’s a nice young man. We have a pleasant conversation every October when my annual physical rolls around. Excuse me, I misspoke, they are called “well checks” nowadays. I suppose going in for a “well check” does sound a bit more pleasant than going in for a “physical”.

I went into my first well check with my pleasant young doctor expecting the same protocol I had experienced in the past with sports physicals. The protocol that involved nudity on my behalf and poking and prodding on the doctor’s behalf. Five years of well checks, and my doctor, that pleasant young man, has never once had me remove a stitch of clothing.

Years ago, it was expected that if you were going to the doctor for most anything, your naked butt was going to be wrinkling that odd butcher paper they roll out to shield the exam table from your wretched body stuff.

Earache…naked. Ingrown eyebrow hair…naked. Clubfoot…naked. Sprained thumb…naked.

Part of me is quite all right with having a pleasant fully clothed conversation every October, but another part of me is still in the old school “physical” mindset and feels like I’m being cheated. Would it stifle the pleasant conversation if I were to ask the pleasant young doctor if he’d like me to get naked? Perhaps he’s just too polite to ask?

The kids are all right, and I am quite pleased with the highly skilled and knowledgeable medical care they are able to provide me as I slide towards ABR…Advancing Bodily Ricketiness.

Be well my friends.

Between June 29th and July 21st, I spent a fair bit of time galivanting around various parts of Italy and France, before zeroing in on Paris specifically from July 26th to August 11th. Galivanting in mind and spirit anyway, the body was reclined comfortably in our living room.

I know the Tour de France isn’t everyone’s goblet of wine, but I took a shine to it about 20-years ago when I got into cycling. I got into cycling because while I was training for my one and only marathon, which still ranks near the top of my “Stupidest Things I’ve Ever Done” list, which is saying a lot, as I’ve done a lot of stupid things, I noticed that everyone I met on bikes seemed to be enjoying themselves much more than I was.

Perched regally upon two wheels, they carried a look of glee upon their faces, while I, perched upon two hot, sweaty, and sore feet, carried a faint hope that a distracted driver, in the midst of an “LOL” text, would clip me with a side mirror and put me out of my misery. So, getting a bike became my motivation for seeing that silly marathon lark through to its miserable conclusion. So it goes.

When you’ve peddled over hill and dale (sorry Dale), you can sort of relate to what the cyclists in the Tour de France are going through. When you’ve felt the burn in your legs and lungs on a steep uphill, you can sort of relate to how the legs and lungs of these professional cyclist feel in the Alps. Sort of…but not really.

They race 100 or so miles a day for 20 or so days, so my 8 or so mile ride to get a scoop or so of maple-bacon ice cream, even with the brain freeze that ensued, may not illicit the same degree of physical duress.

Shortly after the Tour de France concluded, and the brain freeze subsided, the 33rd Olympiad commenced, and athletes from around the globe took center stage in our living room. Night after night, I would find myself moved to tears by the stories, the triumphs, and the failures of people that have dedicated large portions of their lives to the sports that have moved them to strive for “Citius, Altius, Fortius”.

Some were the fastest, some went the highest, some were the strongest. Some. Most were not. Some knew without a doubt going into the games that they had zero chance of going home with an Olympic medal, but they went anyway. They went to show others like them, from countries like theirs, what is possible. They went to give people that may feel hopeless, some hope.

As Desmond Tutu, the South African Anglican bishop and theologian, once said, “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” A light that doesn’t require a gold medal to reflect it.

If you, like me, have found yourself suffering from the withdrawals associated with an Olympic hangover and lusting for more inspiring stories of the expanses of the human spirit, you may want to check out the documentary, “Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa”.

It’ll scratch that itch.

And if you’ve ever had to walk to school during a North Dakota winter, your frozen fingers numbly clutching your prized Trapper Keeper, you can sort of relate to what it was like for her to summit Mount Everest a record 10 times…Sort of.

As has been the case for the past 25-years, my July 17th birthday conveniently occurred one day after my sons July 16th birthday. Every single year the 17th of July miraculously follows the 16th…numbers are so mystical.

This year my wife, one of those odd people that understands the seemingly indecipherable language that numbers speak, informed me that Jackson and I were having palindrome birthdays this year. A palindrome, as the trusty dictionary explains, is “a word, phrase, or sequence that reads the same backwards as forward.” Wow!

As the internet is prone to do, it provided me with a laundry list of examples, some interesting…some odd:

-Civic

-Mom

-Peep

-Ma is a nun, as I am.

-We panic in a pew.

-Yo, Banana Boy!

-Step on no pets.

So, until July 16th of next year, “2552” will be Jackson and my personal numerical palindrome for the ages…our ages anyway. Since I am so fond of this palindrome concept, and have so enjoyed squeezing the word “palindrome” into quasi-polite conversation, I have decided that after my birthday next year, I am going to willingly pause my birthdays until the boy turns 35. I tried to use math to figure out if Jackson and I had anymore palindrome years in our future, but seeing how math always…always…always…refuses to cooperate with me, I decided that this birthday pause was a simpler solution.

Simpler, and best for all involved. Specifically, me. I just need a short break from all this getting old stuff. For the past several years I have lovingly mocked my wife for her need to rely upon reading glasses to perform such tasks as…well…reading. Before these eye-crutches became a ubiquitous fixture upon her lovely face, in a fit of frustration, she would hand me something and dejectedly ask, “What’s this say?”

I, feeling like a balding Superman in tattered tights, with a casual glance, would effortlessly translate the blurred images she was trying to decipher. All while deftly opening the jar of Miracle Whip that was thwarting her attempt at a proper BLT. Actually, a “proper BLT” would be lightly slathered with Hellman’s Mayonnaise, but as a mixed mayo marriage, we have learned to accept one another’s poor taste in condiments and have made space for both in the refrigerator.

Sometime in the past year, either my arms got too short, or my vision got too long. I can still twist the top off of Miracle Whip jars when duty calls, but my casual deciphering glance has become labored, squinty…not very super.

For so long I assumed, with great hubris, that my vision was different, that my eyes were special. I imagined traipsing over the hill towards the golden years below, smugly waving off the assistance of eye-crutches as I pompously recited the labels of pill bottles to the hordes of blurry-eyed mortals that shuffled the halls of my wing of the nursing home…the one my children promised not to put me in.

We only have access to knowing whatever it is we know at any given time. Now, at the backside of a 2552 palindrome, time has passed, and I know different. So it goes.

The backside. Some of it stinks.

On July 4th, as the sun began to descend, and various iterations of rockets red glare and bombs bursting in air ascended into the evening sky, a friend of mine said, “I’ll be thankful if I wake up tomorrow morning with the same number of fingers I woke up with this morning.”

I enjoy woodworking. The process of turning a pile of wood into something of need or want is quite satisfying. A bookshelf, a cabin, a chair…things that start as a mere image in your head and take shape to sometimes resemble that image. Sometimes…other times we find ourselves in a state of pensive contemplation, pondering the overestimation of our carpentry skills in front of a backyard fire as the wood from a failed project crackles in agreement. So it goes.

As Samuel Becket wrote in Waiting for Godot, “Ever tried? Ever Failed? No Matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

The table saw that I turn loose on the majority of the projects I attempt is older than me. It harkens from a time of yore when safety was the responsibility of the operator not the manufacturer. A time before blade guards, anti-kickback pawls…a time when eye-protection was called “squinting”. Leering protection? Deer plugs? What? You’ll have to speak up.

As I said, I enjoy woodworking, but I really enjoy playing the guitar, and the guitar is an instrument that is most efficiently and effectively played with a full set of functioning fingers. Sure, it can be played with less. I once saw a fellow with no arms deftly play an acoustic guitar with his feet, but I prefer to avoid such if at all possible. My toes are appalling.

You may ask, “If your precious fingers are so important to you why don’t you purchase a table saw that was manufactured in the 21st century, one that has more safety features than you can shake a severed finger at?” That is a fair and reasonable question, and I believe I have a fair and quasi-reasonable response.

Firstly, the relic I rely on has character and a sorted past. Two endearing factors for most anything. It resided for the majority of its life at my grandparent’s farm, where it was called into service often by my Uncle Tim (a real carpenter), once by my Grandpa Ardell (a farmer/comedian), and occasionally by myself (a wee lad with nary a bit of adult supervision). During that time, the table saw that now resides in my garage, bit two of the three folks previously mentioned.

Grandpa Ardell, whom I should mention, only had full use of one arm from birth, twisted the doorknob to leave the shop where the table saw resided, with that one good arm, with half as much thumb as he had used to twist the doorknob when he entered. As for me, I was sent scurrying out that same door, up to the farmhouse to have Grandma Rose clear away what seemed like a lot of blood, to a 10-year-old, and fully assess the state of one of my favorite index fingers. As I stood over the kitchen sink, legs wobbling, I fielded questions from my favorite attending physician about why I was using the table saw, and nodding in hardy agreement that, “I should be more careful.”

Merely a flesh wound. A warning shot across the bow.

Lastly, as part of my quasi-reasonable reason for not upgrading to a less malicious table saw, I would like to call upon the Peltzman Effect. As stated in the Journal of Political Economy in 1975, “The Peltzman Effect was first introduced by economist Sam Peltzman in his study titled “The Effects of Automobile Safety Regulation”, where he theorized that people are more likely to engage in risky behavior when security measures have been mandated.” I rest my case.

Perhaps that table saw is a wise oracle, a misunderstood guru, not so gently assisting me to find moments of undivided attention in divided times, times where the middle-finger seems to be waggling about with sneering and jeering impunity. Most often a virtual middle-finger, or its equivalent, being safely waggled from afar by someone who would most likely never waggle one in a fellow human’s actual face. Have you heard of the Peltzman Effect?

Each and every time I flip the switch on that table saw, just before I push a piece of wood into those hungry unguarded whirling teeth, I think of my Grandpa’s thumb, the shot across my bow, my Grandma’s ever present plea to “be more careful”, and my guitar, and I am instantaneously fully focused on the task at hand and the fingers attached to those hands.

Thus far, knock on wood, self-congratulatory high-fives have managed to prevail.

Welcome to July. Where June went, I can’t say for sure. It was here one minute, I turned around to ascertain whether or not my bikini line was appropriately manicured for the summer season, and POOF…through a cloud of sparkler smoke, July came prancing in to scribble its story in the air.

Of course, in northwest North Dakota, you have to bide your time until the far side of midnight arrives to usher in sufficient darkness to do any sky scribbling with a sparkler. An extended daylight that we are all well aware will begin to pull back its reach soon enough, so we “make hay while the sun shines.”

I recently spent a few days of that here-and-gone June in Lignite “making hay” with family. Cheered on Avie, my niece, at her t-ball game in Bowbells, cheered some more for Otto and Perry, my nephews, at their baseball games in Stanley and Crosby, lent out my relatively strong back and weak mind to help my sister move furnishings of various shapes and weights, and enjoyed hanging out with mom and dad.

After the baseball games in Crosby concluded, Perry asked his mom, to ask me if “Old Man Joshy Washy would come to their house and play?” When an 8-year-old deems you worthy of entry into their world, you proudly accept and enter wholeheartedly, because 8-year-olds become 25-year-olds as fast as June becomes July. So it goes.

As I played baseball with Otto and Perry, I drifted in and out of the present as little things here and there transported me back to when my son wasn’t about to turn 25. It was one of those long summer nights that you wish could hold the daylight a bit longer, a night where you want nothing more than to “steal a couple more minutes from a darn good day”, as Larry Fleet sang in his song Working Man.

Perry stood poised with his bat, awaiting my pitch, and as the light faded, I heard our outfielder, my brother Gabe, say, “End on a good one.” If you’ve spent any time around baseball, that phrase is something you hear quite often during batting practice. “End on a good one”, it focuses your attention a bit more, it draws you in tighter to the present. “End on a good one”…we should all be so fortunate.

I hope your July moves slower than June, and that you have ample opportunities to make enough hay to get you through the winter or any long dark nights you find yourself in.

As stated on the Robert Pirsig Association website, “April 15th, 2024 marked the 50th anniversary of the publication of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig. Part novel, part travelogue and part philosophical treatise, the book and its reclusive author shot to overnight meteoric success in 1974. Generations of avid fans have been deeply influenced by the book’s quest for quality and reminder that “the place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands.”

To mark the occasion of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’s 50th anniversary, I am facilitating a Chautauqua to discuss the book and the author at the Rapid City Public Library from 12:00-1:00PM on Saturday August 3rd, 2024. You are all cordially invited to attend and partake in the Chautauqua.

I’ll pause a moment while you excitedly scramble to circle and star the date on your calendar…

What is a Chautauqua? My pals, Merriam-Webster, define Chautauqua as, “Traveling shows and local assemblies that flourished in the U.S. in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, that provided popular education combined with entertainment in the form of lectures, concerts, and plays.”

Basically, a lyceum. You remember those don’t you? There was nothing better than the announcement of a lyceum during my tenure of a less than studious student at Burke Central. In my aged mind and dusty memory, Mabel Falck’s angelica voice, would politely interrupt whatever the teachers were trying to teach us unteachable knuckleheads via the brown wooden speaker that hung high upon the wall in each of the classrooms with, “Please proceed to the gymnasium for the lyceum.”

Mabel would never use the word “gym” in an official announcement that was projected through brown wooden speakers that hung high upon the wall in each and every classroom. Why did we always look at the brown wooden speaker when a voice made its way through it? Can we hear and comprehend a brown wooden speaker better when we look at it? Many such mysteries pervade and persist.

One distinct memory I have of a lyceum, was when a NASA astronaut graced the wooden floor of the Burke Central Gymnasium when I was in the 3rd grade. The astronaut had a space suit with him that had been used in actual space. Perhaps gymnasium space? He wouldn’t have been lying. Space is space I suppose.

The astronaut asked Sandy Larson, my 3rd grade teacher, “If you could send any of your students to space, who would you send?” As the hands of all the kids completely enamored with all things outer space (you remember them) shot up excitedly, Mrs. Larson, without pause, locked her gaze on me, and said, “Josh” to the astronaut. I assume Mrs. Larson had more than the space in the gymnasium in mind.

So, I got to wear a space suit. It was peaceful in the inner space of that bubble helmet. The sound of my breathing amplified a bit, and the astronauts voice, carrying on about outer space and such, muted some, as I stood, my wee 3rd grade frame wobbling a bit under the weight of the space suit and the gravity of the gymnasium space.

A pivotal portion of the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is when the author completely engrosses himself in the contemplation and exploration of “Quality”. What it is? How to recognize it? How to teach it? Questions that eventually drive him insane, or, at the very least, exacerbate the authors schizophrenia to a degree that necessitates his institutionalization and the administration of electrical shock treatment. True story.

A good read that has given me much to mull over through the years, as I drift through this time and this space. A time and space sometime adorned with brown wooden speakers that forever contain, and sometimes project, the voices of memories from another time and another space. So it goes.

As Pirsig wrote, “Sometimes it’s a little better to travel than to arrive.” Enjoy your travels and whatever time and space you find yourself occupying this summer.

Happy June to you. I was thinking the other day that it’s been a long time since I’ve seen someone sporting a hickey on their neck. Have “love bites”, as they are referred to in Britain, gone out of vogue with teenagers? Nothing against the Brits, but I prefer the word hickey. What do teenagers know about love? Maybe that it bites?

It bites, it gnashes, and it grinds your plaque-free teenage heart, into raw little bits and shards of has been and never will be. Love bites…indeed.

A hickey, as defined by Merriam-Webster (both of whom I doubt ever gave or received such) is “a temporary red mark or bruise on the skin, such as one produced by biting and sucking” or a “Gadget” a dingus…a doodad…a thingamabob…a thingamajig…a whatchamacallit…a doohickey.

Now the gang at Funk & Wagnall, they seem like a hickey crew. Not a neck safe around that bunch of hooligans.

As the father of a daughter, I suppose I’d rather she came home with an arm load of dingus’s than a carotid artery battered and disfigured with “a temporary red mark” from some teenage degenerate. Some young punk with a full head of hair that can pull on knee-high tube socks without farting and gasping.

“Farting & Gasping”, quite a band name. Put that on the marquee and watch the people line up in droves. I’m of the belief that if the Beatles had opted for Farting & Gasping, they wouldn’t have been such a flash in the pan.

Unpopular opinion…I never really cared much for the Beatles. I’m more of a John Prine kind of guy. To each their own. As it should be.

When I was teenage degenerate with a full head of hair, a young punk that could pull on his orange and black BCHS Panther knee-high tube socks with nary a fart nor a gasp, hickeys seemed to be quite prevalent. As did their incestuous cousin, pinch hickeys, which generated the same insinuations, but were harder to explain.

At Burke Central High School, in US History class, circa 1990, Mr. Leonard Savelkoul likened the giving of a hickey to “some Rufus urinating on a tree to mark his territory.” What does an “old man” in polyester pants, who most likely farts and gasps when he laces up his wingtips, know about the world of young people with heads full of hair?

Rufus. Rufus was young. Rufus was insecure. Rufus was jealous. Rufus had a brain that couldn’t think straight under the weight of that luxurious mullet. Rufus was in love. A love, like a temporary red mark fading away under the cover of a turtleneck, a scarf, or God forbid, an ascot. Rufus knows its there. That’s about all he knows. So it goes.

Hickeys, love, dingus’s, tube socks, urinating on a tree, farting and gasping? What’s it all mean? Viktor Frankl always said that the question, “what’s the meaning of life” was too big of a question for any of us to answer. Alternatively, he believed that finding meaning in the moments was more surmountable of a quest to fathom.

Enjoy your moments. Hickeys are temporary…like a full head of hair.

I hope you all had a lovely Mother’s Day, or at the very least, a mildly tolerable Sunday. Mildly tolerable doesn’t seem to be too much to ask of a day above ground. Could’ve been worse…could’ve been better. As Shane MacGowan sang in Fairytale of New York, “I could’ve been someone” to which Kirsty MacColl responds, “Well so could anyone.” So it goes.

Keeping with the spirit of Mother’s Day, Shane once sang that song with his mother as part of televised Christmas special on Ireland’s “The Late Late Show”. It’s about as good as one might imagine a mother/son duet to be, when the mother is not a singer, and the son has just spilt a bottle or two of Irish whiskey on his liver.

It occurred 24-years ago, but thanks to YouTube, we can enjoy it for the eternity of our being, or until the AI overlords avert our slack-jawed gaze elsewhere. Whichever comes first.

If the endorsements are lucrative enough, and it’s something the public demands, my mom and I will recreate the whole mess some night at The 109 Club. Those walls have managed to contain worse…so I’ve been told.

About once a month I play guitar and sing old country songs for the residents of Crest View Nursing Home. When your guitar playing is suspect and your voice waivers a bit north and south of perfect pitch, nursing homes are a good place to subject others to your hobby. They’re not going anywhere, and if they do, they’re not going anywhere very fast.

I’ve been visiting Crest View for about 2-years now, and the Director told me that in that time, there has been a dramatic uptick in DNRs requested by the residence. Coincidence? Whatever I can do to ease the suffering.

The residents like Johnny Cash, so I’ve learned a few of his songs to “perform” for them, and despite that, they still like Johnny Cash. The other day I was giving “Five-Feet High and Rising” a shot, and when I got done killing it, one of the residents said, “I remember hearing that sitting by the radio with my parents when I was about 5-years old.”

Music is powerful, even mediocre music. A simple song transported her back 75-years. For a moment she was ushered into the presence of her mom and dad, into the presence of a time a lifetime ago.

Another resident, wheeled in, head slumped, a mind seemingly elsewhere from her immobile body, sits expressionless. This is how I knew her for about a year, and then one day a nurse said, “She used to travel around with a show kind of like Hee-Haw, and her and her sister were the main singers.”

The nurse leaned in close to her and said, “Would you like to sing a song?” Suddenly there was life in her eyes, her chin lifted from her chest, and she sang “Butterflies” in its entirety, just as she had sung it with her sister 70-years ago. At the conclusion of the song, she yodeled a bit, and then went away again. She was there, if only for a while, if only for a song.

This life our mothers gave us is fleeting, enjoy every song.

What is the purpose of car alarms? There is a pickup on campus that seems to be of the sensitive sort, as a wisp of the slightest breeze or the broken, bumpy wind of a moderately impressive fart, seems to set it wailing. On the high plains in the pan handle of Nebraska there is no shortage of wisps of slight breezes, and on a college campus full of healthy bowelled youngsters fueled with questionable cafeteria food there is no shortage of moderately impressive farts.

Most any hour of most any day…HONK…HONK…HONK…HONK…Why? I would hazard a guess that anyone, other than the owner of the sensitive pickup, would be more than happy to be an accomplice to grand theft just to make the HONK…HONK…HONK…HONK…proceed anywhere out of earshot.

As I am firmly atop my noise police soapbox, the HONK…HONK that signifies that a car has been successfully locked via the key fob, seems an unnecessary addition of noise to a universe nary in need of additional noise. How can one fully immerse themselves in the refreshing wisps of breezes, and the always humorous, broken, bumpy wind.

Other than irritating to crotchety cranks with a penchant for the sweet silence of solitude, what is the harm of such auditory intrusions? Well, I’ll tell you! Hold onto your wig, these findings will be so surprisingly terrifying and troubling that your skyward dashing eyebrows may very well knock it askew.

National Geographic recently reported that, “Studies have shown that loud noises can cause caterpillars' dorsal vessels (the insect equivalent of a heart) to beat faster.” THE HUMANITY! The next time you hear a HONK…HONK, think of the poor caterpillars and the accelerated pitter-patter of their wee little hearts.

Think of their stubby appendages, too short to reach and provide a sound dampening respite to their fuzzy ears, leaving them completely at the mercy of the HONK…HONK.

Curious, I Googled, “Do caterpillars have ears?” and it turns out that they have “sound-receiving hairs on their bodies” rather than ears. Hmm? I then Googled, “If caterpillars had ears would their appendages be of sufficient length to reach them and provide a sound dampening respite in the event of a HONK…HONK?”

It seems that this question ascended to an intellectual level beyond that which smarty-pants Google has yet to summit. In a lame and mildly pathetic attempt to save face, Google offered, “According to a new study, some plants can hear caterpillars eating leaves and respond by emitting caterpillar-repelling chemicals.”

In case you are curious, plants don’t have ears. So Google says. Yes…yes…except for corn. Good one.

The National Geographic report didn’t indicate why, or if, a caterpillar is harmed in anyway by the accelerated prancing and lub-dubbing of their little hearts. Perhaps the reader was to assume that such was bad? Perhaps people that sit around listening to caterpillars' hearts with tiny little stethoscopes, while they intermittently blast Metallica through tiny little headphones, just want their mothers to be proud of them for getting their findings published in National Geographic?

“What does your son do?”

“He produces broken, bumpy wind.” So it goes.

A bit of Spring weather found the Black Hills this weekend, prompting many a folk to get out and about in the various manner folks like to get out and about. Hikers, bikers (pedal and the vroom-vroom kind), runners, ATVers, and topless Jeeps (not topless Jeepers) were among the hoards heading for the hills.

It’s nice to see people out enjoying all that the Black Hills has to offer, but it would be even nicer if they’d stay away from my favorite hiking spot. As Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.”

There’s a lovely trail system that is only about a 10-minute drive from our house, so rather than walk our dog around the neighborhood tethered to a leash, I prefer to get out into the hills where we can both be untethered.

The majority of the time Wilson and I have the whole area to ourselves, but when I rolled into the trailhead this weekend there were about seven cars scattered about the parking area. There are several different routes one can take from the trailhead, so the chances of running into someone is still fairly remote.

In instances like this, where I know there are several hikers out on the trails, I like to increase the odds of not running into anyone and wander about off-trail. Hiking on a trail is fine and dandy, but I’ve found that I prefer picking a general direction and wandering through the forest in that general direction until a different direction of interest presents itself.

Often, when I hike on a trail, I find that my gaze will inadvertently fixate on the trail, like a beast of burden, head slowly lolling from side-to-side, the miles sliding by largely unnoticed. Whereas traversing hill and dale off-trail, in a largely unspecified direction of my choosing, keeps my mind alert and much more engaged in the moment.

I suppose that whenever personal choice is a part of the equation or actively interjected into a situation, we human types will become more engaged in whatever it is we have been allowed the autonomy to do. When we go off-trail we get to see what we want to see, not what the well-meaning folks that established the trail think we should see. So it goes.

On a recent off-trail stroll, I was reminded of something the writer, Phillip Connors said, “The greatest gift of life on the mountain is time. Time to think or not think, read or not read, scribble or not scribble, to sleep and cook and walk in the woods, to sit and stare at the shapes of the hills. I produce nothing but words; I consume nothing but food, a little propane, a little firewood. By being utterly useless in the calculations of the culture at large I become useful, at last, to myself.”

A rambling body, a roaming mind, unguided and untethered from convention. Where might you find yourself?