Shanks Pony

I walk in all seasons, which here in Indiana number a trusty four. 

I walk in all emotional states. Sometimes to celebrate them. Sometimes to mend them. Sometimes simply to experience them.

Sometimes, as I walk, I pray.  

Sometimes too, as I walk, I cast my thoughts beyond my immediate experience, by means of memory. Thus to walk in different directions over the landscape, can also be to walk to different venues and destinations in time. 

People do not estimate highly enough the freedom there is to be had and enjoyed in walking. They consider the automobile a symbol of freedom. But in terms of choice of vector of motion, the freedom that a car can give us is slight. In a car, your movements are limited to the road itself. But to walk is generally to be free of such restrictive straight-line proscriptions, and straight lines, by the way, are unnatural. There are no straight lines in nature. Only the human mind imposes straight lines, and a profusion of them is inevitably tied up in natural destruction. Witness logging roads. Or the modern, machine-plowed mono-culture farm-field. 

It is said that walking is really a perpetual falling forward, which we arrest again and again with each laying down of the foot. Thus our feet prove to be something akin to guardian angels, that protect us time and again from harm with a knowledge and a timing all their own. By giving ourselves up to their protection we make self-locomotive progress: a kind of daily example of incarnational Grace.

I walk to two libraries here in town. I walk to church. I walk to the university campus for lectures and recitals. I walk to rehearsals as well as to coffee shops and cafes to meet with friends. I walk to concerts, and I walk back home humming whatever tunes linger--the last bright leaves hanging on the tree of the immediate musical mind. On many mornings I walk my wife to work, and in the afternoons, walk her back home as we talk over our respective days, and what was accomplished, and what setbacks we experienced, and what moments of enlightenment. I walk to the barber, and return home minimally lighter. I walk to the grocery and return more heavy-laden. I walk to the park. I walk through the park. I crisscross the park, sometimes touching the trees as if playing (with rooted beings) an unfair form of tag, but really blessing them. I walk down the block to my brother-in-law's, where the family vegetable garden flourishes, and return with radishes and lettuces and whatever else may be in season and delectable. Occasionally, it's true, all this walking represents itself to my impatient mind as a slow, duty-motivated chore, but for the most part, I walk without regret, and even prize the task. My heart is the lighter for it. My body the better exercised. My conscience clear of carbon. 

Note: It cannot be emphasized enough that a nine volt nomad, when walking, need not have in mind, or even pretend to have in mind, an immediate destination. In fact, for a nine volt nomad, the greatest pedestrian pleasure is often achieved with no destination in mind at all. Destination is so often tied to ambition and achievement, which should have as little place as possible in a low-voltage mental realm. Thus setting aside obvious goals in our ambulatory activities underlines our resistance to many of society's most overweening faults, among them hubris, naiive belief in the inevitability of progress, and optimism without reasonable cause.

But more on the matter of destinations later. The subject of the practical uses of walking (of which destination of course must be an integral part) deserves a post of its own someday, since I lump it in with a theme that requires deep and sustained reflection: to wit, the matter of physical labor, and our present-day disrespect for it. Our society's favoring of convenience over self-reliance, its death dance with complexity, and fixation on the machine.  The Hubbert curve in the years ahead will wean us from much of this, to the accompaniment of much wailing and grief. So why not live ahead of that curve? Why not, in the proleptic vanguard of adaptation, learn again to walk with joy?

For now though, to doggedly pursue my present course, I wish to enumerate what it is that, on my walks, strolls, walkabouts, and hikes, I encounter and experience. And here, out of a desire to cultivate my wit, I intend to strive for manful concision. After all, our mortal nature, both as readers and writers, is an issue to consider. And besides, I seek the throne of a toadstool in the electric garden of wit...and wit dear readers is a nine-volt virtue par excellence. Nothing thrives more on abridgement and concision than wit. Nothing shines more bright on less, except perhaps children at play, otters of all ages, and baby foxes. 

Then what, to wit, as I walk, do I encounter both by habit and by chance? Well, to start with, sadly I encounter specimens of the automobile, some in farty motion, others thank God at least for the moment in a state of silent park. As little must be said about these as possible, if I am to keep my wit, for I do not look kindly on cars, given that they deprive the world of walkers, and in a host of other ways render me irredeemably grumpy. 

So to proceed. Objects of interest visible on my walks include the many homes of my neighborhood:  some of which are intended for humans, and others of which--martin houses, dog houses, robins' nests, and cold frames--are not. Regularly on my outings, I also sight ground-holes into which chipmunks and groundhogs will scurry, sometimes at speeds that suggest the hole is vacuuming them in. I also have witnessed raccoons and opossums taking refuge in the city sewers.  

I see flowers in great variety. I see trees, including my favorite native species, the dogwood--which in the springtime features flowers that really look like flowers, unlike say the maple, whose flowers are difficult to accept as flowers because they are so small and un-bloomy. I prefer my flowers large enough to be capable of gesture. 

When out on a walk I consistently wear a red backpack. This backpack serves not only to contain items that I wish to carry with me--apples or whiskey or volumes of James--but also to attract the attention of members of the public to my low-voltage but nevertheless mysteriously bright existence, a brightness produced in part (I am convinced) by the rubbing of my shanks against one another while in my pedestrian state, which you see imparts a sort of static electrical polish to my physical aura, an ambient electrical charge that surrounds me as with a halo of light. Call it the Ambulatory Aurora, after the goddess of dawn, who herself is clearly a pedestrian. For evidence of which I note that Horatio, Hamlet's good friend, informs us that "...the morn, in russet mantle clad/Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill." 

Mark you--"walks!" To walk is to mirror the morning. To walk is to model the dawn.

Walk to feel of the wind on your face. Walk to greet the sun. Walk if you dare with saints and visionary companions. I have for instance walked mile after mile with William Blake, a most marvelous and indefatigable walker, and a fine conversationalist about matters both infinite and eternal, though I must also mention that some of the dead who have offered to walk with me, I have had to refuse, as being the same tiresome ambitious bores in death as they were in life. Once for instance, I was forced to chase off Thomas Edison with a large stick, because he kept dogging me at my heels, arguing the case for infrastructural DC current. "Give it up man," I said. But he was unable to listen, for even in the regions of the dead (where by the way Tesla his great rival is universally celebrated) he has not bothered to purchase a hearing aid, being so egotistical that he cannot take part in mutual conversation with any other being, much less bear to hear his rival praised.  

Above all I walk for sanity. You see, as a nine volt nomad, sanity is always my first business, and practically my sovereign vocational goal. Sanity is why Jesus periodically got away to pray, and Thoreau went to Walden, and Buddha sat beneath the boddhi tree. Yes, walking is my boddhi tree. My cabin of logs and wattle. My daily wilderness away. Paradoxically it's the outer motion involved in the act that imparts the requisite inner sense of stillness, as the hurricane both generates and harbors the eye. And though my feet and legs and arms may be in motion, the inward remainder is still and calm. And the best of me can think.

HB

Impressment

For those who dislike camping, or who just fail to see its attractions, believe me, I can understand, and do sympathize. Yes, having in my time experienced many of the vicissitudes common to the pursuit, really I can comprehend why the prospect of shooing flies off the melting lunch-butter, or of lying on a cot in a damp nylon bag while it drizzles for hours on the tent roof, or of having to stumble four hundred paces to the bathroom in the dead of the night (coyotes howling) on account of a case of diarrhea--all adds up to an experience that fails to entice. Somehow though--I suppose through some anomalous short circuit in the brain--I am able to take the bad of camping and lump it in with the good, like a bitter turnip tossed in with a wholesome stew, but redeemed in the mish-mash and warm rosy sundown of composite digestion. Even a half-mile walk I take every evening down to the trash bins, to dispose of a tea bag or two or three or four (and whatever else leftover and comestible must be kept from the clutches of the masked artful dodger called the coon) I find I can turn into an opportunity to admire the rising moon or the acrobatic flitting of the swifts, or the gymnastics of the last few children on the playground as they hang from the bars and swing on the swings like the primates that they in some playful inner space very well know they are. Yes yes always always I thoroughly enjoy the time.

We go together, my wife and son and I, always to the same Wisconsin state park. We stay for two weeks, and every morning of every day we go hiking, and every afternoon of every day devote to napping in our vintage canvas tent and to reading books and to daydreaming and study. We turn in every night around nine. This is when the sun goes down in June and the whippoorwills start their calling.

Then comes the hard part. Going back.

Right from the beginning, the drive back invariably depresses me. Picture now you're leaving the park in all its beautiful bright particulars behind you: its bluebirds and scarlet tanagers, its sandstone bluffs and jack pines, its waterfalls and fields purple with lupine and other fields dotted with daisies, and you pull out onto the highway and roll up the car windows and immediately yes immediately no longer are you the conscious alert observer or wakeful celebrant of the natural scene, but just another mobile encapsulated consumer participating in the hot flow of human economic blood, and the interstate here serves pretty much literally as an artery and you're an automotive blood cell moving along within the artery and here's a billboard for vodka and here's the exit for the water park and here's the body of a deer.

A metaphor to consider:

Back in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the British navy, finding itself chronically understaffed, to Americans' consternation practiced what was called "the press" or impressment.  This was a form of forced conscription, and proved on the American side to be one of the primary incitements to war with England in 1812. Simply put, British captains out on the high seas had a habit of helping themselves to a few seamen here and there; these might be sailors on merchant fleets, or sometimes even the fleets of rival navies. The general routine went like this: take one powerful warship (yours) and swing it alongside a helpless smaller ship, have your own men draw a few sabers, speak the necessary number and voila! The number of men demanded was now yours.  All this was easy enough to accomplish, given the isolated situation of a warship on the open sea; usually there were just no other ships around to call you out or challenge you.

Now here's my question today, which is actually a two fold question that breaks into all sorts of other questions too, a sort of interrogative billiard shot that splits I think into all sorts of spins and ricochets of implication.

1. In the first place, isn't impressment a pretty decent metaphor for the way we treat the planet and all its life forms? that is, always as a ship to serve us, always as a resource for the taking, always as something to toy with to suit our desires. Just this morning I note that researchers have apparently cooked up a way involving neural implants and video game joysticks, to remotely control cockroaches. At first it sounds  like a joke, but no it's real, and, regardless of how you feel about roaches, clearly a case of impressment.

2. In the second place, given an economic system sustained by the impressment of nature, is it any wonder that the same system presses so many human beings into service to it as well, in ways both rank and subtle? The obvious recent case concerns the sweatshop workers in Bangladesh--the hundreds dead, the thousands affected by that building collapse. But consider too, another phenomenon: all the young people in the US currently seeking (generally at great cost) college degrees, though with little hope of finding work that will enable them to pay off their student debt, when, after graduation, that debt comes due. Again, a case of impressment. A case of "do this, whether it's good for you or not. Feed the machine." Moreover there's plenty of evidence both anecdotal and statistical to suggest that in the face of their uncertain, debt-laden future, students' primary concern surprise surprise in pursuing their degrees has little to do with growing into more thoughtful, informed citizens, or with enjoying and appreciating the fruits of civilization, or even with simply enjoying their youth; it has to do with arming themselves for a competitive workforce. You see, the culture itself has been hijacked for staff, and all of us hoodwinked into believing there is no way for us to prosper unless we live in conflict and competition with one another. Well, it's time to question all this. Time to quit swabbing the deck until we know the destination. And mutiny too if needed.

Find your way back to the home you love. Take passionate refuge in an independent mind.

HB

Two Week Hiatus

I am taking a two week hiatus from the blog. I will be on vacation (camping in Wisconsin) and away from the internet.

HB

Creed

I believe in a universe that participates in our lives
In birds that sing on our behalf and waves on lakes
That continually throw diamonds across our paths of thought.
I believe that metal and glass respond sensitively to our touch
And that car engines can be known closely as lovers.

This is not to say the universe is centered on the human.
Birds have their own centers, burning hearts of song
Bunched like grapes within them,
And the moon shines, yes without our gazing.
It is to say that all things are a unity,
A One that may manifest itself diversely
But blossoms from a single seed and may be
Imagined folded back into that seed.
It's to say the human is the bird and the bird is the human
And that when birds sing they sing a human song
And that when humans sing, they sing a song of birds.
It's to say the moon finds purpose when we look to the moon,
And that we find purpose when the moon reaches into us,
Swaying the cells of our blood in minutest tides.

To say the universe participates in our lives
Is to say it's time to begin anew:
Time to act from the spirit again in reverence for the One
The spirit apprehends. Don't the atoms of air
That oxygenate our brains take part in thought?
Aren't we porous, replaced atom for atom with the passage of years?
Then why disbelieve in unity, why involve ourselves
So thoroughly in separation--doubting, disbelieving
Insisting on proofs when they are right there in front of us?

From me O human, flows every aspect of earth's reality
I tell why the blackbird sings and have the shy willow
As my companion. I even contain your suffering cities.
Nothing can take these from me, but will you have them as well?
Will you put Earth's sorrow at your heart?

HB