I will be sharing this with all of my students this next week.
As a primary care physician for decades, I have come to realize that we in the modern world have really lost our way. I see it every day all day in my patients. It is so hard to characterize that which has been lost with words, but the word that I think most covers it is "enchantment". To be a part of our living world, to have the ability to put ourselves into the minds of our ancestors, even the animals around us. To recognize and be a part of the glorious rhythms of our world.
But who needs all that when we have Prozac, Adderall and Hydrocodone? And all the other blessings of our medical "science" and technology that are based in corporatism?
As I so often think when I listen to your podcasts ----- Real scientists, as I aspire to be, and as you and your husband clearly are, live in a realm of wonder and enchantment as well. "Just look at the amazing things going on in our world." May we never lose that.
Elegaic and lovely. For a few short minutes I was walking with you in my mind's eye. You convey a real sense of time; place; and, above all, value. Tah very muchly.
I literally just read the first paragraph and I had to stop and say - I have no idea what a tanager is but it kind of looks like teenager, so when I read the line "Now come a mixed foraging flock of hungry tanagers, shockingly bright in every color of the rainbow." it brought me back to a few years ago when I had teen boys at home, and now I'm picturing you in the middle of some jungle surrounded by hungry teenagers - a bunch of social media influencers who came to the amazon looking for photo ops in sponsored makeup and fashionable clothing.
This must be a common experience, for I to have pondered the same musings. Just in different places and about different times.
My father's family is from what is now the least populated county in MN. Traverse, population 3200, is half as populated as it was in 1970 when I was in grade school and I spent summer weeks on my uncle's farm.
It was new to me then. I had no base line from which to subtract the loss, but surely the erasure was well underway.
They showed me where the one room school house that my uncles and aunts attended in the 40s and 50s stood. Their farm was the closest to the school so they got to carry the school's daily water.
As I got older, and visited now and then, I began to notice the farmsteads turning abandon, and after a time getting raised and burnt. They were wiped away like dinner crumbs on the counter before the sponge - to remove yet another obstacle from before the relentless plow.
Those farmsteads, the houses, the pig barns, machine sheds, chicken coops, all surrounded by wind breaks of trees that gave shelter from the cold North wind, vanished like a David Copperfield trick.
Like so many of the trails you write about, these houses and the families that made them homes are gone, and surviving in imagination or maybe memory. People no different than me left a mark that was far from undull able. Now we can only imagine the merlad of conversations, emotions, hopes and dreams of these people who are no longer there.
I have always been fascinated by pre-literary history. People as complex as us, probably smarter and almost certainly more robust surely have a rich history that we can never know. The remains of ancient campsites and graves can only tell us so much. What was the world of the time before the Younger Dryas like? What have we lost along the way? Gobeleki Tepe hints at so much. Before horticulture and animal husbandry, humans were working cooperatively for generations to raise megaliths. What came before?
I was raised to treasure nature, and have reveled in the wildest places only in NY and Alaska, but rather than feeling serene and nostalgic as I read this, I found myself pondering what our culture will predominately leave behind, and thought, “a shit ton of non-biodegradable plastics and chemicals in the earth and sea”. Sigh. For an eternal optimist I certainly have my black-pilled moments. One of the things I adore (and feel awe over) in the woods in my area of Alaska, though, is when I realize that the paths I use were forged by moose and bear and wolf and lynx, and very likely also the thriving indigenous Dena’ina who had peopled the area. I live where a creek with running salmon merges into a river with even more salmon only a few miles where even more salmon run. Where evidence of winter houses still remain (but only the square pits as these were made of wood and branch and moss), but also where Russians wiped out a whole village during a particularly vicious time in history... what is the word for the pill one takes that is both black and white yet certainly not dull and grey?
I put together a fanny pack / "survival" belt after finding myself less that sure where I was in the grouse woods. The sun was out so I knew which way my road was and when it would get dark. It wasn't really a close call, but without the sun I'd have been a lot less certain. Of course, for it to be useful, I'd have to actually bring that fanny pack with me. It still looks like brand new.
And... yea. from a Minnesota point of view, why would anyone willingly go hiking a glacier? We get enough snow, ice, wind, and cold without going to look for it. At least while snowmobiling, should your sled break down, you have a trail out. And particularly in Wisconsin, you are rarely more than 10 miles from a bar.
There are many "places I want to see still"... Great list. I'm with you.
You can, I have, canoed a piece of the Lewis and Clark trail. Montana has preserved 120 ish miles of wild and scenic Missouri River.
We had read Undaunted Courage. We had Lewis and Clark's journals with us, and read their words around camp fires as we camped in some of their camp sites.
It's actually a very doable trip. There are outfitters ready to help you succeed. I'd like to spend a few days on the Oregon trail, oxen pulling a wagon.
About your comment people like us would have all stayed on the east coast.
Can you start a fire with natural items found around you? I can't.
So much is gone. Assume Northern Indians who needed fire to survive winters. Did the typical 7 year old know how to light a fire? My guess is it was a skill as common as gathering blueberries.
I wonder how I can get into consequential conversations with other intellectually honest people. Real conversations. Not just 15 seconds of fame afforded by these electronic filters that provide a semblance of access to those who extend a hand to those with interest. I feel like I still have something to offer to society as a whole. Maybe once I've published my book and stuck my head above the offal I will get noticed. The cream must rise at some point right? I have to eventually dive into the pool if I want to enjoy the water. I do not often associate with the "popular opinions" of the masses because that entity moves as a reactive force to stimulation at a cursory level. I require depth and breadth to my view with an occasional lens of magnification to facilitate scrutiny and comprehension. My reality is interested in understanding your reality better but my reality is also important to me so it may seem like your reality is less important but within the scope of allowing my reality to interact with your reality it is how I know to become aware of your reality. My way of becoming familiar with your reality may not suite you but if you allow me to take a look around I can see where our realities overlap and then we can build upon that shared component of our realities.
We never think one green looks bad next to another green because we are so used to seeing the mix of different greens in nature. It's not the same for other colors.
What a wonderful read. I could almost feel myself standing in some of the places you mentioned. So beautiful to contemplate this concept in beautiful places! Thanks for writing.
Thank you so very much for this amazing piece.
I will be sharing this with all of my students this next week.
As a primary care physician for decades, I have come to realize that we in the modern world have really lost our way. I see it every day all day in my patients. It is so hard to characterize that which has been lost with words, but the word that I think most covers it is "enchantment". To be a part of our living world, to have the ability to put ourselves into the minds of our ancestors, even the animals around us. To recognize and be a part of the glorious rhythms of our world.
But who needs all that when we have Prozac, Adderall and Hydrocodone? And all the other blessings of our medical "science" and technology that are based in corporatism?
As I so often think when I listen to your podcasts ----- Real scientists, as I aspire to be, and as you and your husband clearly are, live in a realm of wonder and enchantment as well. "Just look at the amazing things going on in our world." May we never lose that.
Elegaic and lovely. For a few short minutes I was walking with you in my mind's eye. You convey a real sense of time; place; and, above all, value. Tah very muchly.
I literally just read the first paragraph and I had to stop and say - I have no idea what a tanager is but it kind of looks like teenager, so when I read the line "Now come a mixed foraging flock of hungry tanagers, shockingly bright in every color of the rainbow." it brought me back to a few years ago when I had teen boys at home, and now I'm picturing you in the middle of some jungle surrounded by hungry teenagers - a bunch of social media influencers who came to the amazon looking for photo ops in sponsored makeup and fashionable clothing.
This must be a common experience, for I to have pondered the same musings. Just in different places and about different times.
My father's family is from what is now the least populated county in MN. Traverse, population 3200, is half as populated as it was in 1970 when I was in grade school and I spent summer weeks on my uncle's farm.
It was new to me then. I had no base line from which to subtract the loss, but surely the erasure was well underway.
They showed me where the one room school house that my uncles and aunts attended in the 40s and 50s stood. Their farm was the closest to the school so they got to carry the school's daily water.
As I got older, and visited now and then, I began to notice the farmsteads turning abandon, and after a time getting raised and burnt. They were wiped away like dinner crumbs on the counter before the sponge - to remove yet another obstacle from before the relentless plow.
Those farmsteads, the houses, the pig barns, machine sheds, chicken coops, all surrounded by wind breaks of trees that gave shelter from the cold North wind, vanished like a David Copperfield trick.
Like so many of the trails you write about, these houses and the families that made them homes are gone, and surviving in imagination or maybe memory. People no different than me left a mark that was far from undull able. Now we can only imagine the merlad of conversations, emotions, hopes and dreams of these people who are no longer there.
I have always been fascinated by pre-literary history. People as complex as us, probably smarter and almost certainly more robust surely have a rich history that we can never know. The remains of ancient campsites and graves can only tell us so much. What was the world of the time before the Younger Dryas like? What have we lost along the way? Gobeleki Tepe hints at so much. Before horticulture and animal husbandry, humans were working cooperatively for generations to raise megaliths. What came before?
I was raised to treasure nature, and have reveled in the wildest places only in NY and Alaska, but rather than feeling serene and nostalgic as I read this, I found myself pondering what our culture will predominately leave behind, and thought, “a shit ton of non-biodegradable plastics and chemicals in the earth and sea”. Sigh. For an eternal optimist I certainly have my black-pilled moments. One of the things I adore (and feel awe over) in the woods in my area of Alaska, though, is when I realize that the paths I use were forged by moose and bear and wolf and lynx, and very likely also the thriving indigenous Dena’ina who had peopled the area. I live where a creek with running salmon merges into a river with even more salmon only a few miles where even more salmon run. Where evidence of winter houses still remain (but only the square pits as these were made of wood and branch and moss), but also where Russians wiped out a whole village during a particularly vicious time in history... what is the word for the pill one takes that is both black and white yet certainly not dull and grey?
My 2 thoughts.
I put together a fanny pack / "survival" belt after finding myself less that sure where I was in the grouse woods. The sun was out so I knew which way my road was and when it would get dark. It wasn't really a close call, but without the sun I'd have been a lot less certain. Of course, for it to be useful, I'd have to actually bring that fanny pack with me. It still looks like brand new.
And... yea. from a Minnesota point of view, why would anyone willingly go hiking a glacier? We get enough snow, ice, wind, and cold without going to look for it. At least while snowmobiling, should your sled break down, you have a trail out. And particularly in Wisconsin, you are rarely more than 10 miles from a bar.
There are many "places I want to see still"... Great list. I'm with you.
You can, I have, canoed a piece of the Lewis and Clark trail. Montana has preserved 120 ish miles of wild and scenic Missouri River.
We had read Undaunted Courage. We had Lewis and Clark's journals with us, and read their words around camp fires as we camped in some of their camp sites.
It's actually a very doable trip. There are outfitters ready to help you succeed. I'd like to spend a few days on the Oregon trail, oxen pulling a wagon.
About your comment people like us would have all stayed on the east coast.
Can you start a fire with natural items found around you? I can't.
So much is gone. Assume Northern Indians who needed fire to survive winters. Did the typical 7 year old know how to light a fire? My guess is it was a skill as common as gathering blueberries.
This conversation could go on and on.
Thank you for this wonderful walk through the past and into the present.
I wonder how I can get into consequential conversations with other intellectually honest people. Real conversations. Not just 15 seconds of fame afforded by these electronic filters that provide a semblance of access to those who extend a hand to those with interest. I feel like I still have something to offer to society as a whole. Maybe once I've published my book and stuck my head above the offal I will get noticed. The cream must rise at some point right? I have to eventually dive into the pool if I want to enjoy the water. I do not often associate with the "popular opinions" of the masses because that entity moves as a reactive force to stimulation at a cursory level. I require depth and breadth to my view with an occasional lens of magnification to facilitate scrutiny and comprehension. My reality is interested in understanding your reality better but my reality is also important to me so it may seem like your reality is less important but within the scope of allowing my reality to interact with your reality it is how I know to become aware of your reality. My way of becoming familiar with your reality may not suite you but if you allow me to take a look around I can see where our realities overlap and then we can build upon that shared component of our realities.
We never think one green looks bad next to another green because we are so used to seeing the mix of different greens in nature. It's not the same for other colors.
What a wonderful read. I could almost feel myself standing in some of the places you mentioned. So beautiful to contemplate this concept in beautiful places! Thanks for writing.
Beautifully written, a joy to read.