Month: January 2023

SAD

~ aviewfromthiswilderness ~ 1 Comment

Sometimes you can sense some sort of lethargy this time of year revealing itself in blatant ways, like not wanting to go to work, not filling out some forms or editing some article, not bothering to return important calls completely out of a sense of avoidance, as if you might be able to wait long enough and all of this will pass—this stuff that brings you down, and to be honest, you’re not really sure what that stuff is. The idleness of society maybe, the constant sense of impending doom reported in all forms of media about democracy, about pandemics, about weather, about climate, about the economy, about depression and isolation. You have no reason to take any of it personally, but some people can’t let it go, and it weighs heavy, so you aim for avoidance, which unfortunately ends up a heavier burden.  

Sometimes the withdrawal is subtle. You can sense yourself not trying as hard or caring as much, like eating whatever is around instead of thinking it through, not going for a walk because you don’t want to be bothered putting on a coat or dealing with any sensory change. You’re sitting; you’re comfortable, and you’re numb. It works. 

Numb is good.

In both situations you are absolutely aware of it. Going for a walk helps. Filing out the forms, returning calls, all help by providing a sense of accomplishment and forward motion, like checking things off the to-do list, it leaves you with the hint that if you keep going there’s something worthwhile on the other side.

There’s the rub. It seems you keep reaching the other side and there’s still nothing there to lift the spirits, not this season anyway—more hostility in the east, more pessimism in our government, more variants on deck ready to step to the plate after Omicron smacks a triple into right field. So you try a little less at one task, and it spirals from there. You realize your handwashing time has dropped to about 12 seconds. It’s not depression; it’s, well, yeah, it’s depression, but not in the deeply caving sense; in the “whatever” sense.

The problem with this type of malaise is it can be debilitating to you without being scary to others if you are not suicidal. The truth is, the vast majority of people who deal with depression are not contemplating suicide and will never kill themselves, which is what most friends fear most, and when those friends learn that is not part of the equation, they feel better. But that can often make it worse since the objective is for you to feel better, not them. But that’s fair since you know what they don’t: that a different suicide exists, a slow erosion of sorts, which anonymously eats away at ambition and accomplishment, takes the edge off of energy and momentum. It’s the guy sitting at a bar nursing a beer, nowhere to go despite having a million things to do. It’s the one on the park bench watching people walk by but not noticing a single one of them; it’s the inability to concentrate, the disinterest in listening, the short responses to questions, the inability to make it through the most basic of activities. It’s writing endless emails about nothing to others in some attempt to reach out; but that just backfires. Rational thought has nothing to do with it. “Knowing” what to do is not relevant. Your mind is suspended, your thought process withdraws into some elementary state.  

On the one hand it’s situational—financial problems, relationship problems, blizzards. But it can also be chemical if you don’t have medical help. It’s addiction without restraint. It’s a combination of these, and it is unpredictable because the same thing that leaves you in bed staring at the ceiling feeling hopeless can drive you to your feet to tackle whatever it is that left you prostrate to begin with. It is a conundrum that plays handball in your brain.

The guy at the bar with the beer, the woman in the park, the man at the river watching the tide roll out, all know exactly what the problem is. But their brains are aflush with fog, their anxiety has disabled their decision-making capabilities, and their strongest assets and most celebrated talents that normally keep them going the rest of the year, are no longer applicable since they carry a sense that those traits are probably what brought them to this place to begin with. They sit and wonder what if. They sit.

“Maybe if I had just…”

“Perhaps I should have…”

“Fuck it.”

At some point it seems you stop fighting altogether and are either not afraid to hit bottom, or you hope to use that bottom to bounce back, not afraid to fail since it can’t be worse than this. It is extreme but that is part of the diagnosis—extremes, polar reactions—sometimes both in one day. Sometimes within one hour.

More often than not, the guy on the corner holding the cardboard sign didn’t “decide” to quit, didn’t give up, but “felt” a pressure that he no longer could handle or define, caught in some stream of disconnect and hopeless confusion. Sometimes the one who does, in fact, tragically go that last fatal step didn’t “decide” to do anything at all, and that is the point. Suicide is not a decision. It is one step beyond decision making. The vast majority of people who deal with depression have that in check, less so in the dead of winter, of course.

But that’s not you. Truly. And that is the problem; you really aren’t suicidal at all. And when suicide is not part of the equation, others feel that you must be “okay,” or “going through something right now.”

Yeah, winter, you’re going through a snow bank. This is the worst time of year for many people with depressive issues. Seasonal Affective Disorder is real and feels like all of the above. Nothing helps but time, but time to some people sounds like the slow drip of icicle melt. Others say you’ll get over it, it will pass, hang in there, talk to someone. Yes, all of the above, but right now–right this minute–you need help and you don’t know it.

Other people try to help so they talk about the weather or sports or anything at all with enthusiasm and a sense of caring, but it often makes it worse, only emphasizes that others get excited about the minutia while you can no longer find value in a sunrise.

And the disguises are nothing short of cunning. I’ve known people fighting depression who on the outside resonate as the very poster image of Carpe Diem. I’ve been friends with people who contemplated overdosing on Monday while making plans for Tuesday, who loved others more than the average soul but only wanted their puppy nearby at checkout time, and people who fought depressive ways by pushing adventure to the limit, and beyond. “What a lust for life!” people exclaimed. They had no idea.

It isn’t exactly depression, by the way, though it is easier to simply call it that because it certainly wears the same eyeshadow as depression. It is indifference; it is a vague inability to muster the energy to lift your spirits enough to give a damn about anything. It’s not like you woke up depressed so you decided to stay on the couch all day; you simply don’t care that you’re on the couch to begin with. Complete apathy. You’re not down about anything; you answer “fine” because you really are fine; fine’s a fine word; vague and indifferent. It has the definitive weight of a horse shoe and the value of fog. “I’m fine, really,” should never be left alone with a person who fights depression.

Ironically, for most of these afflicted people, life is amazing, every half-beat is a moment of “miracles and wonder” which is why you cannot comprehend the misuse of time. The abuse of time in so short a life, you think, is as suicidal as the abuse of substances, and that can be depressing as well.

It is the time of year when you wake at three am knowing nothing is going to work, and you’re going to lose your house and your sense of security and no answer makes sense, no way forward seems rational. Equally, the dawn can come with new ideas and hope, and if you push those moments far enough into the morning, you just might be able to make a day of it. But January has 285 days. And February is several months long. March? Well you well know that March is merely a tease. April comes and breathing is easier. May, and nothing stands in your way. But in January it is safe to say yet difficult for others to understand that May hasn’t even been invented yet. It doesn’t exist and neither will you by then.

On the outside you seem to be fine. On the inside you’re grasping the thin rope of enthusiasm with clenched fists, pretending all will be well, but your insides—much against your will—are shredding at the thought of what to do next.

You “hang in there.” You “get through it.” You suffer the trite suggestions of others who simply can’t understand what the big deal is. That’s okay though, you think. Really. There are no solutions, per se. Just more questions. And “hang in there” is at the very least an acknowledgement you really aren’t trying to dismiss your very existence; it just happens sometimes. Depressed people do not feign depression; they feign contentment.

This afternoon I went to the river where a bitter breeze is pushing down from the west. There’ll be ice tonight somewhere, and snow, but I sat reminding myself I have been there, touched that ring of undefinable despair, and I’ve moved through it, sometimes with difficulty, often with ease, always with the knowledge that I’ve had one freaking incredible life so far, and time enough left, I hope, to continue my pilgrimage well into the next mood swing. But there are moments, collisions with frustration at the gap between the way things are and the way things should be, that catch some people off guard. “You’ve been like this before,” a dear friend told me not long ago when things were less than fine. “And you’ll be like this again.” And all you can think is, “Yes I will, like right now.” But what she meant was this is you, this is part of your DNA, this is as much you as your skin. What she meant was there is no “fighting” the tigers that come at night. Better to sit and dine with them, and wait. Just wait.

And Eventually you remember that the seasons, like everything else, change. And love, despite its bad reputation, is holding the other end of that thin line you’re grasping.

Because nothing else matters but love. Nothing.

I’ve been released
And I’ve been regained
And I’ve been this way before
And I’m sure to be this way again
Once more time again

–N. Diamond

First the COVID-19 pandemic, now winter….is seasonal depression coming my way? — Dear Pandemic

The Moon and My Own Private Ghosts

~ aviewfromthiswilderness ~ 1 Comment
My moon, today

It’s not easy finding the constant in life. You think—or at least you hope—it will be people, and sometimes, but rarely, a particular person, but that doesn’t always hold to be true. People change, they come and go, they die, they just die, and while that’s not unexpected or even unusual, it still creates that ripple, that slight adjustment which a constant helps steer you through.

The constants in life mean everything.

Today while out for a long walk to clear my head, to figure out where yet again I most likely screwed up, I looked up at the moon and understood there is my constant. The moon, yes, but all of it—the water and the marsh, the woods, the sounds of the rest, and all the rest included.

From the start it was always nature. When I was still in the single digits we moved to a house in walking distance to a state park, the Great South Bay, a river, and an arboretum. Even behind the houses before the highway, which anyway ended right there, were woods and a mysterious trail leading to “the creek.”

When we moved my constant came along. We lived on a river and I could canoe clear out to the Chesapeake right from my own yard. I’d ride my bike all over the city, but in particular along the boardwalk and clear back through a new state park to a smaller but beautiful different bay. It was always nature that saved me from loneliness, from anxiety, from the awkwardness of me.

It simply never changed. At college I never felt either mature enough or hip enough to engage much with others, except if separated by a mic, but the river—that river running along New York’s Southern Tier saved me more than a few times, and my hikes up to the Heart where Thomas Merton used to sit and write in his journal, or overnighters out in the National Park not far west.

And Niagara. Canada. And my go-to safety net, Letchworth State Park.

Bring on Arizona and the Sonoran Desert, the Catalinas, the canyons with waterfalls and paths. I’d head up to Kitt Peak and watch the stars, or up Mt Lemon and watch the snow just miles from friends in shorts. I was safe there.

In many ways I never matured. Some might say my constant is immaturity then. Okay, perhaps. I admit I am more interested in hiking through woods watching birds than I am just about anything else. I moved to New England and hiked Mt Wachusett most weekends; I lived on a reservoir and walked out to the Old Stone Church and sat for hours playing my guitar hoping no one could hear, praying someone would listen.

Africa.

The trails at the small but memorable Pinchot State Park in Pennsylvania.

Here. Aerie, where hawks and eagles nest, and osprey teach their young to fly, and deer, opossums, fox and countless birds make themselves at home, because it is their home. I’m a guest.

Nature has no concerns. It is its own constant. It has no financial obligations; it does not have to ask anyone for help again and again; it does not answer to differing opinions or lie about its past. Nature does not judge, it does not question, or answer for that matter.

I know these trees, like I still know the ones Eddie and I climbed in Hechscher, like I still know the ones bending over like “girls throwing their hair over their heads to dry in the sun” along the Allegheny where my friend Joe and I used to wade for hours, dry fish on the rocks, and talk about wilderness and time.

Everyone above is gone. They’re just gone. But the nature of us is there, as well as nature itself. I wander for hours with my ghosts, talking about back then, talking about what’s next.

Today through the branches the half moon stood stark in the dark blue sky, and I swear not one other human could see it. Sure, you have a moon to admire in your world, but it’s not this one. Because this one knows Eddie and how he warned me one night when walking through the trails just after sunset to lookout for lunatics. I didn’t know what that was so I asked what a lunatic is and he said never mind. When I thought he had left to go home, I walked further past some grove and he jumped out and screamed, and I screamed, loud, and I called him crazy. And he laughed and said, “That’s a lunatic.”

My moon knows that story.

The trees here know about the time my dad and I sat on the porch and he couldn’t remember the names of some loved ones and he couldn’t see how sad I was. And they know about the time he let my son tie him up in a lasso and put a small cowboy hat on his head, and my father and my son laughed. That’s in the air; that’s out there, waiting for me to cut through the path on the west side of the property.

I have much on my mind, and a great deal of it I would rather not discuss with many people. And that’s not healthy—keeping it in like that. So I go outside and share it with the waiting trees and the ghosts I bring along. Certainly it is all internal monologue, but it’s always been that way, when Eddie and I wandered the woods singing Harry Chapin songs, or Karen and I canoed the Lynnhaven talking about how far the river reached to the south, through the marshes. I was always in conversation, connecting to the wilderness.

A friend of mine in Colon, Germany, but who is from Poland, calls me “the Man from the Country.”

“I was born in Brooklyn,” I told him.

He looked around when he was here and we walked to the river many years ago, and said, “This is not Brooklyn, Bob. This is a jungle. You live in a jungle.”

So it is. But it’s an honest jungle, with a river and a bay and a moon.

Nature lets me off the hook. Nature holds me responsible. It teaches me to be honest with myself and, in turn, with others. It teaches me to be quiet, to let others think what they want.

I have lived, lived very much “out loud” as it is fashionable to say. Oh, I have certainly lived. But it is in nature I am alive. There’s a difference. You know what I mean. There is a difference. You know exactly what I mean.

The Great South Bat at Hechscher State Park

Trial and Error

~ aviewfromthiswilderness ~ 3 Comments

Today worked out okay. I mean, if we could have trial runs of our days before we actually lived them, today would pass. I did a lot outside, worked on some things in here, had a decent acceptance for an essay, got ahead on another project, and listened to the rain on the skylight above my head while working; it’s better than background music. It is background music.

At the river earlier some gulls huddled together against the wind and they walked before me aimlessly up the sand before the jetty. The tide is exceptionally low and I could walk well out to the end of the rocks for my best view both up river and out across the bay.

I saw a deer near the shed. Another at the point this morning.

I stopped at 711 for a Slurpee and a man contemplated the various size hot dogs, some with extra spices and some stuffed with cheese. Another guy noticed that gas went back up but he didn’t seem to mind. Not nearly as much as the one buying kerosene at almost seven dollars a gallon. This is a boater’s world though, where there are three times more boats than people in the village, and more often than not the conversation is about diesel engines, traps, shrink wrap (yes, many boats get shrink wrapped for the winter), and a fire at one of the live-aboard marinas a few weeks ago where no one got hurt and where a friend of mine lives aboard his 27-footer and only woke because someone smashed the glass to get the fire extinguisher next to his slip.

The manager Sue said she liked the old breakfast empenadas better than the new ones. Jimmy bought his case of Bud and Lee his iced coffee. Michelle bought cigarettes and wondered what she would do after she brought her little girl to school. Curtis complained because Curtis complains.

I was awake. Not caffeine awake; new-birth awake, each sound, each comment and action I picked up and held for a moment, as if everyone else was moving just slightly behind me, like I had the edge today. I have no idea how to explain it. I was really awake. Like I could hear every rain drop, individually, hit the surface of the bay.

Some lady with two kids who screamed out every item in the candy aisle demanding she buy it for them and to which she screamed back at them before, of course, buying it for them, has got to be guilty of some sort of child abuse. Should it be legal to let your four year old eat two snickers bars and a donut with her chocolate milk at 6:30 am and then scream at her for dropping an Ipad which she brought in from the car, on the floor? All the while this woman managed to drop the F-bomb—TO HER KIDS—in every sentence, often several times per sentence. The fact she came into the store the same morning I was crack aware of everything around me is just bad luck.

So I left and went to the bay and sat there for an hour, more, sat there and thought about my brother and sister and how much I admire them, their integrity and example, and my mother and her perseverance through everything, and I mean everything. I thought about my friends like Laura and Letty who are fighting the battle of their lives, and others like Sean and Mike, the other Sean and Rick, who have more kindness and compassion than seems normal, yet is instinctive to them.

I thought about Michael, my son, who—no kidding here—is kinder and more genuine than anyone I’ve ever met, and how much he reminds me of my father in so many ways. I wondered if he has any clue that his art is masterful, and I know art.

What would I do if we could have had trial runs of our days? Which ones would I have cancelled entirely, which ones would I have made slight adjustments, and which ones would I look at and say, “Yes, good, that seems right.”

And as I watched two buffleheads land in the bay and immediately dive for breakfast, I realized I’d not change many at all.

Certainly I would have x-ed out a few: that one with that one phone conversation. Gone. And when Mike called to tell me about Dave. When I called Mike about Roberta. I would have stopped a friend of mine from getting in a taxi; told him it was a bad idea. I would have asked another friend of mine to get in a taxi; told her it was a really good idea.

But for the most part I wouldn’t change anything. It has been one hell of a ride, and even some of the seemingly bad events that others might look at and say, “Come on! How can you NOT change that?” I’d leave alone.

I’m glad I whacked my ankle.

I’m glad I got lost and ended up on this dead end road.

I’m glad I left that job.

I’m glad for the times I have struggled because they made me stronger.

I’m glad for the times I was hurt and I cried because they made me more aware.

I’m glad for the times I was rejected because they made me better at what I do.

I’m glad for the times I asked for help because it showed me the kindness of others.

I keep thinking of Alanis Morrissette: “Thank you clarity.” That was today. The most like this I’ve ever been was when we were on the Camino de Santiago from France across Spain. Today was unique, but over there this was a constant state of being, from the time we woke until the time we slept again we remained aware, in the moment, in conversation with everyone around us, listening to everyone.

Today was very Camino-like. Only I was in 711 walking down the aisles, which is a kind of pilgrimage of its own, depending upon how hungry you are.

Everyone has a story, a struggle, a dream, a disappointment. Everyone survived something that should have killed them, has been rejected, has known deep-to-the-soul pain.

And apparently everyone ends up at 711 to tell everyone else about it.

I wouldn’t change a thing about my life. I really wouldn’t.

Except that mom with the two kids; I’d kick her and her filthy mouth the f**k out of there.

You want to get in touch with every single slice of American culture? Every economic level, every race, religion, every pain-stricken and passion-filled tortured and celebratory soul? Go buy a Slurpee.

Beautiful Beautiful Boy

~ aviewfromthiswilderness ~ Leave a comment

Today is one of those chilly, rainy Sundays I’ve always loved. There’s something immediate about them—I feel present. A mist is moving down river toward the bay and a Great Blue Heron has perched on a branch across the swamp, her head pulled down like a cold child. The air is calm and the tide high.

Like everyone else these days, I have a lot on my mind. I’m worried about a few friends, some projects I’m working on, some commitments I must stick to, some issues I’ve been dragging around for a few years. To push the tired metaphor that NPR guests cannot seem to use enough, it often feels like playing a game of Whack-a-Mole; just when one issue has been dealt with, another rises, and it goes on and on, and I feel like running away.

Instead I walk to the river dressed in seven layers and a raincoat, a hat, my hood up, hands shoved deep in my pockets. I can hear buffleheads in the fog diving under the surface, rising. Some gulls call from a nearby pier, and the diesel engine of some boat pushes it along the channel toward the bay.

Another typical rainy morning.

I remember a rainy Sunday morning forty-two years ago. Half the guys on my floor at the dorm were asleep, the other half just getting home from passing out somewhere. I had been up in Niagara all day Saturday and while the details aren’t important, it took me twelve hours to get home. I slept a few hours, noted the cold rain, and decided to walk to my friend’s painting studio under Francis Hall on the far side of the campus. It had been a seminary years earlier, and in an old library beneath the hall he set up his paintings. On the walk over I couldn’t even see the hills just behind campus across the Allegany River, and it was deafening quiet on campus. Quiet like today, misty too, and chilly like today.

I descended the stairs and could hear John Lennon’s “Double Fantasy” album; an album that artist Cole Young played non-stop for a few months that year. I was deathly tired, and Cole looked up from the canvas just briefly. “Kunzinger! Listen to this!” Then a minute later, “What the hell happened to you?”

“I walked home from Niagara Falls. Well, a good deal of it. I’m tired.”

Cole put his brush down and sat down, crossed his legs and picked up his coffee mug. “Go on.”

I told him how a friend and I hitchhiked to Niagara Falls the previous day and the hour and a half drive only took us an hour and a half—someone picked us up immediately and brought us right to a donut shop at the falls and bought us donuts and coffee. Then we ran into some other Bona people and hung out all day, and around four she said, “Bob if we leave now we can be back to the dining hall for dinner by 5:30.” Cole laughed hard because, of course, we were idiots.

“So you guys just decided you’d get a ride right away from someone who happened to be headed to this town that isn’t on the way anywhere?”

“Sure.”

“And you didn’t get a ride.”

“You’re a genius Cole.”

I told him we walked until nearly three in the morning then huddled together in the overhang of a hardware store in the small village of Machias, and after ten minutes I saw a payphone and convinced my friend to call her boyfriend, who is still a very close friend of mine despite that night, and ask if he can borrow someone’s car and come pick us up. He did. We got home. I slept, woke to the rain, walked to the studio.

“That is excellent, Kunzinger! Wow!!”

“I like your painting. What’s it called? ‘More trees somewhere’?”

He laughed. “Homage to Cole.”

“Oh but we don’t have an ego!” I quipped.

“Thomas Cole, Kunzinger.” Of course, the Hudson Valley School founder was a major influence in my friend’s craft. “Seriously! What a great night!” he said.

“I’m exhausted. That was frustrating because I KNOW that people we know passed us on Route 16!”

“But then you would have gotten home and done what? Gone to the skellar? The Club? Are you kidding?! You walked to Machias from Niagara Falls!”

“I know but…”

“Shhhh. Listen.”

Lennon played.    

“Before you cross the street, take my hand.

Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”

Cole was a beautiful man. He died young. But that day at that moment he nodded his head in a definitive manner as if to say “if you don’t agree with me you’re too stupid to live.” “Don’t you get it?” he asked me.

I got it.

“You would have had another unmemorable night in a long stream of unmemorable nights surrounded by drunks and loud music! You’ll be talking about last night for the rest of your life!”

That was more than four decades ago.

I’ve done really well. I have. I have a beautiful place, been around the world dozens of times, written books, and laughed hard—really really hard—with friends. But I’ve been down too, scraping by, not able to pull my own weight without help, living in the extremes—life at perfection that if you died then you’d be happy with it, and life so decidedly bad that if you died right then you’d be happy with it.

But in both cases, I was not busy making other plans. I was decidedly alive. Maybe I should have been more restrained, I don’t know. I’d do a lot differently, especially in the past few years. Even now I want to call a few people up and tell them to shut up while I apologize and explain myself, but there’s no point. There’s only now and next. That’s it.

It’s raining harder now, though I’m at my desk looking out at the woods where a fog has settled with the holly, and it is beautiful.

Sure, I could sit here, get some work done, prepare some lessons for my writing class Tuesday night, maybe finish an essay I’m working on about—no kidding—weather.

But life is happening, and I want to go be a part of it. I’m not irresponsible. Well, okay, I’m sometimes not irresponsible. But sometimes when the world “is too much with me” and I feel unable to think rationally, I get the attention span of a lightning bolt and need to get outside, and walk slowly, taking it in, sitting watching the heron on the branch perched watching me, and spend hours at a walker’s pace instead of seeing it all like a drive-by.

I don’t mind the rain or the cold. It is the nothingness of life that chills me to the bone.

The painting Cole Young was just starting that night, “Homage to Cole,” hung in the second floor lobby of the South Tower of the World Trade Center, and when they came down, I called him at his studio in Brooklyn at the time, and said I had read in the New York Times about the artwork in the towers, and how his was among them.

He laughed. “Yeah!” Then he moved on quickly. “Hey Kunzinger! When are you coming up here! We can hit some studios and some bars, listen to some live guitar music. Bring yours!” he said.

“It’s not around the corner,” I told him.

“I just assumed you’d hitchhike.”

The thing about the hills behind campus was I knew they were there even though on misty Sunday mornings you couldn’t see them at all. But they were there. I’m heading out to the river, walk in the morning fog and clear my head.

Carpe Diem

~ aviewfromthiswilderness ~ 2 Comments

More than a few people I am very close to are facing troubles–real troubles–far worse than I’ve ever had to deal with.

This is about perspective.

Today was a very good day for me. But even the worst of days is more about how I handle the situation than the situation itself. Life is swift and life is fragile, even for the healthiest, even for the youngest.

I would do a lot of things differently, especially over the course of the more recent years. But I can’t. The best I can do is start now, and keep starting. As many times as it takes.

Life is beautiful.

Much peace my friends.

If I had my life to live over …by Nadine Stair

*****************************************
If I had my life to live over,
I’d dare to make more mistakes next time.
I’d relax, I would limber up.
I would be sillier than I have been this trip.
I would take fewer things seriously.
I would take more chances.
I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers.
I would eat more ice cream and less beans.
I would perhaps have more actual troubles,
but I’d have fewer imaginary ones.

You see, I’m one of those people who live
sensibly and sanely hour after hour,
day after day.

Oh, I’ve had my moments,
And if I had it to do over again,
I’d have more of them.
In fact, I’d try to have nothing else.
Just moments, one after another,
instead of living so many years ahead of each day.
I’ve been one of those people who never goes anywhere
without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a raincoat
and a parachute.
If I had to do it again, I would travel lighter than I have.

If I had my life to live over,
I would start barefoot earlier in the spring
and stay that way later in the fall.
I would go to more dances.
I would ride more merry-go-rounds.
I would pick more daisies.

So Far Away

~ aviewfromthiswilderness ~ 1 Comment

When I came up here to Aerie to mark off the corners for the contractor to dig the footings for the house, my father and son both came with me. Michael was just three at the time and climbed the stacks of logs and other materials, using the brand-new shed as a fort. My father and I held opposite ends of a long measuring tape and put pre-marked sticks in the ground.

We talked about the drive up—it was a Saturday—noting how it wasn’t as bad as he thought it would be from Virginia Beach.

“This place really is centrally located,” I reminded him. “About an hour and a half to the beach, about an hour to Richmond, two fifteen to DC, and two and a half to the mountains. Plus a river and a bay.” We had a great time that day and had lunch in Deltaville before driving back across three bridges, one tunnel, and two interstates to his house.

A few weeks later I was fiddling around the property while waiting for a delivery of stones, and a neighbor walked up the long, winding driveway to introduce himself. Roland and I talked for hours about where we were from, and he filled me in on some of the local places to eat. Then he said, “You know, Bob, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but we’re really centrally located here.”

“Yes, I know,” I said. “My father and I were just talking about that not long ago.”

He nodded and said, “Yep, the village is only three miles from here, and there’s an Exxon/711 about two miles the other way next to a bank. And if you don’t mind a really good, pretty drive when gas isn’t that high, Urbanna has some nice shops and is about fifteen miles from here. I head over there once a month or so.”

Perspective.

Here’s how I deal with the “So where do you live?” question:

When I’m in Deltaville: “Down Mill Creek toward the river and duck pond.”

When I’m in Virginia Beach: “Deltaville” (technically, “Wake,” but most people understand the much larger though still miniscule Deltaville).

When I’m in western Virginia: “Where the Rappahannock River meets the Chesapeake.”

When I’m in New York or Florida: “Virginia,” but if they’re also from Virginia, “Middlesex County, half hour northeast of Gloucester out near the Bay.”

When I’m in Europe: “the United States.” If they know the States, then I’ll add “Virginia.” Once, an annoying Russian salesman kept asking, “Where are you from specifically?” So I said, “Down the end of Mill Creek near the river.” He said he didn’t know where that was, and my friend Mike said, “Are you kidding?? Everyone else around here in the market knew exactly where that is!”

But usually, just “The States.”

I suppose if I were on the International Space Station I could say, “Down there. Now. No, wait….Now.”

This relative form of measurement works beyond geography. A dear friend of mine died at twenty-seven. Did he know that at twenty-six he was already, relatively speaking, an old man? When my father was my age he still had nearly thirty years left. More often than not I feel closer to ninety than sixty, but then I haven’t looked at my medical map in a while, so I could just be near a rest stop still as close to my thirty-year-old son’s birth as my own death.  

The farther away from a place we are, the more abstract it seems. If I look at my house from the sky, I might notice a swirl of trees with endless green all year from the pines and holly. Then a brown roof on the house at the end of a long scar through the woods to the road. But when I’m standing on the front porch, I see how badly I need to re-stain the logs, how much I have neglected the driveway turns, and how much fallen debris remains in the woods. I am more engulfed by the property and the home when I’m here, of course. It floods me, making it hard to see much else. I don’t mind—it is one of the reasons I live here.

But lately I’ve been realizing that my mind needs to be more centrally located. I can drift too close sometimes to melancholy or even bouts of depression—I don’t necessarily mind as they remind me of what a beautiful journey it has been so far and help keep people who I have loved and lost close to my heart. Likewise, being so engulfed in nature here as I am, I often find myself not too far from some state of presence—in the moment and appreciating every aspect of nature. The river and the bay are my companions, the woods too. This brings me peace and often I can come quite close to some euphoric state.

But if I move too close to one or the other for too long, or too far away, I find myself in a state of confusion and worry. Lost. My balance is thrown off and I can easily fall into the terrain of regret and sorrow, or the Oz-like, false sense of safety that comes from a mind at peace. I need both, but I would like them equally at arm’s length—close enough to find, far enough away to avoid.

When I’m here on the river for too long, I need to go. I get restless and I need to head out—see more, discover more. It is simply my DNA and I don’t know how else to explain it. Florida, Prague, Spain, the Rockies. But after being on the road a bit I almost can’t breathe right until I’m sitting on the rocks on the Rappahannock, watching the sun slide away again, listening to the geese or the osprey.

When I was young, we moved from our home in one county on the Island to another. We returned a few times to visit friends on the block, but rarely. It was so far away that it might as well have been in Topeka. Geez, it was only twenty-one miles away! When I leave my driveway now, I drive further than that just to get to the first stoplight. But back then, distance was measured in necessity, and if we didn’t have a need to go back, we didn’t.

Me, well, I always have a need to go back, even just for a little while. It’s only dangerous if you go back and stay there, unable to cut the tethers. But I’m careful enough to make sure I’m looking ahead as well, appreciating the anticipation, spying as much on hope as what was.

Therapy

~ aviewfromthiswilderness ~ 1 Comment

I saw my therapist today. My son and I went to a local nature trail, and as we walked I mentally conversed with the crisp air and bare trees, the occasional birds, and the creeks running alongside. This is my proverbial couch, and today (as well as last week at Westmoreland State Park on the Potomac River) was my weekly session. I have always found perspective in nature, an understanding of the need to focus on now, on today, on the moment at hand, as well as a deep appreciation for the pace and tempo of time when we are in nature. With so much going on in my life, today, and every time we go for hikes or when I just wander to the river and sit on the stones to watch cars pass on the distant bridge, I manage to slip those bonds of stress and anxiety.

I have walked in nature since I’m nine years old, and I always innately managed to allow “nature’s peace to flow into me as sunshine flows into the trees,” as John Muir suggested, and I’m certain everyone out there understands this as well.

E.O. Wilson wrote that, “Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction.” I think better in nature. I mentally write and revise, I connect dots between seemingly unrelated themes. I can sit and contemplate the way geese land on the pond and suddenly recognize the relationship between them and a discussion I had about some folk song or compelling art. I don’t do this on purpose; I just walk, then I recall that piece I’m working on about the Torture Museum in Prague, and after awhile I note the patience and focus a Great Blue Heron uses in seeking out small fish in the duck pond, and, ouila, clear as a bell. I’m off and running.

I have been to churches all over the world and remain close friends with priests I’ve known since I’m nineteen, but I don’t really contemplate faith until I’m on some trail somewhere in the snow and turn around to see the valleys cut by ice millions of years ago. Even those faithless among us know that Muir was right when he wrote “the clearest way into the universe is through a forest wilderness.”

I have been going to these therapy sessions since I’m a child along the Great South Bay, and like John Burroughs, I have always gone to nature to be “soothed, healed, and have my senses put in order.” It isn’t far, this nature I’m talking about. I’ve walked down Fifth Avenue in summer at five a.m. and have known nature. The walk from my building to the parking garage at the college passes several groves of trees and a well-hidden pond where birds spend their time between their classes.

When I’m confused, anxiety-ridden, stressed, worried about meeting my goals, worried about so much I thought I’d never have to concern myself with at my age, when “the world is too much with” me, I just know what Einstein meant when he wrote, “If you look deep into nature, you will understand everything better.”

Frank Lloyd Wright said he walked in nature every day for inspiration for his day’s work. Me too, and sometimes it actually happens that way, particularly if I come home, put some appropriate music on, and brain dump my thoughts.

Just as often, however, I’m so inspired and awakened by nature that I just stay out there. The long trails become my compound sentences and the rocks at the river from which I can see both west up the Rappahannock and east across the Chesapeake become my exclamation points. In writing I avoid such sensational punctuation marks, but in nature they are virtually everywhere! The herons and the kingfishers are sensational. The snapper turtles and the stingrays, the pink clouds at dusk, the orange glow before dawn, the osprey call, the geese landing all at once with hundreds of slides into the otherwise-still water; these are nature’s equivalent of dramatic emphasis. There are simply no parentheses in nature, nothing to set off or turn into some subordinate clause. It is all subject and verb; it is always active voice.  

Life—my life—has seemed heavy at times, a ton of bricks difficult to carry but more difficult to put down. I have climbed so far already this year, and I continue one foot in front of the other, but the summit is still quite aways away, and when I’m inside—both physically and mentally—it can keep reflecting back at me, can absorb too much attention simply by virtue of perspective, like a boulder in a bathtub. But when I’m outside and the simplicity of life greets me at the door and reminds me of my priorities, and I step out into the infinite presence of earth, Rachel Carson is there too to remind me that “those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.”

Bizarre statistic: Those who contemplate suicide and decide to see it through at home are three times more likely to do so than those who go into nature to end their misery. Of course there are exceptions; I’ve known or have known of a few troubled souls who found their eternal peace in nature much too soon. But the vast majority of lost souls find their way home by leaving it and seeking out something larger than themselves.

We seem so damned important and certain in the confines of our offices and living rooms and our problems can appear so significant, but out along the river, out where we can stare across the reach to the distant waves, up along the ridge of some mountain where water formed caves millions of years ago and we stand in perfect silence completely in the moment, we are aware that life is nothing but now and love. Life at its core is comprised of nothing more than now and love.

Session over.

Stardust

~ aviewfromthiswilderness ~ 2 Comments

Let’s start with this creepy little statistic: Every single day, one-hundred tons of meteorite dust coats the entire planet. You, me, the cars, buildings, everywhere, everything. It is so miniscule, of course, that we don’t even know it is happening, preferring instead to wait for the Leonid shower, or the Perseid, the Geminid, or even the Urid, to run outside and watch shooting stars every twenty or thirty seconds on a clear moonless night. Who isn’t transfixed by that? No one says, “Hey, I’m covered in microscopic meteor dust; make a wish!” But equally, who isn’t freaked out by the thought of meteor dust in their hair? On their ice cream cone?

This Earth of ours is at its core about ten thousand degrees Fahrenheit, exactly the same as the surface of the sun. Symmetry aside, one has to wonder if The Great Thermometer simply stops tracking at 10K. Also, Earth is the only planet not named for a God, and as crazy as this seems, no one knows who named it, though the etymological roots are Germanic and Old English. As for age, Scientists–the ones who know what they’re talking about because of generations of research–say the planet is about 4.5 billion years old, but humans of any sort have only been here for about 450,000 years. Some traditions and faiths call the start date around six thousand years ago. Either way, the human portion of earth hasn’t been here that long and isn’t staying long enough to wear out our welcome. It seems the earth is cleansing herself.

Since the onset of the Covid pandemic, this planet has shed about three thousand humans per day. That’s a 911 every single day. We are improving, but we are doing it on a very slippery slope. Why? Well, we’ve so adjusted for life to be “convenient” (think Smart Phone, think 5G, think online everything, think curbside, think Drive-thru, think Alexa, think Lunchables), that too many believe if some aspect of life is inconvenient, they’ll simply redefine reality to accommodate what they want, even if it chips away at Earth’s patience.

We’ve traded the rare beauty of this one-of-a-kind globe for “whatever’s easier.” The percolator becomes Mr. Coffee becomes a Keurig. It’s easier. We are completely, arguably, most definitively reliant upon the 2500 operational satellites orbiting the earth (about 6000 actually are orbiting, but more than half simply don’t work–how inconvenient). So here’s the thing: According to scientists who know what they’re talking about and constantly work on and adjust the Asteroid-Satellite Collision Probability, when a meteor or other such space object hits a satellite, the rock “vaporizes into hot, electrically charged gas that can short out circuits and damage electronics, causing the satellite to spin out of control.” Don’t worry about being hit–it’ll burn up on reentry into the planet’s atmosphere. No, that’s not the problem.

See the problem? Yes, no more satellite.

And if a large such space rock plays pinball with Space X’s system of communication, we here are earth are, as they might say on “Eureka,” simply fracked. And if one of them or a flock of them zero in on the Great Siberian Forest setting it ablaze, we are, once again, Stardust, part of the atmosphere, that naked-to-the-eye coating which exploded countless zeros away from here several billion years ago, arriving, now, on our chocolate swirl cone.

The greatest scientists in the world who know what they’re talking about have trouble wrapping their minds around this simple idea: We, Earth, are an anomaly, God’s only child. Even if you believe somewhere in the deep recesses of unthinkable distance are planets with lifeforms playing Scrabble and drinking Pinot Noir, astrophysicists like Stephen Hawking, Neil Tyson, Carl Sagan, and Brian May can’t tell you where, and they’ve looked with equipment so advanced some of it has left the solar system, some landed on moving asteroids, and some is scooping up dirt like a dog-walker in Central Park and bringing it back. Then they study it, then they tell us they still don’t know.

But they can tell us around 100 tons of meteorite dust coats the earth, and us, daily.

I walked to the river earlier. Unplugged and, to be honest, uninterested in much. The day started poorly but finished really strong, but still I felt like going for a long walk in the mountains or sitting on the sand at the gulf, quietly. Instead, here I am, more than a little content to look out at a distant bridge and watch the cars and trucks cross the mile and a half reach headed North, up toward DC, up toward New York, up, just further and further up, perhaps as far as the northern stretch of Ontario to watch the Northern Lights bounce across time. But closer, near me on the river, some bufflehead ducks surfaced and dove again. Watermen on a workboat checked traps.

See, it is information like this that makes me aware of why when a student asks me about subject-verb agreement I’m wondering why we can only see about 2000-3000 stars, not “millions” as we feel when standing at the bay on a clear, moonless night. And my frustration at knowing I have so much I want to see, so many glasses of wine to drink with friends in European pubs and small quaint villages, brings me to the brink of psychosis when someone actually screws up simple comma rules. Part of me wants to say, “Come on! This isn’t rocket science! It’s a fracking comma, for God’s sake!” but in the past few years, a stronger part of me, a more conscious part, wants to whisper, “You’re doing fine. It’s just commas–I knew what you meant. Now go outside and bathe in the miracle of meteorite dust. Buy a cone and wait for it.”

We’ve drifted too far astray from the essential, so far afield from what matters.

We’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.

Etre en Vie

~ aviewfromthiswilderness ~ 1 Comment 










It’s New Year’s Day. Barely.





A heavy fog has settled on the Rappahannock and even out into the Chesapeake. It is calm and I can hear morning doves, some house wrens, and a few gulls calling from the docks. I like to think the fog is a cleanser, slowly sweeping through like mist to cleanse the world overnight so we can rise this morning and start fresh.





I promised someone I would get up and do something, so I went for a long walk, despite the fog. Even enhanced by this fog. I need a new start. My life could stand a decent cleansing. 





I did a superb job of racking up a list of shortcomings to undo this coming year. The easy stuff includes losing the weight my doctor told me to lose and which I absolutely know how to lose but keep yo-yoing through the months. Also, to eat better. Again, I have the capability and the information to get it done, but it must be challenging enough that I still have these resolutions to make. I think you know what I mean.





That brings me to the difficult stuff: willpower, motivation, and simply getting through those tough three weeks or so where I still crave old ways while adjusting to a new way of doing things. I know after that time habits will form to achieve my goals, and old habits will be pushed out and cast aside. But I knew that fifty-two weeks ago—that’s seventeen chances of three-week periods to start again and stick with it that I simply didn’t bother. So why would now be different? What is it about this New Year that will find me a month from now well on my way to my goals, and a few months down the line having obtained them enough to enter that stage of maintenance only?





I’m getting to that. First though, I believe 2022 was a wake-up call for many people I know. Some dear friends of mine are not doing well, and the problems are beyond their control, so the rest of us must recognize that when the problem that slows us down and even compromises our lives is in our control, we should not hesitate to act. Another part of it is the peace of mind I used to love when everything was going right—physically and mentally, and while I must still pay close attention to many aspects of my life, I would like to knock this physical monster out of the way—the one I actually can take care of and was at one time an expert in doing so. It is inexcusable, to be sure.





The fog is starting to lift, and the river is like glass, like a mirror, and in the distance I can hear a flock of geese; out at the mouth of the river I can hear the diesel engine of a workboat. More geese. At the marsh two deer gently walk through the reeds. There was a time some years ago I made a resolution to spend more time in nature. I remember how hard it was adjusting my routine to make that possible, but I also remember it becoming such a part of my day that at some point I couldn’t recall not being out in nature all the time.





We choose the life we wish to live. Even if we don’t choose at all, which in itself is a choice.





To be blunt, 2022 was one of the crappiest years of my life. I’ve been fortunate to have very few of them, and when I do run into one of them, friends have always been there to help me keep perspective. But this last one, well, thank God for my friends and thank God it is gone.





But New Year’s is just another day. So sometimes it takes something more than some annual resolution to achieve the same annual goals we didn’t bother to attempt the previous annum. It takes more than some passing motivation.





ie:





Not long ago I had a conversation with someone about what I would do with my life if I knew I was dying. I sipped my coffee and thought about it and said I’d tie up loose ends and then drive to see everyone I’ve cared about—family from Long Island to Seattle, friends from Florida to Ohio, from Prague to Africa. I’d go for a long hike in the Rockies and I’d sail along the gulf coast. I told her more. She told me what she will do. It made me deeply sad, yet it also made me deeply aware of my aliveness, of my choices not everyone has.





Finally, after working the phrasing in my mind for a few minutes, I said, “I am dying. Maybe not in six to eight months, but maybe—I don’t know. Maybe thirty years.”





“Better get off your ass then,” she said. Then a very long pause. Then, “Just in case. Really, Bob,” she said from somewhere deep, like she reached as far as she could into her soul before speaking so I’d not just hear her but absorb every syllable. I’d never seen anyone push words out so hard before. “Be alive as long as you are.” We were both quiet a long time.





Sometimes you just know to be quiet. 





After a while I said something to make us laugh, and we laughed for a very long time. I joked about the coffee and the overpriced croissants. Joking is my default position, and she appreciated it. Then I was quiet and added, “I’ll pick a day and get right on it. I Promise.”





Today is good. January 1st, 2023.  Happy New Year my friends. 





Be alive as long as you are.





It’s time to make mistakes again, it’s time to change the show.





It’s time and time and time again to find another way.





It’s time to gather forces and get out of yesterday.





–John Denver