Organic Living

I don't know what to say really, but it's 1:30 in the morning and I've been watching Jon Stewart clips on YouTube for over an hour now (because I am too cheap for cable) and thought, I should make some sort of personal update on my blog. Lately, for those of you who come by for a read--and I thank you kindly for doing so--I've been a bit distraught. Angry is what most people might call it, and bitching and complaining about pretty much anything that pops into my head when I sit down to write. This happens from time to time and if you check in with me on a regular basis, you're likely to hear me say some pretty petty and ridiculous stuff. But who doesn't have their pet peaves. Some people complain about their own life, some people complain about the people in their life--I prefer to bitch about broad mostly unchangable ideas and customs that frustrate me.

Here's the thing. I think most of the civilized world is pretty silly. I realize that this is not something that a lot of people can relate to, but I have spent literally hundreds of days (adding up to close to a full year) of my life in the backcountry of the United States. This means no phones, no TV, no news, no institutions of any kind (save whatever park service runs the land I'm on); just me and trees and rocks. This is how it goes. On the first week you're out it's a little uncomfortable; there's rain, there's bugs, your body hurts at night when you fall asleep on the ground, but then a change happens. You start to realize that you are biologically created to survive in this environment. Soon your nerves are calm, your mind is relaxed, you feel very comfortable and organic--the truest you one might ever experience. No more appointments, no more phone calls, no emailing, no sensory overload from blinking lights and abbrasive advertisements, no alchohol or coffee to help you deal with the stress, no religion to escape life with thoughts of things to come--nothing--just pure life (Pura Vida!).

So in this blissful state one can begin to look down from a high peak at the city lights and say, "What a friggin' racket". As humans we've created this entire world that is completely seperate from what our bodies and minds are engineered to survive in and then we wonder why we're all so stressed out and unhappy all the time. So if I seem bitter or disillusioned in my blogs, it's because I lived a pretty spoiled life for over two years. I was getting paid to backpack and I gave it up for something more. The thing is, although I think civilization is mostly ridiculous with all of its stereotypes and institutions and holier-than-thou individuals that couldn't wipe their own asses in God's actual creation (if you believe in that sort of thing) for a week, I'm still a big fan of the cultural elements that the woods can't provide. I love music, I love art, I love literature, but when I tell people this I sound like a snob. I've been called a hippy, a bum, a liberal, and any other term Americans can conjure up for a person who doesn't care much for getting rich and wasting his life away on things that don't amount to a small pile of crap when it's all said and done.

That being said, I'm trying to make it here in the "real" world now, and those organic feelings are all but forgotten. I'm anxious all day long and over-stimulated. My mind races, and if I let my guard down for half a second some advertiser plays on my human weakness and I feel the urge to spend money I don't have. I have stereotypes placed on me as a man and as a husband and people expect that you are doing what everyone else in the world is doing. If you aren't, they can barely hear what you are telling them. It simply doesn't register that someone in 21st century America might spend his or her days in the woods. I assure you when you step outside it all for a couple of weeks, it seems like a gigantic cosmic joke. Sometimes I feel like the only "real" life that is happening is out in the woods and I'm walking around in some kind of ridiculous circus.

Anyway, this is my one and only explaination for my comments and cynicism about "civilized" life. I will now recommence my satirical badgering and other such outlashings. In the meantime if you care to go for a couple weeks in the mountains with me, for the sake of enlightenment, drop me a line.