I love rowing.

[rebeccmeister]

This morning, I went out in a double (two-person boat) with a rower who recently graduated from Stanford. It was fantastic. She's still learning the whole sculling thing, but that's only fair, considering that I've been off the water for about three months. So we're going to row again next Wednesday. Hooray!

Yesterday for some reason or another I couldn't sleep, and got to thinking about my childhood. Perhaps it all started when I was reminded of the Encephalgrammic Jujumic Enhancer, the mind-reading machine that annikusrex and I built when we were in middle school. It worked pretty well, with a bit of coaching of our subjects.

For some reason or another, last night I started thinking about my childhood ambition to grow up and live all by myself in a house in the middle of nowhere, preferably somewhere along the coast in the Pacific Northwest. I don't remember my exact rationale for this ambition--it wasn't Thoreau-ian at all (I always imagined it with electricity and plumbing and all of the conveniences of modern society). A large part of it was probably that I felt happiest in wild places, felt that such a place would provide me with space to pursue creative ideas. When I wasn't happy, that dream was my escape. Annikus always asked if she could come and visit, and I decided that yes, a small group of people could come if they wanted to stay for a short while. I guess it was my mental retreat.

Something about that changed when Zack died. When I went out to Wet Beaver Creek and found myself on the wrong trail, all by myself, all I could think of was Zack, all alone, walking around Mt. Rainier, ending up somewhere where nobody would be able to hear him shout out for help (if he was able to shout out for help; we'll never know). When I read The Art of Happiness a while ago, the part that struck me the most was the realization that it's nigh impossible to reach that Thoreau ideal of self-reliance (as I said, not what I was consciously pursuing, but with a similar end result). While Americans tout independence, we rely on other people to grow our food, make our clothing, listen to our stories. It makes me wonder--what was I after in that childhood dream? Was it just a creative space, like the Woolfian room of one's own? It may also have symbolized the periodic retreats I used to go on with my church's Yooth Grupe (take the alternate spelling in stride if you don't know its etymology); I always enjoyed the spaces they created for reflection.

I'm probably back to thinking about that ambition because I've spiraled back to the state of trying to figure out what I want to do with my life. Who knows. I obviously don't.

Comments

[jwatriss.livejournal.com]

Eh, I wouldn't swewat the whole self reliance thing too much. People all alone in the middle of nowhere have to know an awful lot just to subsist, and none of it's taught in school these days. Survival, knowing how to hunt and find food... Agriculture, blacksmithing to make tools, etc, etc. It's too hard to make it on your own.

I suppose if you knew enough to go out and hunt down enough animal food you could get by while you hunted down a seed crop, chopped down a tree with a rock to make a fire to melt iron ore (gotta find the ore, too) to make tools to kill other animals to make leather to tie more animals to plows so that you can plant the first crop, so that you have something to eat after you gather more ore to make more tools to work the wood you'd have to chop down to make a house with.

Of course, if you want to go the vegetarian route, you'd have to establish a broad enough teritory full of wild food to eat while you planted enough hemp to make the ropes to tie the animals to the wooden plows you'd have to shape with rocks. Then when winter was over, you could start growing food the next year.

I dunno. I think you should open up the coffee shop so you have a decent job while you go to school. :) Then when you need a place to be alone you can close up and have coffee.

[rebeccmeister.livejournal.com]

I'm not really concerned about the whole self-reliance thing at all.

I'm also not really sure that opening up a coffee shop is going to help matters--the whole goal of the place-in-the-middle-of-nowhere is to be able to sit outside and feel enveloped in a natural landscape. That's why I could never make it in Boston--too closed-in.

[jwatriss.livejournal.com]

Silly. The goal of the coffee shop is to enable you to leave from time to time to go spend time in the middle of nowhere.