Camping & What One Gains from a Hike
[Written at a Campsite in Olympic National Park]
I’m sitting here at a campsite reading the LRB, reading about the greater wolrd and htinking that I’m missing out by being here in a wild and inherently beautiful place.
Now, as you may or may not know, this trip hasn’t entirely been to my liking—mainly because I haven’t managed to write and work as much as I would have liked. You could say that as an internet person, I’m failing to unplug, but I don’t believe this is right. In the end, life and its importance is what this is about [1]. And that interaction combined with the lack of ability to work and write is what’s getting to me.
No, no, I suppose it’s not just that. I need to dig deeper here. I think that readin the LRB stirred up these feelings of resent. Hearing about the greater world, that is, about th eproblems that I care about, puts in stark contrast the frolicking in the woods that I enjoy but feel is time better spent elsewhere.
But even the above isn’t exactly true. There is something about the crowds near the visitor centers, the friviolity of this very act of hiking, that gets to me. Again, as the world turns, we are here, taking in great sights of the Olympic Mountain range and enjoying the odd shapes that the rainforest affords us.
Yet I’m not saying that we should feel guilty at all times. Rather I’m saying that this time spent camping seems more and more like some suburban ideologist’s dream of escape. it’s because of this that I think of comments by passerbys as to if I were playing Pokemon Go as particularly asinine (I was hit by the muse and writing a quick short story). As if one particular form of suburban escape was much better than any other. As if time in the wilderness was religious.
Of course, time in a National Park isn’t all bad or worse than in a city—I’m speaking for myself here—it’s just that it hasn’t inspired much from my writing. This probably says more about me than the parks visited, but it’s hard to think outside of one’s own reality.
And I’m still stuck with more work and more things to do when I get back. Not to mention that my contributions to the world’s improvement are certainly not visible here (even if they’re not so visible out there). And I‘m not just whining. I would love it if there were a library or art gallery that one could only hike to. A place for the human mind and the natural mind.
[1] I should also note that, I’ve rather enjoyed the times spent with the better half. But that it could have been better spent in other places.
