July 11: Shapes and Powers, Euell Gibbons, Roughing It

This is what I had come for, just this, and nothing more.  A fling of leafy motion on the cliffs, the assault of real things, living and still, with shapes and powers under the sky--this is my city, my culture, and all the world I need.  I looked around.

Dillard loves roughing it.  She packs up her sleeping bag, a couple of sandwiches, a flashlight, a canteen of water, and off she goes into the woods, like some erstwhile Euell Gibbons.  It's where she feels most at home, with all the shapes and powers under the sky. 

I have never been that much of a nature person.  I do appreciate the beauties of nature.  When I was in Hawaii, I hiked across a lunar landscape to see real lava pounding into the Pacific Ocean at midnight.  I've sailed on Lake Superior (and gotten monstrously seasick).  In California, I stopped at a beach to see a legion of manatees basking in the sun (and promptly threw up because of the smell of rotten fish).

That's me.  Like Dillard, I've seen all the shapes and powers under the sky, and they have nauseated me.  I live in one of the most beautiful places in the world, just about fifteen miles from the shores of the biggest freshwater lake in the world.  Last summer, I went waterfall hunting and found five in the space of two-and-a-half hours.  Yet, when I'm roughing it, I like free Wi-Fi, a couple double beds, and a pizza from Pizza Hut (preferably with Alfredo sauce and chicken).  If there isn't free HBO and Cinemax, I'm roughing it.

Here's Saint Marty's wisdom for tonight:  there aren't any mosquitoes at Holiday Inn Express.