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29 December 2005
Thu, 29 Dec 2005 16:09:00 GMTA Walk in the Woods
Spectacular book from Bill Bryson. He matches odd quips of knowledge, very much in the fashion of A Short History of Nearly Everything with his trials and tribulations walking sections of the Appalachian trail.
Bryson’s books really illustrate how little man actually knows. How stupid and shortsighted we really are. But as much as us humans are failing the world we ought to be serving, there’s still beauty and simplicity out there.
Bryson has a sharp english wit, and uses plenty of it. As sobering as parts of the book can be, most of it is funny in an understated, haw haw sort of way.
On page 46 Bryson digs into the National Forest Service. More like the National lumber trust. They specialize in building roads: 378,000 so far, 580,000 new miles slated to by cut by the middle of the century 47. 2/3 of 150 million acres is held for out future pulp based product need, the rest up for clear cutting and extraction by private enterprise via the government build roads.
Oh, and that government tends to sell the trees at a loss. If $4 was spent surveying, appraising and road-building, the trees would go for about $2 (??48??).
It’s embarrassing I’m willing to put up with the american government.
I really like the flow of time when you’re out on trail. I’ve done a pitiful amount of distance hiking, only a few trips, but loved every minute of it. The physical exertion is so far above that of daily life. The only comforts offered by the wilderness are pure natural beauty and simplicity. Time really does recede – the sun gets you out of bed in the morning, and by sunset you’re tired enough that it’s not a problem to nod off at 8pm in your tent.
There is no point in hurrying because you are not actually going anywhere. However far ot long you plod, you are always in the same place: in the woods. It’s where you were yesterday, where you will be tomorrow. The woods is one boundless singularity. 72
Somehow that singularity has been pushed far far off to the side of the whole human ethos. How many people do you know have been honest to god off in the woods lately? City parks and ski resorts really don’t count.
Here, the mountains and woods were just backdrop – familiar, known, nearby, but no more consequential or noticed then the clouds that scudded across their ridgelines. Here the real business was up close and on top of you: gas stations, Wal-Marts, Kmarts, Dunkin Donuts, Blockbuster Videos, a ceaseless unfolding pageant of commercial hideousness. 115
The whole american attitude towards wilderness is retarded. For every person who enabled conservation and responsible management, hundreds practiced thoughtless mutilation.
As the forest service senselessly enables logging, private industry all over is kicking the wilderness’ ass. Robert F. Kennedy gave a speech on government treatment of the environment that made the rounds a few weeks ago, and it’s a quite a sobering account of what sort of esteem gov’t (the american one at least) holds the natural world in.
Everywhere, there was a kind of recklessness borne of a sense that the American woods was effectively inexhaustible. Two-hundred-year-old pecan trees were commonly chopped down just to make it easier to harvest the nuts on their topmost branches. 120
Bryson also brings up something I’d never thought about – that winter as we know it is just the ceding of the last ice age.
Here is the thing most of us fail to appreciate: we are still in an ice age, only now we experience it for just part of the year. Snow and ice and cold are not really typical features of earth. Taking the long view, Antarctica is actually a jungle. (It’s just having a chilly spell.) At the very peak of the last ice age 20,000 years ago, 30% of the earth was covered in ice. Today 10% still is. 196
Bryson isn’t trying to debunk global warming, but pointing how how little we actually know about global climate throughout the history of earth. We can tell that there have been quite a few ice/thaw cycles, but haven’t the slightest idea what caused them.
What if the quick bit of global warming caused by our great age of industry just tips the globe into a great period of glaciation? How long until the america we all love is covered entirely by ice?
Ever since reading The Diamond Age, I’ve been finding places that we could do with more subtlety, the ability to handle ambiguity. Things are remarkably polarized. We live in the highest industrial comfort, yet drag ourselves backpacking through the wilds when we chance to have a vacation.
A more mainstream example: we drive ourselves to the gym in order to counter the sloth introduced into society by automobiles. These illogical habits are all over society, but why?
In America, alas, beauty has become something you drive to, and nature is an either/or proposition – either you ruthlessly subjugate it [...] or you deify it, treat it as something holy and remote, as a thing apart. Seldom would it occur to anyone on either side that people and nature could coexist to their mutual benefit… 200
Indeed.
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27 August 2005
Sat, 27 Aug 2005 20:46:40 GMT Pacific Crest National Scenic Trailvia Kjell Olsen2355 days agoI want to hike this, like nothing else.
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29 July 2005
Fri, 29 Jul 2005 10:50:00 GMTThe Complete Walker IV
Colin Fletcher & Chip Rawlins
A tome of backpacking knowledge, from what equipment is light enough yet functional enough to take with you on long trips living out of a backpack, to what to do when your living in the wild out of your pack.
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17 July 2005
Sun, 17 Jul 2005 07:33:25 GMT Two Seas, Two Feet: My Hike Across the Continentvia Kjell Olsen2396 days agoHike from Nova Scotia to Washington…
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01 July 2005
Fri, 01 Jul 2005 08:03:00 GMT Famous Crosswalk Button Hackvia Kjell Olsen2412 days agoChange a stoplight from red to green with the walk button:
The most popular hack, which works on most models, is the “Instant Walk.” Three short clicks, followed by two long, one short, two long, and three short; turn any crosswalk signal from “don’t walk” to “walk” with a matching change in the traffic signals.
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30 March 2005
Wed, 30 Mar 2005 18:25:51 GMT zestyping: How to really confuse your party guests.via Kjell Olsen2505 days agoBlow the minds of college kids next time your frat house hosts a kegger. Real fun looking.
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