“Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer? If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we can substitute?”
Henry David Thoreau, from Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854)
I’ve had a somewhat bumpy relationship with that passage from Walden over the years. At times it’s brought comfort, as I walked a path very different from those followed by my contemporaries. I’ve also on occasion reviled it, seeing Thoreau as an apologist for complacency, inaction, or difference for its own sake.
Ultimately, however, his words resonated. They speak to presence, of keeping one’s own counsel and charting an independent course. And while I neither idolize the man nor venerate the hermit saint, the book, published over 170 years ago, has become my Old Testament.
(My New Testament, by the way, is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert Maynard Pirsig, published 120 years later.)
The nexus between the excerpt from Walden and our American Life on The Mountain may be obvious to many of this blog’s readers. For the rest of you, I’ll lay it out.
What you find here on Ubi Libertas Blog is, without exception, absolutely true. Now, do I ever embellish that truth? Sure — but I never lie to you.
That said, I don’t tell you everything.
In fact, I don’t tell you most things.
For example, you won’t read about any arguments that Deb and I have. I don’t document every failure or vent every frustration. I tell you about lots of the challenges we face, but I don’t whine about the struggles.
I nap for an hour almost every afternoon. Rarely do I report that.
The proverbial elephant in the room (or on The Mountain) is that we’re still living mostly in the camper, not the cabin. Friends and readers can’t help but wonder why.
I know that. I get it.
I sense a strong current of impatience, even disappointment. Sometimes it manifests as outright disapproval.
It’d be human nature, then, I suppose, for me to rush to explain — to quiet the disquieted, to tamp rumor, to end speculation. Are they okay? Is it a money thing? Do they regret their move to The Mountain?
Is any of this even real?
If I were hopelessly insecure, and from a selfish perspective, I could answer all of those questions. Or I could construct an elaborate façade, representing our Life as something it’s not.
But I won’t play pretend. And I feel no obligation to explain.
See, I don’t have an ego that’s wounded by others’ disappointment or disapproval. I’m just not that vain.
The sentence that follows the Walden passage quoted at the top of this post is worth noting here:
“We will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality.”
In short, what we do — and the pace at which we do it — isn’t determined by the expectations of friends, family, neighbors, readers of this blog, or anyone but us.
Ditto how we do things up here. We decide.
Am I saying that “it’s none of your business”? Hardly — I’ve spent the better part of five years, through this blog, making my business your business. It’d be damned disingenuous for me to use “privacy” as a shield now.
It’s simple: I won’t tell you everything. You get what you get. Outside of what you read on Ubi Libertas Blog, my focus is on building the Life that Deb and I have imagined, without wrecking it on the rocks of what someone else thinks we should do.
We’re fine, thanks. Not only is our dream alive — it thrives. Even if we don’t always know what we’re doing, we know where we are.
Whatever our plans, and no matter the shape of the box in which we live, that’s enough for us.
It’ll have to be enough for you, too.
I had a list of things I wanted to knock out before the snow started falling later today, but I ended up running a few errands in town.
I dropped off our Husqvarna chainsaw at Miller Hardware’s Saw Shop to have them give it a thorough going-over. Yeah, I guess that means I admitted defeat. There’s wisdom in knowing when to hand a problem to professionals, though, and it was time to do that with the balky Husky.
It’ll be ready next week.
Across the parking lot at the hardware store, I bought a sled. No, not a riding sled (I’m too old for that shit) — it’s a cargo sled, the kind used by hunters and ice-anglers. I’d been thinking about putting such a tool to work on The Mountain, and Miller had this model priced almost 40% lower than anywhere else I looked.
If I’d had this sled yesterday, I would’ve loaded it with what I bucked, run a winch line to it and skidded the wood up the slope instead of making ten round-trips carrying it in my arms. (More like 12 trips, counting tools.) There are other trees to haul out of these woods, in places where I can’t get the Ranger (or the Silverado) anywhere close, and I believe this’ll make it easier on knees, back and shoulders.
I’ll probably ask it to haul more than firewood, too.
Since this sled will be used whether there’s snow on the ground or not, and considering The Mountain’s rocky terrain, a few modifications are in order. I’ll fashion “wear bars” from scrap (aluminum or plastic) and attach them to the runners, which will protect the belly and help the sled skid over rough surfaces.
I’ll make a yoke out of 3/8-inch arborist rope that’ll accept a clevis hook (from a winch cable), but which also can be used when a “man pull” is called for. Finally, I’ll drill the gunwales in a half-dozen places and, just like I did with our utility cart, attach eye bolts — lashing points that’ll let me stabilize a load with ratchet straps or rope.
It’s all about working smarter. If I can deploy a tool that helps me continue to do the things I’m used to doing, then it’s worth every penny.
And now, we await the snow.
Yeah, the forecast has changed a bit.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable
#LetsGoBrandon #FJB
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