Whilst walking along the Roof of the World...
Some of the best walks are those without a set destination. Point your feet in a direction and get to trekking. It is there you can find wondrous things.
The tundra starts to rust. Recently, I told someone the alpine has that vibe of a juxtaposition of the Scottish Highlands and Patagonia. Being mostly Scottish by ancestry makes me wonder if there's part of its appeal. Then I dismiss the notion as being absurd. I've never been into ancestor worship. How I succeed or fail as me is more important than the glories and blunders of those who came before.
Looking west...
I could say where I stopped is my new happy spot, but I also found this absurd. Erroneously, I was saying that about Grizzly Gulch for a time before I realized how the zen and serenity and magic and mystery and coo-coo ka-choo was in so many of the other places I wandered. I fucking live in my happy place, I realized, like I had to be reminded.
That concept of Kashmir, don't you know?
A ptarmigan chortled an avian hello as I headed down. Recently, I met a man who was obsessed with knowing what another person's trade was and telling everyone his own. These days, when asked what I do I reply with caustic honesty; whatever I fucking well like. I never wanted a career or a house in the ticky-tacky suburbs or the two-point-five kids-one's enough. What I've wanted is to be able to go my own way and do as I please along this personal Tao of Chaos.
I'll be forty-two in two weeks, and, so far, so good...
Kudos to you for doing whatever you fucking well like. I think we all secretly want to do that deep down, but we find ourselves bound by societal norms that have been bred into our way of thinking.
ReplyDeleteThanx:)! I find the labels to be not only limiting, but rather boring. It's a sad social construct that so many of us get pigeonholed by what we do for money, when, in fact, it's not always the end all and be all of existence. Being bound by the social construct of reality is, to mind, not only a form of slavery, but slow death.
DeleteSometimes, I think I secretly hope I'm planting the seeds of subversiveness and seeking one's own bliss and freedom when I purge out these posts...;)
I like the picture quite a lot, reminds me of Alaska. Ptarmigan are a delicious bird, by the way.
ReplyDeleteI'll offer a slightly different view on the rest: sometimes what we want to do, perhaps passionately, is something that puts us in a slot, a niche. Mate to someone you love, parent to kids you love. And you sacrifice time from your life, years, to do this. At some point you know if this is good or not, if it makes you happy.
I've been one of the luck ones, my life while sometimes constrained, has been one I'd live over. No, I didn't go on a milk run from La Paz to Tahiti, and I didn't fish the sea run browns of Patagonia. But I have three grown kids who love me. And I have colleagues who think I was good.
I hear Old Blue Eyes singing that song and I identify with it too.
And that's what matters, I think. The being happy and having done it the Sinatra context.
DeleteDo, as they say, as thou wilt. :-)
ReplyDeletePearl
And to thine own self be true...;)
DeleteVery clever observation buried here: that we all carry our happy places with us.
ReplyDeleteStill, there are spots on earth that seem to speak to some kind of collective genetic memory in me. It's too evident for me not to recognize it.
Thank you. Glad you noticed.
DeleteEdward Abbey and Bill McKibben are two authors that I've read echoing your thought of a landscape resounding down in the marrow.