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Farmers and Sailors

01/08/2011 by John 12 Comments

Sunrise

As I stepped outside, the darkness of night was punched through with a million tiny pinholes of light. The rays of the sun would not begin to lighten the eastern horizon for another half hour, ushering in a new day, the last of an Outward Bound course that had spanned the New Year’s holiday bridging the time between 2010 and 2011. The dew clung heavily over all exposed surfaces, giving everything a shimmering quality with the starlight providing illumination. I made my way across the lawn of the Sunset Island base camp and looked upon the tents and personal bug shelters, where our students were still soundly sleeping. I glanced up and saw a shooting star blazing it’s short life across the canopy of the universe overhead. I walked more slowly, eyes pointed upwards. Another! At the bottom of the stairs leading into the lodge, I paused, and saw yet another shooting star. The sky above was alive this morning with spent pieces of the cosmos taking their final plunge after a journey none of us could possibly imagine. I turned to face the door, took one more lingering look at the sky above, and then placed my foot on the first stair. The coffee pot was calling, it was time to head inside again. It was time for the sailor to rest, and for the farmer to once again take prominence in my life.

For the past week, I had traveled by sea kayak through Everglades National Park and the 10,000 Islands National Wildlife Refuge with eight strangers and my co-instructor. It had been a good Outward Bound course. For me, the end of it marked the end of a period of many months of movement, of being outdoors. Since June, I have not spent much time in one place for very long. Leading backpacking trips, bicycle tours, and being away on vacation has kept me in motion. Heading inside that last morning of course felt symbolic to me of the larger direction my life will be going during the next several months. The sailor in me was returning from sea for awhile.

Kayaking by Gullivan Key

I am back in Asheville today, settled into my favorite chair, and ready to begin being a member of the community of people here. I will step back into the role of full-time student for the semester. I will enjoy watching the winter turn to spring. This is the farmer in me.

This concept of farmers and sailors was brought to my attention by a post I was reading this morning from a blog called The Path Less Pedaled.

[A friend] said, “There’s basically two kinds of people on this earth. There are farmers….and there are sailors. Farmers are the people that take great joy in laying down roots and are comforted by the predictable day to day routine and the dependable seasons. Sailors have to be constantly moving and looking for new experiences. There is nothing more satisfying than the prospects of a new port for a sailor. The world needs both kinds.” I’m not quite sure if I’m either wholly farmer or wholly sailor

I could not agree more. The farmer in me loves my home and community here in Asheville. He enjoys raking the leaves to the curb in the fall and going out to breakfast with friends at his favorite breakfast spot. But the sailor within me just won’t be quiet. He is a restless soul who does not tolerate sitting still for too long.

Therein lies my challenge. Can I convince the farmer and the sailor to work out a compromise? In 2010, I was able to have them coexist fairly well, though always at some level of uneasy tension between the two of them. When one of them is allowed to thrive, the other necessarily must suffer some. One thing is certain, the farmer and the sailor are both a part of me and neither is going away any time soon. And the thing is, the farmer within me learns so much from the sailor, just as the sailor is nourished by the contributions of the farmer.

What about you? Are you a farmer, a sailor, or a little of both?

The Mag at sunrise

Gullivan Key at sunset

Dog Trains Man

12/10/2010 by John 4 Comments

Picture of a chocolate labrador retriever

Tucker

I’ve got a big brown dog pacing with expectation around my house with a dirty gray stuffed skull and crossbones wedged between his jaws. Occasionally, he brings it right up to my face as I sit here on the recliner, trying my best to write while his nails are clip, clopping rhythmically across the floor. The beast’s name is Tucker, and he wants my attention.

The pacing stops and he goes into his routine. This consists of him sitting in front of me and giving me the direct stare, his big brown watery eyes focused squarely on me with a look that says “OK, I’m ready, what are we gonna do now, I know you must be dying to do something fun with me, can we do something, anything, can we, can we, can we”. After the direct stare fails to move me to action, Tucker shifts his strategy into his sit-down-inches-from-John-and-stare-straight-at-the-floor-looking-dejected pose. I believe the intention here is to try and make me feel sorry for his hardships, such as the fact that we are not currently playing with a rock, or out splashing around in a muddy puddle trying to get as dirty as possible. Poor little puppy, we never do anything fun.

Yesterday I swept what seemed like half his 95 pounds of body weight off the floor in the form of coarse brown hairs. Doesn’t he know that winter is here and he should really consider holding on to all of that fur until at least next April? Additionally, how can he lose that much hair as regularly as he does and still be here at all? I keep expecting to wake up one day to find nothing left of him but a pile of prickly brownness with some ragged old bones poking out of it haphazardly.

Now he’s gotten the message. He’s given up any hope of anything fun happening anytime soon and contorted himself into a curly Q in his chair in the corner of the living room. How can any creature sleep with their nose that close to their ass? He’s lightly snoring and soon perhaps he’ll start in with little high pitched, muted barks, his legs twitching as he runs in his sleep. What could it be that he is running from, or perhaps towards, in his doggy dreams?

Soon we will go for a walk. It’s pretty much the same walk we go on each and every morning since he’s been staying with us. We’ll leave the house and take a right on the greenway leading to the University of North Carolina in Asheville. There’s a wooded spot there where I’ll let him off his leash and hopefully he’ll go take care of his business in private (he is modest in this area of his life, though this modesty does not extend to his propensity to consume other animal’s byproducts when available). Afterward, we’ll continue on around several blocks and if I allow myself to be patient, he will teach me some lessons.

As previously stated, the route we take each morning varies little from day to day, but yet for Tucker, each and every time we go seems to be a new adventure. I’m pretty sure he knows where he is and that he’s been there many times before, but he does not let this detract him from experiencing what he encounters as if it were all new again. You see, he realizes more than most of us that nothing is ever the same. There are new things to check out, such as that little patch of grass he did not notice yesterday, or a new sound coming from the trees to our left, or that peculiar smell emanating from the dumpster by that student apartment complex. He takes each step of that same path open and ready to experience it anew.

A dog’s life is routine. Eat, play, sleep, repeat. Yet in this routine, they find joy. After all, what creature wouldn’t enjoy a big bowl of simulated fish and oatmeal flavored food product consumed so fast that no chewing is required, followed by a roll in cow shit? A dog has little trouble identifying the simple pleasures in their day to day life.

These simple pleasures are all around us, yet we usually take them for granted or miss seeing them all together because we are too busy responding to a text message or worrying about what still has to be done on the to do list. I think discovering what Tucker knows is something we can all strive for, and that something is to find joy in our routines.

Many days of our life may seem at first glance to be remarkably similar to many other days. We see the same places, interact with the same people, and respond the same way we always do to the conditions around us. But there is another way to view each day, and that is to open our eyes and minds to experience the events of our life as if we are doing so for the first time. Nothing is ever exactly the same from day to day. The light is different, the quality of the air varies, and that person we thought we knew so well probably has something new to teach us if take the time to listen.

I have been traveling a lot lately for work and pleasure. I have not had much routine as of late. I think one of the reasons I do what I do is intentionally to avoid routine. I tend to equate routine with boredom and drudgery, and routine can certainly have those qualities. But this is a choice that we make. We decide if we let routine affect us in negative ways. The big brown beast helps me to see the alternative. Tucker has shown me that I can view each moment of my daily walk as a new adventure, full of new experiences which bring with them potential and possibility.

Tucker in the Sun. Photo by Trish Haitz, the beast's primary caregiver.

Coming Home

11/09/2010 by John 2 Comments

I find myself home again after a fall spent traveling to Tuscaloosa, New York City, the Chesapeake Bay, and the Outer Banks. I’m a little road weary and glad to be back in Asheville for a while. So here is something I wrote back in the Spring of 2009 about coming home after a season of adventures.

Photo of the Linville Gorge, North Carolina

The Linville Gorge in the Fall

As the trees opened up at the bend in the trail, the late afternoon sun striking out across the gorge washed the alternating bands of lush vegetation and jagged rock walls before me in a fiery glow that filled my mind and spirit with a profound sense of peace and wonder.

I was home again.

It was the late summer of 2003 at the end of a road trip that had taken me down rivers in the canyons of Utah, hiking in the magnificent forests of the Cascades, and sea kayaking in the salmon and berry filled fiords of southeast Alaska, but at that moment, I realized that nothing I had experienced on that journey had surpassed the beauty I was witnessing out my backdoor on the rim of the Linville Gorge Wilderness in North Carolina.

Growing up as a skateboarding, floppy banged, punk rock aficionado in 1980’s north Alabama, I spent my time waiting for the day I could leave the southeast behind for more majestic and progressive places. I had dreams of attending collage in a ski town out west where I would live in the big mountains and hit the steeps in between classes, but reality and my introverted nature set in and so I remained in the south for my collage years, still dreaming of the time I would escape to more exciting locales. A few twists and turns after college eventually led me to work full time as an instructor for the North Carolina Outward Bound School where I was able to create a lifestyle allowing me to travel and explore new places. My time in that role had me spending warm months hiking and sea kayaking the mountains of western North Carolina and the Outer Banks, then migrating down south during the winter to paddle the Florida Everglades and islands of the Bahamas. It was a grand adventure, allowing me ample time to travel in the time periods between migrations or when I chose to take a season off, as happened that summer of 2003.

Travel is a magical thing. It strips us down to a minimum of our precious possessions and puts us in places where we don’t know what to expect around the next bend or from the next conversation we’re about to have. It allows us a perspective on the places we’ve come from that is far more valuable than what it teaches us about the places we may be visiting at the time. Experiencing the different environments and cultures we travel through shines a light on ourselves, and helps to clarify who we are and what we truly value. When I was younger, I felt that one had to get as far away as possible to experience these things. The moment of clarity I had while looking in awe at the Linville Gorge taught me that adventure, natural wonder, and the insight they imbue can be found right at home.

I now consider myself fortunate to live in the southeast. Here one can explore rugged mountains, beautiful coastlines, and a fascinating cultural and natural history. In these times of economic uncertainty and global warming, what better way to save money, minimize our environmental impacts, and bolster our local economies than to seek our adventures close to home. For me lately, these might simply involve a long run on a local trail or a weekend bike tour. A week away might involve camping and paddling in the coastal areas of the Carolina’s, or a hike on a section of the Appalachian trail. Though the Linville Gorge is no longer my backyard, the Asheville Botanical Gardens are right down the street and the Blue Ridge Parkway is just a 20 minute bike ride away. Natural beauty, adventure, and all the benefits that come along with these phenomenon can be right outside your door if you open yourself up them.