Thursday, September 26, 2019
Trash
As soon as you remove a piece of wood from the forest and cut a couple of straight lines on it, the quality of the wood changes dramatically. It becomes more"useful" as building material, in a certain relation with other elements of human artifice, but it also begins its decline into "trash."
A rotting board of lumber sitting on the forest floor doesn't look too good; it looks like garbage, because it looks out of place with its perfectly straight lines, even though it will decompose anyway. And it is garbage.
That same exact piece of lumber, before it was altered, as a fallen or shattered tree, in the form of a stump, cut off round, or a large fallen branch looks perfectly fine lying in the forest. Untouched, it may not be very useful, but it looks like it belongs there, even as it decomposes, as alas, that is what trees occasionally do. And indeed, it adds to the beauty of the forest's landscape.
A rotting board of lumber sitting on the forest floor doesn't look too good; it looks like garbage, because it looks out of place with its perfectly straight lines, even though it will decompose anyway. And it is garbage.
That same exact piece of lumber, before it was altered, as a fallen or shattered tree, in the form of a stump, cut off round, or a large fallen branch looks perfectly fine lying in the forest. Untouched, it may not be very useful, but it looks like it belongs there, even as it decomposes, as alas, that is what trees occasionally do. And indeed, it adds to the beauty of the forest's landscape.
Damage Revealed
Until you work directly with it, or work with people who work directly with it, there are forms of decomposition that just remain hidden until something or someone brings it to your attention. Let's say, for example, the effects of wet soil on plant leaves, wood beams, or shovel blades. It is hard on all of them. It spreads disease and rot on the plants, it rots and decomposes the lumber, and it breaks down the shovel blades.
These oversights can be embarrassing, but how could it be otherwise? Some signals are just too insulated the further you are from them. And you learn of them through hard experience, or by someone who has learned through hard experience telling you directly about it.
And sometimes you just bang an elbow on something. After all, the elbow is not the centralized thing doing the coordinating. But getting more in touch with your elbow does help to cut down on the banging.
These oversights can be embarrassing, but how could it be otherwise? Some signals are just too insulated the further you are from them. And you learn of them through hard experience, or by someone who has learned through hard experience telling you directly about it.
And sometimes you just bang an elbow on something. After all, the elbow is not the centralized thing doing the coordinating. But getting more in touch with your elbow does help to cut down on the banging.
Keep Em Spinning
To avoid mounting social problems - which steadily increase in traumas and costs inflicted with duration and advancement - a certain universal buoyancy of personal wellbeing is required among oneself and one's peers.
Fundamentally, this amounts to housing, clothing, means of transportation, self-maintenance, and reproduction, food and water, and heat and energy that is on par with what is available to one's peers, so that each can stand with a daily dignity and respect in the eyes of each other.
In an advanced industrial society, this means a set of specialized and professional commitments to perpetually generate each individual in this image. A "job" then not only has to secure those basic and fundamental needs that all individuals socially related to each other should have, but should also act in concert with the other "jobs" to faithfully produce them and make them accessible to secure. A delicate balance.
A balance which we - the supposed masters of the universe - should nevertheless have no problem striking, yet it is not so.
For one thing, we are continuously expanding the nature and definition of that most basic set of fundamental needs for each member of the community. Only so many palaces and beachfront sprawls and giant manicured gardens and driveway fountains can be built, and so higher tiers of community must be artificially constructed based on principles of superiority and exclusion.
And for that matter, it could be said that this idealized equilibrium of social status and participation was corrupted from the start with early processes of conquest and forced labor like slavery and indentured servitude, and those reactionary prescriptions for race, class, gender, and etc. which set in motion powerful social and material forces that take great exertions to reverse.
At the very least, to maintain the flow of "nice things" there must be a supple and flexible organization of associated labor to maintain high productivity and social harmony. That is, individuals must be able to free associate in accordance with their talents and their chemistry in working with others in association, and of course for many this is not the case either.
One is thrust into the world and expected to generate for oneself a whole range of goods and products through one's economic activity, all of which require intensive and voluminous amounts of labor, knowledge, and usable energy, or else one is dirty, unwashed, vagrant, lazy, crude, unstable, and most of all, suspect. To avoid this, one has to throw oneself into the arms of an organization that delivers for oneself these economic goods, which through concentration, monopoly, economic depression, and artificial and hidden unemployment, is fewer and further between, with less available positions than socially necessary.
And so those that still hold onto these increasingly rare and valuable positions hold them with a deathgrip, and live in fear of losing them, which causes all sorts of social problems of its own. The organizations become less dynamic, less open, and trust and communication die while cultivated image and signaling reign supreme.
And with the curtailing of quality economic goods and the spreading of suspicion, paranoia, and resentment, the greater body politic is set against itself. A few lord over the rest and the many prostrate themselves this way and that. And in mirroring the deathly organizations, here too communication and trust die, and a smile in front with a knife in back becomes the dominant mode of relation.
And here, when these dangerous social relations set in, it is already too late to reverse them. There is far too much weight in economic commitments alone, and far too many obligations to hold onto to take a break and re-evaluate one's position. Lost trust takes much more labor to restore - and opportunity cost in stopping one's "progress" however temporarily to take a breath and take stock - than incrementally increasing levels of surveillance, manipulation, and coercion.
But the problem with this is that the former clears the air and repairs the foundation, while the latter only muck up the air and erode the foundation until everything gives at once.
Fundamentally, this amounts to housing, clothing, means of transportation, self-maintenance, and reproduction, food and water, and heat and energy that is on par with what is available to one's peers, so that each can stand with a daily dignity and respect in the eyes of each other.
In an advanced industrial society, this means a set of specialized and professional commitments to perpetually generate each individual in this image. A "job" then not only has to secure those basic and fundamental needs that all individuals socially related to each other should have, but should also act in concert with the other "jobs" to faithfully produce them and make them accessible to secure. A delicate balance.
A balance which we - the supposed masters of the universe - should nevertheless have no problem striking, yet it is not so.
For one thing, we are continuously expanding the nature and definition of that most basic set of fundamental needs for each member of the community. Only so many palaces and beachfront sprawls and giant manicured gardens and driveway fountains can be built, and so higher tiers of community must be artificially constructed based on principles of superiority and exclusion.
And for that matter, it could be said that this idealized equilibrium of social status and participation was corrupted from the start with early processes of conquest and forced labor like slavery and indentured servitude, and those reactionary prescriptions for race, class, gender, and etc. which set in motion powerful social and material forces that take great exertions to reverse.
At the very least, to maintain the flow of "nice things" there must be a supple and flexible organization of associated labor to maintain high productivity and social harmony. That is, individuals must be able to free associate in accordance with their talents and their chemistry in working with others in association, and of course for many this is not the case either.
One is thrust into the world and expected to generate for oneself a whole range of goods and products through one's economic activity, all of which require intensive and voluminous amounts of labor, knowledge, and usable energy, or else one is dirty, unwashed, vagrant, lazy, crude, unstable, and most of all, suspect. To avoid this, one has to throw oneself into the arms of an organization that delivers for oneself these economic goods, which through concentration, monopoly, economic depression, and artificial and hidden unemployment, is fewer and further between, with less available positions than socially necessary.
And so those that still hold onto these increasingly rare and valuable positions hold them with a deathgrip, and live in fear of losing them, which causes all sorts of social problems of its own. The organizations become less dynamic, less open, and trust and communication die while cultivated image and signaling reign supreme.
And with the curtailing of quality economic goods and the spreading of suspicion, paranoia, and resentment, the greater body politic is set against itself. A few lord over the rest and the many prostrate themselves this way and that. And in mirroring the deathly organizations, here too communication and trust die, and a smile in front with a knife in back becomes the dominant mode of relation.
And here, when these dangerous social relations set in, it is already too late to reverse them. There is far too much weight in economic commitments alone, and far too many obligations to hold onto to take a break and re-evaluate one's position. Lost trust takes much more labor to restore - and opportunity cost in stopping one's "progress" however temporarily to take a breath and take stock - than incrementally increasing levels of surveillance, manipulation, and coercion.
But the problem with this is that the former clears the air and repairs the foundation, while the latter only muck up the air and erode the foundation until everything gives at once.
Sunday, September 22, 2019
Needs
In regards to our material conditions, our material needs can actually be very difficult to suss out. Yeah we need food, water, shelter, and connection. But that connection part does complicate things. We're connected to a spectacular and violent process of material change in which our technology is undergoing permanent revolution.
Embedded in society, we ask, what do we need? What tools and appliances? What is economically available? What is available by salvage and personal skill and knowledge? What is acceptable to the average sensibility of our group?
And further, one can't simply break away and live in peace, engaged in one's own idiosyncratic activity, even if it doesn't dramatically affect greater society. Idiosyncrasy itself is dangerous to a mass industrial society, as it raises the potential of mimicry in that new direction. There are people with clubs and cages who are here to prevent that.
My Good Luck Charm
Funny how something like a lucky rabbit's foot, or a similar cherished object that is perceived to bring good luck is expressed in terms of probability - or the obscure and inaccessible workings of some objective process that determines various outcomes - when it is really a powerful emotional bond that brings about a state of mind, however fleeting that state of mind is.
Similarly, people engage in these sort of informal prohibitions of taboo "jinx language," such as refusing to talk about the weather or car traffic out of fear of influencing it, without acknowledging the fact that the states of fear and doubts themselves are really the core things being avoided, which can have powerful effects on one's immediate life if entered into and sustained.
Similarly, people engage in these sort of informal prohibitions of taboo "jinx language," such as refusing to talk about the weather or car traffic out of fear of influencing it, without acknowledging the fact that the states of fear and doubts themselves are really the core things being avoided, which can have powerful effects on one's immediate life if entered into and sustained.
There You Are
You really have to stop and marvel at the sheer difference in the state of consciousness it would take to simply navigate a given stretch of land free of human influence; in other words, a wilderness before mass development.
The sights and sounds that one has to pay attention to for instance. One really has to know how to read the land, and have an intimate acquaintance with detailed sensory knowledge of the surrounding environment.
Beyond that, there must be a certainty behind one's own instincts, and one's lineage of traditions and knowledge in navigating the land. This is a certainty that in the face of human development sinks so far into the background that it has become moot.
For example, a street, sidewalk, and street signs presuppose so much: generations of development and regularity that make one's presence there - at least one's fleeting and intentional presence - a certainty before the question is raised.
Yes, we've had thousands of years of human development - oscillating in density and intensity of course - but depending on where you are, what you are doing, and when you are doing it, the consciousness involved can be a very different thing.
The sights and sounds that one has to pay attention to for instance. One really has to know how to read the land, and have an intimate acquaintance with detailed sensory knowledge of the surrounding environment.
Beyond that, there must be a certainty behind one's own instincts, and one's lineage of traditions and knowledge in navigating the land. This is a certainty that in the face of human development sinks so far into the background that it has become moot.
For example, a street, sidewalk, and street signs presuppose so much: generations of development and regularity that make one's presence there - at least one's fleeting and intentional presence - a certainty before the question is raised.
Yes, we've had thousands of years of human development - oscillating in density and intensity of course - but depending on where you are, what you are doing, and when you are doing it, the consciousness involved can be a very different thing.
Sunday, September 15, 2019
Implications of Succession
One interesting way to view our current predicament is through the lens of ecological succession.
The study of succession is really just the study of a certain ecosystem within a given slice of time, with the observation that the ecosystem will progress, regress, persist and hold in a balance, change, or collapse in a certain way. As such, a succession will have a certain marked off beginning and end.
The beginning typically occurs after a significant enough disturbance, such as a wildfire, volcanic event, landslide, severe storm, human development, or even mass extinction - ends in their own respects - which free up space and resources for new ecosystems to form. Or else an existing system is colonized by invasive species, which alter the balance of the system and pull in new and disruptive elements.
At the beginning, you have your pioneer species come in, and their ongoing actions on the environment set out the conditions for subsequent species to emerge, and then so on in groupings or waves until the system stabilizes and becomes a climax community. At least until that climax community undermines the conditions for its own existence, is colonized, or is wiped out by some powerful and catastrophic force.
One of the implications of this is that everything grows together and supports each other - at least until power concentrates, which we will get to. So if a forest or field is left to its own devices, it takes the action of the totality of the current grouping of life forms to create the conditions for certain types of life to flourish.
A certain species of tree for example may need a lot of sun exposure, and so requires fertile and clear land to grow tall and remain exposed, and as that species' density increases, its propagation slows in that given area, but then creates niches for other types of species which can form something like an understory of small trees and shrubs which require less light, and in which the new soil composition is favorable.
And then the selection of those trees and plants depends on the local availability of their seed, and their modes of propagation, and the composition of the wildlife that is also feeding on and propagating those plants.
So of course we can see that this can take a long time, and really whatever thrives just happens to thrive given the vagaries of the natural forces within a given slice of time in a given ecosystem's lifespan.
We can also view the simple clearing of a plot of land for a garden as a small process of succession - and then the existence of the human settlement and the human organism itself as part of a larger process of succession.
When you clear forest land and then fence it off and dig up the ground to plant a garden, if that clearing is large enough and traumatic enough, which it usually is, you won't just have another section of forest spring up from the soil if you stop the process and just let it go. That would be rather preposterous and miraculous.
This is the case even though you're in the middle of the forest and surrounded by forest. No, what you get is the proliferation of "weeds," plants that are well suited to that cleared space, which tend to be undesirable and which don't have enough nutrition or body to be thought of as suitable food. Who knows what you might get in a couple of generations? But that's more than enough time for starvation to set in.
If you could simply tear up the land and then scatter a bunch of desired seeds for food crops, and then have an ecosystem of desired food species spring up and flourish without any intensive human labor, why, we'd have our mythical Eden ages ago. But this is simply not the case. A thoroughly altered landscape will take off in all sorts of wild directions away from the interest of the entity doing the altering, and it could take generations to produce desirable food again, so it takes labor and knowledge following the altering to set the conditions in place to maintain the desired food crops.
Which is why you typically see large-scale agricultural systems requiring enormous amounts of human, animal, and mechanical labor and concentrated resources. Even no-till and permaculture methods require a fair amount of labor and much care.
There might have been something approximating an Eden some time ago, in which human activity was low impact and the ecological era allowed for an abundance of usable and desirable food as a matter of course. But much has happened since then.
There is a lot of interesting stuff to get at within that progression: say, the nature of indigenous communities and the nature and origins of civilization and extreme human expansion, and why those things happened.
But I only have the time and energy to get to my central point: that we have this situation in which power is concentrating and human activity is perpetually intensifying and expanding. As a result of this, to grow a whole mess of desired foods taken from all different parts of the world over the surface of vast expanses of land alters the land in profound ways that sets all sorts of chaotic living forces in motion.
There is a relationship between organized destruction and creation in which the more concentrated power is present, the more propensity there is for that power to affect the environment around it and ultimately undermine the original generative forces of that thing's power, in which that thing concentrated its power in a distinct ecological time frame forged over generations upon generations of succession.
And to maintain that power, and to continually produce the objects of desire which are to maintain and expand that power, a constant stream of labor and technological application must be applied to hold in place that given mode of organization, which of course faces diminishing returns in the form of soil degradation and disrupted external ecosystems, which requires further expansion and intensification of activity, until there is no more space to tear up and exploit. And then?
The study of succession is really just the study of a certain ecosystem within a given slice of time, with the observation that the ecosystem will progress, regress, persist and hold in a balance, change, or collapse in a certain way. As such, a succession will have a certain marked off beginning and end.
The beginning typically occurs after a significant enough disturbance, such as a wildfire, volcanic event, landslide, severe storm, human development, or even mass extinction - ends in their own respects - which free up space and resources for new ecosystems to form. Or else an existing system is colonized by invasive species, which alter the balance of the system and pull in new and disruptive elements.
At the beginning, you have your pioneer species come in, and their ongoing actions on the environment set out the conditions for subsequent species to emerge, and then so on in groupings or waves until the system stabilizes and becomes a climax community. At least until that climax community undermines the conditions for its own existence, is colonized, or is wiped out by some powerful and catastrophic force.
One of the implications of this is that everything grows together and supports each other - at least until power concentrates, which we will get to. So if a forest or field is left to its own devices, it takes the action of the totality of the current grouping of life forms to create the conditions for certain types of life to flourish.
A certain species of tree for example may need a lot of sun exposure, and so requires fertile and clear land to grow tall and remain exposed, and as that species' density increases, its propagation slows in that given area, but then creates niches for other types of species which can form something like an understory of small trees and shrubs which require less light, and in which the new soil composition is favorable.
And then the selection of those trees and plants depends on the local availability of their seed, and their modes of propagation, and the composition of the wildlife that is also feeding on and propagating those plants.
So of course we can see that this can take a long time, and really whatever thrives just happens to thrive given the vagaries of the natural forces within a given slice of time in a given ecosystem's lifespan.
We can also view the simple clearing of a plot of land for a garden as a small process of succession - and then the existence of the human settlement and the human organism itself as part of a larger process of succession.
When you clear forest land and then fence it off and dig up the ground to plant a garden, if that clearing is large enough and traumatic enough, which it usually is, you won't just have another section of forest spring up from the soil if you stop the process and just let it go. That would be rather preposterous and miraculous.
This is the case even though you're in the middle of the forest and surrounded by forest. No, what you get is the proliferation of "weeds," plants that are well suited to that cleared space, which tend to be undesirable and which don't have enough nutrition or body to be thought of as suitable food. Who knows what you might get in a couple of generations? But that's more than enough time for starvation to set in.
If you could simply tear up the land and then scatter a bunch of desired seeds for food crops, and then have an ecosystem of desired food species spring up and flourish without any intensive human labor, why, we'd have our mythical Eden ages ago. But this is simply not the case. A thoroughly altered landscape will take off in all sorts of wild directions away from the interest of the entity doing the altering, and it could take generations to produce desirable food again, so it takes labor and knowledge following the altering to set the conditions in place to maintain the desired food crops.
Which is why you typically see large-scale agricultural systems requiring enormous amounts of human, animal, and mechanical labor and concentrated resources. Even no-till and permaculture methods require a fair amount of labor and much care.
There might have been something approximating an Eden some time ago, in which human activity was low impact and the ecological era allowed for an abundance of usable and desirable food as a matter of course. But much has happened since then.
There is a lot of interesting stuff to get at within that progression: say, the nature of indigenous communities and the nature and origins of civilization and extreme human expansion, and why those things happened.
But I only have the time and energy to get to my central point: that we have this situation in which power is concentrating and human activity is perpetually intensifying and expanding. As a result of this, to grow a whole mess of desired foods taken from all different parts of the world over the surface of vast expanses of land alters the land in profound ways that sets all sorts of chaotic living forces in motion.
There is a relationship between organized destruction and creation in which the more concentrated power is present, the more propensity there is for that power to affect the environment around it and ultimately undermine the original generative forces of that thing's power, in which that thing concentrated its power in a distinct ecological time frame forged over generations upon generations of succession.
And to maintain that power, and to continually produce the objects of desire which are to maintain and expand that power, a constant stream of labor and technological application must be applied to hold in place that given mode of organization, which of course faces diminishing returns in the form of soil degradation and disrupted external ecosystems, which requires further expansion and intensification of activity, until there is no more space to tear up and exploit. And then?
Me
What they often get at with "God" - or what is "logically real" or "empirically evident" or the "way of the market" for that matter - is really just another wave in that vast and infinite ocean we loosely call reality. This is apparent in the "God disapproves of this" and "God disapproves of that" language, which carves out a limited extended thing, made up of the "goods" and set against the "bads" and so on.
But somehow that wave is it and really all there is. Which is true to an extent, as it is difficult to entirely escape the wave in one's own lifetime, or even in multiple generations. But to mistake that failure to escape as some sort of ontological absolute - in which the wave is projected into all of eternity as all there is - is to commit some sort of spiritual imperialism, which leads eventually to just plain material imperialism. Which, to be fair, probably leads to the extent and the power of the wave, resulting in its inescapability.
If what one is is all that exists, then it follows that anything that contradicts what one is is necessarily out of place or worse, evil, and therefore should be destroyed, reorganized, and reincorporated into what one is. There are of course different disorganizations and different evils which have an entirely different quality from each other, depending on where they originate, and therefore they have a different moral heft or value depending on the observer. But that's another issue.
This is a situation in which one extends one's own limited imprint over the rest of the living world, and wherever one has the actual energy and power to extend, one has to crush and wipe away that living world that one is extending over, in favor of one's own living world. Which is all the more destructive the more dramatic the expansion one's own self is undergoing.
Which raises the question: what came first? Did the spiritual, ideological, and material imperialism arise out of the raw forces of expansion, or was the expansion encouraged and influenced by the imperialism? I'm being a bit coy perhaps, but raising naive questions can lead to all sorts of interesting avenues.
A bit like exploration. If one has already decided on where a given path goes, then one will choose whether to go down it or not, depending on one's intentions. One then carves a path. Or a rut. Just by being in motion in relation to previous activity. But if one cocks one's head and asks, "what if?" then who knows where one ends up? In an oasis? Dead? And maybe giving up and asking these questions - when all of the other paths turn out to be terminal - is itself a forced path.
But somehow that wave is it and really all there is. Which is true to an extent, as it is difficult to entirely escape the wave in one's own lifetime, or even in multiple generations. But to mistake that failure to escape as some sort of ontological absolute - in which the wave is projected into all of eternity as all there is - is to commit some sort of spiritual imperialism, which leads eventually to just plain material imperialism. Which, to be fair, probably leads to the extent and the power of the wave, resulting in its inescapability.
If what one is is all that exists, then it follows that anything that contradicts what one is is necessarily out of place or worse, evil, and therefore should be destroyed, reorganized, and reincorporated into what one is. There are of course different disorganizations and different evils which have an entirely different quality from each other, depending on where they originate, and therefore they have a different moral heft or value depending on the observer. But that's another issue.
This is a situation in which one extends one's own limited imprint over the rest of the living world, and wherever one has the actual energy and power to extend, one has to crush and wipe away that living world that one is extending over, in favor of one's own living world. Which is all the more destructive the more dramatic the expansion one's own self is undergoing.
Which raises the question: what came first? Did the spiritual, ideological, and material imperialism arise out of the raw forces of expansion, or was the expansion encouraged and influenced by the imperialism? I'm being a bit coy perhaps, but raising naive questions can lead to all sorts of interesting avenues.
A bit like exploration. If one has already decided on where a given path goes, then one will choose whether to go down it or not, depending on one's intentions. One then carves a path. Or a rut. Just by being in motion in relation to previous activity. But if one cocks one's head and asks, "what if?" then who knows where one ends up? In an oasis? Dead? And maybe giving up and asking these questions - when all of the other paths turn out to be terminal - is itself a forced path.
Monday, September 02, 2019
On Perceptions in Space
The impressions that space and the ambient environment can give have quite a profound effect on one's own basic mood and perception, which can then in turn powerfully shape the thoughts and experiences which occur on that base.
Going through a pass on a cloudy day for example can really serve to direct one's thoughts on the immediate surroundings, and give one the feeling of being enclosed and introspective, whereas a clear day can reveal the full spread of the landscape, and direct one's attention out and give rise to wide open and spacious thoughts.
Going through a pass on a cloudy day for example can really serve to direct one's thoughts on the immediate surroundings, and give one the feeling of being enclosed and introspective, whereas a clear day can reveal the full spread of the landscape, and direct one's attention out and give rise to wide open and spacious thoughts.
Exploration
Just the process of exploring backcountry land - that is, land that stretches beyond a given established trail system in a wilderness, and which must be navigated with map, compass, and altimeter - can provide a number of useful lessons and insights.
First, one has to relearn all sorts of old logic systems for navigating territory, as well as how to pay attention to how land features work, what they say visually and aurally, and what it all means for one's own orientation to the land.
This is because modern trail systems are so ubiquitous, and so convenient, so that they necessarily relegate more fine-grained navigational details to the background, or even out of one's attention completely. Yes, trails can sometimes disappear or become ambiguous and one has to navigate then, but for the most part one is on a pressed down track which has been well-traveled, with all of the expectations of time, distance, and energy that come with that.
Without all of that, one has to make various decisions concerning time, energy, and orientation. Where do the rivers go, and where will the water be? Should one get up on this higher shelf of land before one gets stuck and pushed down further into the valley where one doesn't want to go? How long will it take to traverse this field of crumbled rock? What landmarks and high points can be utilized for navigation? What wildlife can one expect in a given biome? How distinguished is the landscape, and can one retrace one's steps if one gets into trouble? And so on.
It is the presence of density and regularity of human activity that allows for the stability and accessibility of one's own human needs and expectations. Where people have been en masse, one knows one can have an easier and more dependable time, and focus one's energy and thinking on simpler navigation, such as being in physical shape, wearing the right clothes, allowing enough time, bringing the right supplies, and so on.
Even in the backcountry, traversal is easier and faster when as little as a trickle of people have come through, and there are cairn markers to follow and informal packed down trails to follow which usually mark out the most sensible traversals.
It is when one is lost and running out of time, with the sun going down, that all of the concerns of navigation and economy of energy become so pressing, and take up so much space in one's consciousness. And when one is alone and meets a bear on the pathway, one's own frailty in relation to the land becomes all the more apparent.
First, one has to relearn all sorts of old logic systems for navigating territory, as well as how to pay attention to how land features work, what they say visually and aurally, and what it all means for one's own orientation to the land.
This is because modern trail systems are so ubiquitous, and so convenient, so that they necessarily relegate more fine-grained navigational details to the background, or even out of one's attention completely. Yes, trails can sometimes disappear or become ambiguous and one has to navigate then, but for the most part one is on a pressed down track which has been well-traveled, with all of the expectations of time, distance, and energy that come with that.
Without all of that, one has to make various decisions concerning time, energy, and orientation. Where do the rivers go, and where will the water be? Should one get up on this higher shelf of land before one gets stuck and pushed down further into the valley where one doesn't want to go? How long will it take to traverse this field of crumbled rock? What landmarks and high points can be utilized for navigation? What wildlife can one expect in a given biome? How distinguished is the landscape, and can one retrace one's steps if one gets into trouble? And so on.
It is the presence of density and regularity of human activity that allows for the stability and accessibility of one's own human needs and expectations. Where people have been en masse, one knows one can have an easier and more dependable time, and focus one's energy and thinking on simpler navigation, such as being in physical shape, wearing the right clothes, allowing enough time, bringing the right supplies, and so on.
Even in the backcountry, traversal is easier and faster when as little as a trickle of people have come through, and there are cairn markers to follow and informal packed down trails to follow which usually mark out the most sensible traversals.
It is when one is lost and running out of time, with the sun going down, that all of the concerns of navigation and economy of energy become so pressing, and take up so much space in one's consciousness. And when one is alone and meets a bear on the pathway, one's own frailty in relation to the land becomes all the more apparent.
Foreboding
There was a tree up on the hill above us that was making all of this noise for a week or so. These loud cracks could be heard in intervals, and at first it sounded like a large animal fooling around up there in the forest. Well, finally the tree fell with a massive crash, revealing itself.
When I got to the shattered stump, it seemed to tell a story. The stump was twisted and splintered in a way that suggested that gravity was pulling the tree downhill. In its weakened state, it was twisting downhill and vulnerable and stressed parts of the grain were supposedly snapping with a loud crack in intervals, until after the final snap, the entire tree twisted off its base and fell with a crash downhill.
After a certain point, the weakened tree's own massive weight sheared it against itself, and nothing it could do could prevent it from leaning and turning against itself and eventually snapping against itself and falling. One could imagine that fateful second when one loses balance, and no attempted compensation can arrest the fall.
There is plenty going on in this foreboding metaphor, whether in the individual instance or the macro trend, as the falling trees seem to be increasing with frequency. Apparently the hemlocks in particular have been afflicted with some sort of disease (pests are another issue), and are falling in droves. It is not as apparent with the alders, but something is going on with them too.
When I got to the shattered stump, it seemed to tell a story. The stump was twisted and splintered in a way that suggested that gravity was pulling the tree downhill. In its weakened state, it was twisting downhill and vulnerable and stressed parts of the grain were supposedly snapping with a loud crack in intervals, until after the final snap, the entire tree twisted off its base and fell with a crash downhill.
After a certain point, the weakened tree's own massive weight sheared it against itself, and nothing it could do could prevent it from leaning and turning against itself and eventually snapping against itself and falling. One could imagine that fateful second when one loses balance, and no attempted compensation can arrest the fall.
There is plenty going on in this foreboding metaphor, whether in the individual instance or the macro trend, as the falling trees seem to be increasing with frequency. Apparently the hemlocks in particular have been afflicted with some sort of disease (pests are another issue), and are falling in droves. It is not as apparent with the alders, but something is going on with them too.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)