What a week, part 2 (1/19/2025)

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

What did I learn during the retreat? About Clay Jenkinson, members of the group or myself? I will not detail very personal information on the first two, but I guess that I am somewhat of an open book to my regular readers, and I will write a bit more about myself and the activities I participated in.

What did we do? On Sunday we started out with a gift book exchange, where you gift a favorite book to someone in the group, while introducing yourself to the group. I gave “Solace of Open Space" by Gretel Ehrlich to one of the participants and received a book on poetry from another (“The Trouble with Poetry” by Billy Collins). On Monday we started with meetings in the morning and afternoon. There was a campfire every evening and some free time, sprinkled in between. We ate our meals together. I was surprised by the copious amount of alcohol that was consumed in the evenings. Folks shared wine, single malt and there was beer as well. We had a hike to the river to discuss Lewis and Clark and another time to reenact Thoreau and throw burning sticks in the river. A trip to a hot spring was the capstone to our get together.

Clay is as intelligent as he sounds on the radio and podcasts. He runs a fairly tight ship during the meeting and is an amazing facilitator. He is clearly the best-read person I have ever encountered with a great number of interests. He is caring and is very interested in the well-being of the participants. He engages in personal dialogues with folks during the discussions and social hours. Clay was trying to be as non-political as possible, hinting at the fact that he lived in a conservative State; however, he kept mentioning a great number of times that “Your vote matters.” My guess is that all but one participant were liberal; however, all were very well off (I counted four of the nine participants in first class on out plane on the return trip from Missoula, and I was definitively not one of them). Lastly, his daughter and future son-in-law had joined us for the first few days, and you could see his pride and love for those two. Both are also very intelligent and well read.

The participants ranged from a winemaker and his wife, to a foreign service person and wife, to retired naturalists, to retired park rangers/managers, to writers. Let’s not forget the copious number of retired lawyers (3), a financial advisor and a wall street guru. An eclectic but at the same time a very intelligent group. At least two were searching for what to do with the rest of their lives. This search was brought out to the foreground during our Walden discussions. Thoreau champions simple living, with nature. As a transcendentalist, Thoreau discusses spirituality, self-determination and personal growth. Coupled with his love for nature made most of us that week could consider ourselves to be Thoreauvian in some form or fashion. Hence, the search by some of us for the deeper meaning of life and the next step in the life we are living. Clay was good I hearing them out and making them think.

I had one of the most wonderful experiences in my life, psychologically, mentally and intellectually stimulating; it was a good kick in the ass: get going, there is such a wonderful life still to live. If you are a regular reader of these posts, you must understand that I at times have struggled with the purpose of the rest of my life. I am retired and have blogged about getting old. I have mentioned that it sucks! I too am (was) trying to find purpose in (the rest of) my life. This clearly was an issue that one of the participants was struggling with and I eagerly listened in to what Clay had to tell him, without saying much myself. My understanding is that in a Thoreauvian sense, we all have a purpose in the greater whole, but sometimes we do not understand what it is. We should embrace where we are in our stage of life, suck the marrow out of the life we have been given (to loosely quote Thoreau). Yes, getting old sucks, but at least I can blog and hopefully teach something to someone. As I always thought about the classes that I taught, if one or two of the students in my class of 40 goes home thinking “I learned something” (and hopefully also thinks “and I am going to apply it") than my task for that day is done. The workshop that week somehow enforced that idea. I do not have to be an Einstein, a Thoreau, or an Abbey to have an impact on other people's lives and to make a difference how small that is.

Yes, I came out of that week refreshed and optimistic again, even though the results of the elections had left me depressed and ready to move to Mars or some other place sane. I realize that “your vote matters," and in future elections I will make mine count and make sure that you all vote as well. In addition, I will be reading more and not get sucked in so deep into the television (especially the news) and social media. I need to do more for my family and finally do more for myself. Like Clay, I will be trying to declutter my life. Wish me luck.

“We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us even in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavour. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.”

― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

The Lochsa lodge

Ready to discuss Walden

 

 

 

What a week it has been (1/13/2025)

What a week it has been. I write this while sitting in the Missoula, Montana airport, waiting for my flight home. A guy all the way from the East Coast in cold wintery Montana. As I have mentioned in a few previous posts, we decided that it was my turn to do something different or extraordinary and go to a week meeting (or workshop) at the Lochsa Lodge with likeminded folks. The workshop was put on by Clay Jenkinson and his “Listening to America” organization. Clay puts on two winter workshops back-to-back. In addition, he has a number of summer programs. I went to a four-day (and evening) retreat/discussion on the book “On Walden Pond" by Henry D. Thoreau, and “Desert Solitaire” by Edward Abbey. On first thought an interesting comparison. I am not sure if this post will turn out to be a book report, an account of our meeting, or a free-flowing dump of my impressions and takeaways. Maybe it will become a combination of all three. I will try to keep it somewhat short and sweet, the length of most of my regular posts.

For those of you who do not know who the heck this Clay Jenkinson is, he is a humanities scholar who used to impersonate (played) Thomas Jefferson on a radio show (The Jefferson Hour), he also is an expert on Oppenheimer and on top of that an accomplished scholar on the Lewis and Clark expedition. Here I am just giving you an extremely short resume of Clay, but since this is my blog I have some discretion on what I write about the man.

Comparing Walden and Desert Solitaire may seem somewhat far fetched. When I mentioned Abbey to my friends on the east coast, only a select few (one) knew who I was talking about; and she is a Ph.D. in English literature and professor who teaches composition. Out west he is a more familiar person. I learned during our meeting that everyone who joins the National Park Service in the Southwest is recommended or maybe even required to read his Desert Solitaire. I learned about him in the early 1990s when I lived in Gallup. Abbey is an interesting character; the way I try to describe him to my friends is part hedonist, part environmentalist, conservationist with libertarian tendencies. But that might be too mild for someone who writes about his “love rocket" in his journals. An interesting character, indeed.

History is not certain if Thoreau had a “love rocket” and it is speculated that he died a virgin. What a contrast to discuss in our meeting in the mountains. Honestly, our discussions were more ethereal than the sexual exploits of our celebrated authors; however, this particular subject was good for a few laughs and (nervous?) giggles. For the readers who know my political leaning and the company I tend to keep, it also elicited some noises of indignation by some of the feminists in the group.

I am not sure if we ever came to a conclusion or if that even was necessary, but I think the group really felt that Thoreau was more difficult to read, he was more flowery; very observant and descriptive; at times arrogant or dismissive of the folks around him. He was a transcendentalist and in his own way very spiritual. I was somewhat tickled by his overt love of some of the east Asian and Chinese traditions, the knowledge of which must have been in its infancy in the mid 1800s.

Abbey was more crass, more in your face; however, the beauty of his descriptions mirror those of Thoreau. He is a true nature lover and he showed his disdain for the development of the National Parks. I think we concluded he was a visionary, somewhat predicting the over use of the parks and what we see now, the rationing of access to some parks.

I can write books about our meeting in the Bitterroots on the Idaho-Montana border. I suspect that it were fertile grounds for potential books that Clay might write. I have just scratched the surface here and plan to write some more about it in the future; albeit I am not planning a book. It was a fun week; it challenged me intellectually, something I have not had in some time. Moreover, it dealt with self-improvement and resolutions (simplify, simplify, simply). I will make this vague promise to revisit this past week again and again in future posts; however, I still need to decompress and determine what I think we accomplished there, socially and intellectually. Stay tuned.

Below a few photographs of my week at the lodge.

Travels, nature and breweries (4/9 through 4/16/2016)

My wife and I have been away on vacation for a week.  It was wonderful, away from work, away from the regular travel I do for work, just away from all the regular crap I do all the time.  We spent time in New England; we visited our daughter who goes to graduate school in Boston (Harvard) and (as we describe it to friends) we stole her car for a few days and drove to Maine.  This entry: however, is more about a few experiences I had and how they relate to some of the subjects that are a common thread in this blog.

As any good naturalist or any good Unitarian Universalist that visit New England should do (it helps I am both), I visited WaldenPond.  It is somewhat of a pilgrimage site for many of us.  I often mention Aldo Leopold, who introduced the idea of environmental ethics, but in truth, it was Henry David Thoreau who was one of the first persons who introduced naturalism to the American public and the need to get away in nature.  He had a strong need to go back to the land, to get his sanity back, learn what life was all about and what it could teach him:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden, "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For

The location of Thoreau's cabin near Walden Pond.

The plaque showing the location of the chimney of the cabin.

This is one of the most common used quote from Thoreau when it comes to Walden.  Walden was published in 1854 and was based on a more than 2 year stay in a cabin in the woods near Walden Pond.  It is just interesting to see how already in the mid-1800s there was an obvious need by some to get away from it all and go back to nature, to connect to nature, to experience nature and describe it.  Did Thoreau experience nature deficit disorder in 1850?  But it definitively shows the need to connect to nature.

Walden Pond

Thoreau was a fascinating character he did a lot more than just live for two years near a pond, he is worth a read and a study.  I have read a few books by him or books that tried to retrace his steps and it was impressive what he did.  But he was more that a naturalist he also was a philosopher, a humanist and humanitarian.  There is a whole society set up around this scholar and thinker.

While sitting in coffee shops, microbreweries and funky restaurants is wonderful, albeit maybe not so wonderful on the budget, they can only satisfy me so much.  It is really the nature that nurtures me and satisfies me in the long run.  Our most favorite times and memories of our trip to New England will definitively be our hikes around Walden Pond and on Mount Dessert Island (Acadia National Park); our trip to the top of Mount Battie to look over the Penobscot Bay; and our walks around all those wonderful lighthouses looking over the water (that’s nature too).  They will be staying with us much longer than that food we ate at that restaurant.

Visit to the Allagash Brewery (my favorite) in Portland Maine)

We encountered a beaver dam in Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island (near Bar Harbor, Maine)

Looking down on Camden and the Penobscot Bay from Mount Battie

One of the many lighthouses we visited and had an opportunity to enjoy ocean views.  We saw a lot of common eiders swimming in the waters below these lighthouses. 

The need for nature really struck me during our walks through downtown Boston.  It is great to see how the famous "Big Dig" stuck a major highway under ground and turned the above ground part into a park.  Moreover, it was great to walk on the Boston Commons, in the Boston Gardens and even along the Charles River.  All little pieces of green, where people could enjoy a little nature.  One bizarre thing struck me and I had to take a photograph of it (below).  Not far from the Paul Revere house was a church that where the outbuildings were completely covered with a canvas depicting plants, branches and leaves.  It reminded me of Richard Louv's in his book "The Nature Principle" in which he describes that research has shown that even pictures of nature in buildings and offices help in reducing stress.  Personally, I know that being in nature is so important in bringing down my stress level and (I assume) bringing down my blood pressure.  Nature can be the woods (green) or the water (blue).  That's why I was so fascinated by what I saw on the church; hopefully it does the same in the area near the church.  I found it such an interesting idea of using a bare wall.  What a sight!

The canvas nature mural on a church in downtown Boston