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3/10/12
After one month in one place, I am just
barely starting to feel settled. It does not help my temporary feelings that I am already intensely planning for the days and months
after I leave North Carolina in the summer. Even in Minnesota, where
I spent nearly 3 months, I never spent more than a few nights in a
row in one place. It does not feel normal.
In the past 2 weeks, I have taught
classes in Aquatic Ecology, Animal Ecology, Forest Ecology and
Cooperation skills. I have mulched several hundred square feet of a
cooperative low-ropes course, installed new outdoor steps, fixed a
bulletin board and organized laminated cards. I have evacuated from
my wooden house to hide in the basement of the dining hall with all
of my co-workers due to severe weather and tornado warnings. I ran
up and down a small mountain, my first run since I left California.
I have mountain biked and road biked and lifted weights and done
pull-ups, push-ups, planks, yoga, cross-fit and hiking. I searched
for giant salamanders called “hell benders” which exist nowhere
else in the world. I dressed in a ridiculous costume for a Whitney Houston remembrance party. I laughed and played and watched movies and
messed about with my wonderful new group of co-workers and friends.
I have been eating well, sleeping well, and breathing lots of fresh,
mountain air.
This weekend, a 3 day weekend for us
here at Mountain Trail Outdoor School, we had planned to go caving on
Saturday, hiking and bouldering on Sunday, and boating on Monday, but
the caving didn't work out today, so I rode my bike for a while and
helped a friend install new seats in his canoe. The pattern of
activity here is very sporadic. One minute, there will be 10 people
gathered outside my door, hooting and hollering and having a good
time, and the next, they will have all dispersed back to their
separate chambers, isolated for several hours at a stretch. Have I
forgotten how to live a normal life? Or is there something unique
about the way we live and operate here? Or perhaps, decidedly more
dramatically, we have become disconnected from each other due to the
electronic devices that all of us are definitely addicted to now.
When I get back to my room, the first
thing I do is turn my phone on to check my messages. Now that I
receive e-mails (from 2 accounts) on my phone, it makes noise at
least 3 times as often as it used to, and I find myself cradling it
and checking it all the time. I have to consciously decide not to
bring it, or to turn it off for a set period of time, if I am to go
more than a few hours without checking it. While this habit has
enabled me to stay in much better contact with a growing number of
good people, it also distracts me from the present in such a way that
even I cannot see the ultimate impact. We humans have done such a
good job of creating products to addict ourselves to. It is rather a
startling phenomenon how many people are walking around with iPhones
these days, wondering how they ever lived life without this little
3x5 inch piece of metal and glass crammed with circuitry much too
complicated for most of us to understand how or why it works.
Money: Does everyone want more? In an
industry that tries hard to value natural resources, environmental
ethics, good food, exercise and cooperation more than materialism and
money, it is still very difficult to see. My co-workers go shopping
for new clothing on the weekends. It is 20 times easier for me to
buy a new pair of snow boots on the internet than it is to try and
find a used pair, or a pair of made of natural materials, made
locally by people paid a living wage. How is it that after only a
month of break from my idealistic journey, I am becoming jaded by the
continuous patterns of consumerism and materialism that invade even
the strongest supporters of a different way of life? I can't bring
it up with my co-workers either, that buying new clothing at Old Navy
(sweat shop central), or even REI (yes, its a co-op, but 99% of
synthetics [which is mostly what they sell] are made from petroleum –
and you already HAVE a down vest, do you really need another?) is
still consumerism.
Do people need new clothes sometimes?
Yes, their old ones wear out or...get boring. Are fashion and beauty
and dressing well forms of freedom and creative expression? Yes!
Then when does buying new clothes become consumerism? I don't know,
and I have to contain myself in order not to be preachy or
hypocritical. It is a discussion that I would like to have, but I fear
that simply by bringing it up, people will become defensive. Perhaps
if I use my own consumption habits as an example, I can discuss my
own thought processes and goals when it comes to purchasing, and not
sound totally critical. But even in this crowd, or perhaps,
especially in this crowd of fun-loving, experience-seeking,
privileged outdoor enthusiast, environmentally friendly educators,
people seem to avoid serious topics of conversation. I have been
shut down a time or two by those who would rather avoid thinking
about the worlds ills, and instead indulge in the goodness that is
easy to bath in here in our isolated nature retreat.
My one thought on how to begin a
conversation is that I must be more interested in listening than in
telling. I must turn on my ears, and hear the concerns of my peers.
Perhaps then, we will have a discussion which leads to real thinking
and truth.
