Back at long last from Up North, 8 days spent alone in an isolated cabin getting to know myself. A complex personality, consisting of contradictory aspirations and self - identifications, overlooked by the semi-omnipotent Overseer who notes it all down with fascination and mild amusement. The Overseer is the voice in most of my books, and it is a little odd to find that this higher-level witness is also witness to my life, as if I were the novel. This could be the Russian egg regression where each egg contains another and another, with the idea of a reflection to infinity...
But that is not what this entry is about. Instead, it is a reflection about the Great North:
On arrival, it was 92 degrees and so humid that one would sweat just thinking about moving. In the teeny little cabin there is no electricity, and so no AC - one has the joy of re-connecting with the environment as it actually is, 24 hours a day. That includes not only the heat, but the bugs. In the heat, the sand flies and deer flies come out by the droves, relieved by the mosquitoes and no-see-ums at night. One nice thing the cabin has is a large porch, almost as big as the inside, but there was no porch- sitting because of the bugs, except on the third day, when a tremendous thunderstorm rolled through. Then I sprayed down with DEET and sat before a strong and much cooler wind which brought in thunder and lightening and three inches of rain. Next night it dropped to 40 degrees and the following day reached only 60. Two days later it was 86 again, and more storms, then a cool mist the next day and highs again in the 60's.
Down on Lake Superior, the water ran warm at first - but the sand flied were so bad that few of the people at the local campsite dared come down to the beach. I took a long walk, swatting and stepping with short, quick steps to keep off the flies. The water was as good for swimming as cold Lake Superior gets, and I spent as much time in as out, getting away from the flies. Once back to the car, I drove to the water supply of the camp ground (as they have a solar-powered pump and I have a hand-powered pump at the cabin - I was being lazy) and near the end of filling my bucket, another guy stood behind me with his bucket. I hadn't even noticed that I was swatting and stamping my legs constantly, but he did and said, "how's the flies treatin' ya? Fuckin' bastards!" We both hoped the coming cold front would stop them. He had on his snow-mobile outfit, long Carhartt overalls, pants made of tough canvass. To keep off the bugs, even if he sweat to death.
The ups and downs continued, both bugs and weather changing, mutating, annoying (challenging!) in a different way every day. There were many moments of beauty - like when an evening rain began as the sun set behind the clouds, leaving an orange glow across a shadowed forest - and many more of discomfort. I thought about being a deer in this environment - the constant bugs, as well as the predation of wolf, coyote and humans. And then, in the winter, there's the fantastically deep snow.
Tough, tough, beautiful but tough. It has occurred to me that we forget this, we who live in comfortable homes and tamed environments. It must be that this has changed us, in ways that seem obvious. Discomfort, hardship, endurance, all these seem to us as failures of the social system rather than the work of nature - and in fact, we have turned them into works of humans. But, in a way not connected to distribution of wealth and so on, we do so, I think, at our peril. By avoiding the discomforts of nature, we avoid the discomforts that were meant to be for life. That is, we were built for this and this for us, a feedback system that has at its core the essential symbol of our reason for being. We forget too easily now that we are of a piece, the cosmos and ourselves, all writ large to small and small to large as The Word, one great, transparent meaning that is so close to us that we cannot read it. But it is there in our skin and in the weather and in the bugs and the bites and in the stars. It is there outside, waiting to be understood in one great, deep breathe that we will someday take. But I think that breathe has to BE outside, to include it all. It is why in the Essays section there is often a hint, or more, of darkness or disaster, because that is part of what it is. Just like heat and storms and bugs. FK
But that is not what this entry is about. Instead, it is a reflection about the Great North:
On arrival, it was 92 degrees and so humid that one would sweat just thinking about moving. In the teeny little cabin there is no electricity, and so no AC - one has the joy of re-connecting with the environment as it actually is, 24 hours a day. That includes not only the heat, but the bugs. In the heat, the sand flies and deer flies come out by the droves, relieved by the mosquitoes and no-see-ums at night. One nice thing the cabin has is a large porch, almost as big as the inside, but there was no porch- sitting because of the bugs, except on the third day, when a tremendous thunderstorm rolled through. Then I sprayed down with DEET and sat before a strong and much cooler wind which brought in thunder and lightening and three inches of rain. Next night it dropped to 40 degrees and the following day reached only 60. Two days later it was 86 again, and more storms, then a cool mist the next day and highs again in the 60's.
Down on Lake Superior, the water ran warm at first - but the sand flied were so bad that few of the people at the local campsite dared come down to the beach. I took a long walk, swatting and stepping with short, quick steps to keep off the flies. The water was as good for swimming as cold Lake Superior gets, and I spent as much time in as out, getting away from the flies. Once back to the car, I drove to the water supply of the camp ground (as they have a solar-powered pump and I have a hand-powered pump at the cabin - I was being lazy) and near the end of filling my bucket, another guy stood behind me with his bucket. I hadn't even noticed that I was swatting and stamping my legs constantly, but he did and said, "how's the flies treatin' ya? Fuckin' bastards!" We both hoped the coming cold front would stop them. He had on his snow-mobile outfit, long Carhartt overalls, pants made of tough canvass. To keep off the bugs, even if he sweat to death.
The ups and downs continued, both bugs and weather changing, mutating, annoying (challenging!) in a different way every day. There were many moments of beauty - like when an evening rain began as the sun set behind the clouds, leaving an orange glow across a shadowed forest - and many more of discomfort. I thought about being a deer in this environment - the constant bugs, as well as the predation of wolf, coyote and humans. And then, in the winter, there's the fantastically deep snow.
Tough, tough, beautiful but tough. It has occurred to me that we forget this, we who live in comfortable homes and tamed environments. It must be that this has changed us, in ways that seem obvious. Discomfort, hardship, endurance, all these seem to us as failures of the social system rather than the work of nature - and in fact, we have turned them into works of humans. But, in a way not connected to distribution of wealth and so on, we do so, I think, at our peril. By avoiding the discomforts of nature, we avoid the discomforts that were meant to be for life. That is, we were built for this and this for us, a feedback system that has at its core the essential symbol of our reason for being. We forget too easily now that we are of a piece, the cosmos and ourselves, all writ large to small and small to large as The Word, one great, transparent meaning that is so close to us that we cannot read it. But it is there in our skin and in the weather and in the bugs and the bites and in the stars. It is there outside, waiting to be understood in one great, deep breathe that we will someday take. But I think that breathe has to BE outside, to include it all. It is why in the Essays section there is often a hint, or more, of darkness or disaster, because that is part of what it is. Just like heat and storms and bugs. FK
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