Ruddy Turnstones
Pamela has expressed her surprise on more than one occasion that I have had so much to say about the natural world. So, some ruminations on that:
I've had some time to think about what I want, from a material standpoint, lately. (All this walking is good for thinking.) The answer? Not much.
Oh, I would like a better camera. I've been doing photography for decades and, now that I'm getting the hang of digital, I'd like a camera whose potential matches that of my SLRs. I'd like to do some more repairs on the house. As my online friends know from my endless griping, a 90-year-old house has a myriad of surprises lurking around every corner, none of them good. I'd like to paint the living room and dining room, which have had the same wallpaper for 20 years, wallpaper that now makes me want to scream. What I'd really like is to trade my house in for a much smaller one on some form of water. Any water.
I guess that's about it. A better camera and a cottage on a puddle.
What I really want for myself is to be outdoors. I want to soak up everything that's going on out there, from the first streaks of sunlight in the morning to the past-midnight moon. I grew up far out in the country and, while I didn't begin to learn much about the natural world from the standpoint of cataloging and ecologizing until I was an adult, my life has always been informed by an awareness that there is a universe of which we are only tangentially a part, and even less less aware:
Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.
Henry Beston, The Outermost House (1928)
That is the world with which I am seeking to connect when I walk each day. That's the lens through which I see my rather ordinary suburban life. It's true that I'm walking to get into better shape. But I'm really walking because I need to be outdoors.
Walked: 4 miles.
Walked this past week: 27 miles.
4 comments:
Robin, your talent as a writer is amazing. I look forward to reading your journal everyday. I imagine you have many readers and their number will continue to grow as people discover this journal.
Quote "there is a universe of which we are only tangentially a part, and even less aware". I think we are more than tangentially a part of the universe, but that it is our awareness of that connection with something larger than ourselves that we've either lost or have never had. I think there is an amazing life force/God/consciousness that creates and sustains our world. I think the sense of peace I feel in nature, away from the distractions of a busy, noisy world, is just a little tiny glimpse of that greater reality.
Love the quote. It's how I've always felt about our fellow inhabitants of this earth. I love to be outdoors, too..something I must have inherited from my Dad, since Mom was born and raised in the city... Lisa :-]
I just added "The Outermost House" to my must read list. I was standing on a bluff on Cape Cod overlooking the point where his house was located and realized that it was essential that I read the book - maybe January when my longing for the ocean is strongest.
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