Know Thyself

 

I never liked Walden when I read it in high school. How can you appreciate Thoreau when you haven't stepped out into the world yet to know why you might want to choose a different path? To be honest, after my foray into American Lit in sophomore year English, I hated almost all of American literature "classics." It was ten years later and only through the kindness of Steinbeck that I was willing to give any of those writers a second chance. Anyone who has survived one of my English classes knows that it will probably take me another ten years (and maybe a sex change operation) before I'll develop a taste for Hemingway. (Hey, when I was in my 20s, I didn't drink coffee either. Plenty of things have the possibility for change.)

Thoreau took longer to revisit than the rest. Long after I had fallen in love with the words of contemporary nature writers, Lopez and Matthiessen, Gruchow and Williams, I still imagined HD to be stuffy and difficult. Still, one can't really go getting a degree in literature of the environment and not read Thoreau, so when I started my doctoral program, the first book I read was Walden.

I lay out in my yard on a patch of sphagnum moss I've always liked. In the early green of spring I played with the new grass while the Thoreau's words took root some place inside of me. HD and I were the same age. He had the language I was lacking to explain why I had felt compelled to leave teaching, why I was striking out on my own, why I felt I had to do work that mattered. I wish I had been wise enough to use his words in my resignation letter as they were so clear -

"Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and I could not spare any more time for that one."

He understood what I couldn't explain to my closest friends. He understood that my concept of education was all about living it. How else could he write,

"How could youths better learn to live than by once trying the experiment of living?"

And perhaps the words which have shaped my vision of why I do the work I do comes out of these lines which I know many of you have heard me quote,

"Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?"

Without fully planning, it seems Thoreau had been with us on the ride for quite a while.

The weekend was wonderful was so many reasons that I don't even know if I can fully articulate. I enjoyed the hours of driving time where Jon, Brett, Dave and I could talk...sometimes all four of us, sometimes only two. I like being in the kind of company where someone can yell to the driver, "Hey, Dean Moriarty, want to slow it down a little?" and no one has to explain the reference. In the heat of the day with Walden Pond at our feet and people sunbathing I was really having a hard time juggling my thoughts about Thoreau and his quiet and simplicity with the chaos on the beach. Still, when a few of us stood in the shallows in Thoreau's cove, trying to step without disturbing the bottom of the pond, I felt a little more of the spirit of the place. Thoreau wrote on that question of stepping and his words were in my mind as we played,

"I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet a success unexpected in common hours."

(ok, I didn't remember it verbatim, but I did know the gist of it). Up in the woods by the markers of his house I did find the space holy. Jon was right to ask if the places are holy and the people who come to them are transformed or if the act of transformation in that place creates the holiness. I wish I knew. I heard a reference by a Hopi man recently who referred to a place he had gone to as one where "the skin between the worlds is thin." I liked that. The grove of trees where we stood thinking on Thoreau, thinking about ourselves and our place in the world, made me ponder that.

Our evening adventures were a great education for me as well. Although at the time it may have seemed a bit of a hassle, the whole sunset and keys in trunk escapade was amazing to me. Amazing in the way so many people were capable of doing such unique forms of problem solving. Your ingenuity, or your sense of humor in what could have been a stressful situation, are really in large part what make us a community. Everyone helped out in their own way. Some of you even turned into tv superheroes like McGyver. In the future we'll bring that car theft tool so we can open trunks. Where do you think you get one of those? Ebay?

My memories of our night on the beach are somewhat surreal. Lord Chowderfoot, suggestions of baloney bras (eek!), Damian wishing Ruthie at the Cumberland Farms a beautiful life, shopping for dinner with George and actually contemplating the EZ Cheese as a form of dinner but nixing the SPAM. We will never win awards for healthy eating, but making ham sandwiches in moonlight was rather nice. Sharing Heather's first sleep out under the stars. My least prepared camping trip in history, I didn't even have a pair of socks with me and I paid the price, but it was much more fun to travel light. In the past, I always worried about having everything, taking care of everyone. This time, I just tried to let it all happen and it certainly seemed to do just that. Ok, the mosquitoes could have gone somewhere else, but they did come with the atmosphere.

Waking up to the sunrise over the bay made it all worthwhile. I snuck off down the beach to do t'ai chi in the surf and loved listening to the roar of the waves, feet in the water, felt very connected to everything.

I was glad we had time in the morning to do the different know thyself kinds of tests. I think just doing them for ourselves and then having time to think about those things and process what they mean to us individually and then to our community at large will be more and more important over time. A number of you wrote me about how pleased you were to have the language to explain yourselves. I noticed after breakfast when we were making plans that we were already dividing formally into the J's (who decided the next stop on the trip) and then calling over the P's to fill them in on the plan. They had been the same groups before, only now we understood why they were like that. Breakfast was great. Pure and simple....and after a night of fully processed foods it was awfully good to eat something that didn't come with a fine layer of sand in between.

Jon, thank you for suggesting the stop in Rhode Island. I know I really appreciated having some time to just be alone, to be able to write, to see just how many mosquitoes could do a fly-by on my ears. I wrote this in my notebook as I sat in my hideout:

Are places holy because divine revelation happened there. I was so quick to dismiss Walden Pond with its bikinis and bathers but then I couldn't. In the grove of trees with the stones to mark the corners, like Stonehenge, or the ruins from a forgotten time, there was that holiness. The pile of stones, the thought of Henry David picking them up, tossing them in the air and dropping them for another century to sleep seems all too real. It was holy wood. But is so right here.

The roar of the ocean. Took so long to get quiet but the weaving of the web and pull of the wave was enough to feel. Know Thyself. Socrates asked his students to do such a simple thing.

Ants, eyes relaxed and unfocused. I see them everywhere. They move. How do they see the world? How do I?

So tired…no sleep…some thoughts… Hackboys, God and Jesus your captain and co-pilot, chowderfoot, swimming, Brett the seal, duck the pond protector…, red ball sunset… Keys? What keys? Problem solving with wire from a journal and the leatherman… begging for a site… Goose Island… "Ruthie, have a nice life" tents on the beach, lord chowderfoot and the bologna bras, the RS smore – easy cheez, spam and fluff, the stars, the sand, the skeeters, the sunrise… t'ai chi in the spiderwebs of surf… to know thyself…P and J, fire and water and wood, breakfast at Ellie's… talk, talk, walking in water without disturbing the bottom… stepping lightly, why do we always end up talking about William Shatner?… art, education, authenticity, what matters, enlightenment, drugs, music, jiggidy Jesus…the tide rolling in and out… if you could do Thoreau's experiment, would you? Let's make up our own language, play parts, pretend, do what we do all the time…Moon on the water, ants climb up my legs.

What is wildness?

What is wilderness?

Why does wilderness matter?

What of learning, from books? From experience? What would HDT say of us after all?

It helped me to process much of what had happened and then when we got together again to talk it seemed that everyone was a little more focused, a little refreshed, clear. I am constantly amazed by our need for both community and time alone. Both are important and both seem fully linked to each other. Much of what we talked about, the questions of what is wilderness, what is wild, what would or could be in the future world or a world of technology are of the utmost importance to me. I listen to Thoreau say,

" I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear, nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and such out all of the marrow of life..."

Listening to many of you passionately defending your thoughts, your position in the world, gave me so much faith that each of you in your own way is trying hard to do just that. You are on the right track, that much I can say.

I learn more from all of you than you can know. True, some of this is not new for me, but it is always new with new faces and new thinkers. Sometimes hearing each of you wrestle with an idea, come to an understanding about yourself, or just to share a beautiful sunset with a remarkable group of people is enough.

My favorite lines from Walden will hopefully lead us to our next set of adventures.

"...not till we are completely lost, or turned round - for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost - do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature. Every man has to learn the points of compass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstractions. Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations."

Enjoy your wanderings...come back with good stories...I'll be in touch soon, L