Nature – WildernessPunk

WildernessPunk-Important

Before I start, I’m not coming out and saying this article is important, but it could be. Instead, I want to poke a sharp stick at what is important for you, me, and the other they. However, I’m looking to dig into something more timeless than what’s important in the current political scenes or what yesterday’s buzz words and click bait were.

Sure, some individuals might care how people voted in the last election or if you may think tRump shouldn’t go to jail because jail is only for poor people. But for me many of these mainstream values and click of the minute causes are designed more to distract you and sell products rather than give life real meaning.

What does give your life meaning?

Or in other words: what is important to you?

Opinions on modern issues might help define where you sit on the bell curve of human rights, but as usual, I seek to dig deeper. How do you measure your self-worth or perhaps the worth of another? What should your life’s true goals be and what sort of yardstick can we use on how well you achieved them. Or perhaps more important… are these goals a bunch of manmade, whitewashed bullshit?

Here are some traditional measurements of human accomplishments. Some have reached such status as to have obtained an almost mythical belief system. Others might be less mainstream and rush through the underground. If some appear sexist or uncool, don’t blame me, this is the world you live in.

Measures of Human Success

Personal Worth = Net Worth
The Individual = What They Create
Scene, You Hope What You put Into It = What You Get Out of It
Entertainment/Socializing = The More Enjoyment you Experience the better the Day Is

Personal Worth = Net Worth

This often seems to be the most popular means to measure someone’s importance and self-worth in the United States. I see a sort of Capitalism Karma in effect with how many people in my country regard the value of others. Might doesn’t make right, capital does. You can see a lot of how dare you insult this wealthy person? What gives an improvised person the right to condemn someone who is so successful? Somehow a teenager slinging drugs on the corner should be punished worse than a millionaire who steals the retirement funds of a thousand elderly.

Is having the most toys really the ultimate goal in life. Is it better to be wealthy or have a family who loves you, or friends who like you for who you are and don’t laugh at your jokes just because you invited them onto your boat. If your kids only talk to you so they won’t be cut out of their inheritance, I think you’ve missed life’s boat when you were busy being a workaholic to get yours.

Personal Mental Achievement = Your Psychological Growth

In case anyone was wondering, this is where religion goes. Until someone can prove to me something supernatural exists all methods of mental self-betterment are going under the importance of the psychological development umbrella. Whether you are meditating, receiving therapy, or think your prayers are being heard by a big sky daddy, it all falls into this same category for me. Some just work better than others.

I think growing wise is important. Sometimes I wonder how the huge mistakes I’ve made in the past would be so easy for me to avoid now. I guess this is because I’ve learned the hard way…

Gaining personal knowledge and awareness is important. Being smart is better than being ignorant. Being at peace with yourself and your world is better than living in a constant bundle of stress.

Still, one has to wonder how much intelligence and mental enlightenment is worth in the end. It seems to be the brain slows down as we age and outside of trivia games does the endless pursuit of knowledge matter as much as joy and companionship? Also, I’m sure it goes without saying, that if you’re devoting hours of your life praying and hearing the words of some savior that doesn’t exist, you have probably wasted a shitload of time you could have used for, well…anything real. (Say 4 hours a week for religion over seventy years = 14,000 hours or about three years of your waking life)

Your Strength of Character = The Strength of your Family and Friends

Your strength of character can mean many things. However, if we attempted to measure it, the yardstick might be how strong your relationship with your family and friends is and how important this is to maintain for you.

For many people nothing is more important that your family. If you are a stalwart lover, I think we should throw he, she, they into the family category. But not everyone has a family they made, and some lose the family they had. This doesn’t have to diminish the strength of their character because some things are measured every day even if you never speak to another evolutionarily advanced primate.

As stated above this could be the baseline for most individual’s perception of personal importance and in the end, I don’t think Darwin would have agreed with you.

What You Deserve = How Hard You Work for It

One might call this the motivation paradigm and is probably closer to something I believe. Whatever you feel is important you should work toward. If you want it, do the things it will take to get it. However, too often, in capitalistic America, this is watered down to ‘make that cash’ or ‘nail that hottie’. Okay, maybe this is important for some, or for some of the more immature parts of your life, but the number of other needs, wants, and desires which could be tossed onto this plate could blow the mind.

This could be something as simple as just having a girlfriend to designing the perfect city-state for Dungeons and Dragons. Others want to be in a tight band, live in the woods, or see the pyramids. Getting a car or your own place seems more capitalistic and mainstream, but when you don’t have such things so many of us need, they become critical.

The dark side of this is the sometimes held, almost mystic belief, that if we work hard enough, we get what we want and if others don’t have what they want, they must be lazy. I hope I don’t have to point out this is obviously bullshit. Life is chaos from what types of parents we were born to and the extent of our physical abilities. We all might be created equal under the law, but no two people are created equal. So, the concept that we all have an equal opportunity as long as we work hard enough is absurd.

This doesn’t cancel our hope of following a personal dream to success. If you have a passion, consider yourself lucky for that’s half the battle. So many people don’t have a clear goal or have more advanced goals blocked because they can’t accomplish more basic things such as finding a mate, a good job, or stable housing. I always admire people who set their sights on harder goals and then accomplish them, although you don’t always have to post them on Facebook. Just do it for yourself and not bragging rights.

The Love You Take is = To the Love You Make

This might be a potential way to measure one’s success. The more people who love and care about you = your level of success in life. Personally, I don’t think it is as simple as that. Is someone more successful because their parents had a bunch of kids and now you are loved by an extra dozen nieces and nephews? I think one should earn some of these accolades.

Of course, staying tight with your family and extended family is usually a sign of good character but it is also more of a given. More or less, you will be okay with your family as long as you don’t royally fuck up. More impressive are the relationships with others you create from scratch. I’m not saying being an ‘everyone friend’ is always good because spreading yourself too thin can water down how real these friendships are. However, in the end, you can usually measure how cool and all around decent a person is by the number of friends they have and the duration of those friendships.

Think about it like this. If you were considering dating a person, would you rather date a person who has tight friends who have stuck by them since they were teenagers or that person who ‘doesn’t really get along with others,’ and all their good friends ‘moved away?’ I rest my case.

The individual = What they Create

This can be considered the paradigm of the artist, but it goes so much further. If you make a new bookcase and your family puts books into it, you just improved the quality of everyone’s life. For many, creation is one of the strongest reasons to live. Once you get hooked on a certain kind of creation, you ache for being able to do it again. Other personal projects can come and go, or you might be building toward a similar goal but do it in a different way. The punk rock guitarist has now started a rockabilly band.

What you buy can outlast you but is also the same as hundreds if not millions of other households, but what you create is usually one of a kind. You are making something out of nothing or close to nothing. It is the closest to being a god we can come. A life full of creations is a well spent existence.

Relationship = How much you and your lover honestly care about one another

For some nothing is more important than their romantic relationship. Who is better off. the low-income guy who wife loves him and gives his sore muscles a massage or the rich man with a wife who hates him and is having an affair? I’d take the former. In the end if you can afford your favorite drink and a little soft cheese once in a while, who cares about money, it is happiness which is important.

Another way relationships can be a yardstick for success is how much your significant other loves and respects you. In most cases no one knows you better than your partner. If you have one who loves and cares for you, you are probably a good person. If you have a friend, but they can’t keep it together long with anyone they date, it probably is a strong indicator they do not have a centered life and emotional maturity.

Dating = The Thrill of the Ride

Just because I’m in the best relationship of my life (About 7,000 times better than my second best) doesn’t mean other people are there yet. There is nothing wrong with dating and enjoying the rush of trying to get to know a new person. Dating isn’t easy and trying to improve your skills can be, for some, a lifelong quest. For some singles, their skills with dating might be some of their most important attributes. If you are lonely and seek romance such skills become important to measure up to.

Entertainment/Socializing = The More Enjoyment You Experience the Better the Day Is

This can mean more than the Spinal Tap, “Have a good time all the time” motto. I’m going to dive into two quick threads here. First, what can really be a better measure of a life well lived than how much enjoyment a person has every day? It isn’t the richest man who wins it’s the one who has the most fun every day. Sure, there can be drawbacks. Maybe the guy having fun didn’t help his child get through college, but the child will probably want to visit them later because they know they’ll have a good time and are also more likely to be psychologically well balanced.

The second point is what type of person would you like to be? What type of people do you want to spend time with? A healthy person knows how to enjoy themselves and is not always walking through a world of doom and gloom. Hell, I’m the first one to admit this world is full of a lot of doomage and gloomage and problems should not be ignored, but I also only get one life and worrying about global warming while I’m playing cards with my buddies is not a big win.

Scene, You Hope What You Put into It = What You Get Out of It

Lastly, we have your scene, if you are lucky enough to be part of one, or even luckier to belong to more than one. Scenes are sometimes hard to describe, but it is a group of like-minded people with convergent goals who work together as a team to make a project, entertainment, a style of living, or a physical space come to life.

Here are a few Examples:

Type of Music
Art Collective
A Favorite Tavern
Drug Use
Playing Sports
Camping Group
Gamblers
Role Playing Gamers
Online Meeting Places
Schools
Polyamorous Groups

Sometimes they could just be fans of other people’s projects. These could be people who are really into certain bands, sports, or movies.

I’ll end with this. Terry Trash once told me, “The best way to have a strong scene is to spend money within and for the group instead just wasting it at mainstream businesses.” Okay maybe that isn’t a direct quote, but you get the idea.

No matter which of the items we’re talking about, whether it is spending a few bucks to see your friend’s band or buying artwork from a local, try to support the small person then we can all grow what we feel is important to us.

This was a long one. Thanks for taking the time to review these thoughts with me. Now go have some fun and don’t worry over whether you measure up to anyone but yourself.

You can check out some of my fiction here, where Detective Dak is placed in charge of the anti-clone task force. His main problem…. He’s dating one.

Thanks for listening

WildernessPunk: Three Years

As the third year anniversary of WildernessPunk draws near, I’ve already communicated my thoughts on how both the country and myself have changed over the last three years. So instead of reiterating myself, I’m going to look back in a different manner.

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This will be my 70^th WildernessPunk post. This comes to roughly a new post every two weeks or so. It would have been a better ratio if I haven’t hit that dry spell the second half of 2018. Why did that happen anyway? Oh yeah, I think I was too happy or something.

Along the way, I invented numerous new terms and definitions. Some of them were even used in more than one article. So to aid me in having them all in one place and perhaps have them easier to reference for archaeologists wondering how our generation destroyed the planet despite having all the knowledge to avoid doing so… I give you the WildernessPunk terms, the First Three Years.

Oh yeah, and they are in roughly chronological order, with the various WP defs in front. Enjoy, laugh, contemplate, or throw something at me the next time we meet, as you see fit.

Wilderness Punk. This is the concept one could embrace nature, enter it, live off the land or at least with it, but somehow maintain a cyber presence, a writing presence, and perhaps thrive while doing so.

WildernessPunk II: The idea one can survive without most of the mundane expectations of the day. It focuses on helping the environment by using less processes and items which destroys the land and instead living closer to it. Getting more involved with nature, while using less of what kills it.

WildernessPunk III is not something just meant to be mine, but rather an exploration of the topic of how nature meshes or could integrate into the lives of people so involved in a world controlled by technology.

WildernessPunk IV is the concept of moving past accepted norms in the pursuit of engineering a life which minimizes our environmental impact on our planet.

True Environment is a place existing the way it would whether humans lived on our planet or not. It is an area where humans have not altered the environment away from its natural state.

Animal state: Includes, sex drive, violence, selfishness, but also some of the better things in life like nurturing your offspring, mating, enjoying a good meal.

Cultural World View. CWV is, in as few words as possible, the way a person puts together their world. They create a framework of what is normal, right and wrong, fun and boring. It is a belief system. Opinions can be shared, many of us agree on certain issues, but like the whirling ball of chaos we all are, rare will we find a person who agrees on all our beliefs. Hell, if I get over 50% I know I’ve found a friend.

Humanocentric: Whether for good or for ill, our lives circle around the importance of our own species.

Earth Balance: The balance between the positive impact and the negative damage one commits against the True Environment.

825 Job: The normal office grind employment.

Negative Environmental Impact: The amount you tip your Earth Balance into the negative.

ShitIdoit: When evil combines with dumb.

Self-actualize. We can step back and analyze our life and experiences. With luck and knowledge, we make new and stronger choices.

half-shack

This is why getting stricter with what food we allow to go to waste is the Number One Thing we can all do in this country to combat Climate Change.

Smart Travel: Whether it is on foot, rolling with the bicycle, or to a lesser degree, public transportation, there are many ways we can leave the car parked and perform tasks, both fun and obligatory, without turning the key in our automobiles.

The Strive: Whether personal or natural, the search to find the techniques and methods which will allow us to complete our goals.

Oh you made it this far, wow. Here’s a band new one.

Americaned: A person taught to accept the USA’s reality and the manner it teaches a person how they are expected to live.

And here is a short list of dysfunctional Environmentalists just for fun.

End Game Recyclers: These are the folks who separate their trash, bring it to the curb, and then hop in their car to go buy a new set of lawn furniture.

Privileged Purchasers: These people feel they are ahead of the pack because their new custom made home has an energy efficient dishwasher and since they have solar power, the average person could never hope to be as cool to the environment as they are.

Cherry Picker: These are the people who pick an item or two, usually something easier for them or what they want to do anyway, then elevate themselves above anyone who falls short in this category. Sure, every positive thing you do helps, but helping the environment does not stop because you bike commute or have become a vegetarian.

Power Shoppers: Folks who might do some of the above, but then consume and consume. They buy new things while the old items get tossed into the landfill. They recycle their plastic, but purchase so many groceries they produce five time more trash than they can recycle.

wildernesspunk-1

Thanks for you time and let me know what you think, if you can.

You can grab some of my fiction here, and I can promise you these people are on the Hero’s path.

beer Shades

WildernessPunk: Time – Health = Eco-Overload

What am I talking about this time, gentle readers? For those of you who know WildernessPunk you are familiar with its style of looking at important issues from a different perspective. While most people out there have their steadfast side of an argument where they hammer against those with a different view, WildernessPunk likes to tackle an issue sideways, which is easier because no one can see you coming.

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So let’s consider industrialization for a moment. Much of it has been for the greater good. The invention of the cotton gin and vaccinations, yep, they sure make life better. But what about those innovations which improve on something we’re already capable of doing? For example, we washed clothes before we had washing machines, we cleaned dishes before we had dishwashers, hell, we even got from one place to another before we had vehicles, so why did we invent them?

To save time.

One could argue it makes our lives easier and improves the quality of our existence, but let’s focus on time, and not just because it’s in the title. You’ll see why shortly.

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Let’s just hone in on something easier to wrap our heads around than the complex use of fossil fueled vehicles. I’ll pick on washing machines. Alright, in the past, or the present if you live in the other 80% of the world, when your clothes got dirty you washed them yourself. This might seem like more of a pain, but was it?

Positive benefits from washing clothes by hand

A person got exercise
You were aware of the resources used
You were more likely to recycle the grey water
Little or no carbon waste was created
You might get some fresh air and observe nature
No noise pollution
You didn’t have to waste capital on purchasing and repairing the machine
More space within your dwelling
Clothes got cleaner

Negative consequences of using a washing machine

Creates pollution during each use
Uses resources and creates pollution mining the metals to create it, during its construction, and through transportation
Takes capital to purchase and maintain
User gets much less exercise
More water is wasted and can’t be reused
Takes up space
Does not clean clothes as well as hand washing

I find it interesting how quickly these changes become mainstream. Modern washing machines appeared in 1907 and just over a 100 years later, many people can’t imagine wearing clothes which aren’t washed by machines. How did an unneeded luxury become a necessity? Perhaps more importantly, how does this effect our interaction with the environment?

Do you need a washing machine… No

Do you need to use a washing machine to clean your clothes… No

Are you a true environmentalist if you use a washing machine… No

Did I just piss you off? Well perhaps it’s time to put your money where you mouth is, or in this case back into your pocket with all the cash you’d be saving. Or another alternative is to just not call yourself an environmentalist and get on with your life. The upside is at least you won’t be a hypocrite. And in case you’re wondering… I did blow off using a washing machine for 10 years and look at my biceps, wow.

Moving away from the WM for a minute, I think we all need to reevaluate our intentions. What are your values? If you are crying out about climate change as you toss your clothes in the dryer, crank up the television, while you order something from Amazon, before you drive to the store, YOU ARE NOT AN ENVIRONMENTALIST, I don’t care what memes you post, what music you listen to, or how many piercings you have.

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Things which were luxuries are now demanded and if you don’t use them you’re a freak. Well perhaps it is time to, as Hendrix said, wave our freak flag high. Here is just a quick list of luxuries you can not have and still be an environmentalist.

Unrequired Luxuries

Washing Machines
Dishwashers
Imported foods
Beef and Lamb
Video Games
Driving to places less than two miles away (If not further)
Daily showering
Hygienic products
Pets
Lawns

This list could certainly go on and I’m not saying you can’t have some of these things, but if you claim to be an Environmentalist at all or care about Climate Change, you need to relabel these items as luxuries and not as the necessities we think of them as.

One final note. In 2018 one in four people in the USA was considered obese. We think we have saved time with all these labor saving inventions, but what we have really done is sacrifice our environment and our bodies for the privileges of spending more money to get tasks done. So yeah we might be saving time, but you could very well be paying for this time on the backside of your life by dying earlier because you lead a more unhealthy, sedentary lifestyle. All the while the environment is also paying the price because of the greater amounts of industrial waste you continually create. Oh yeah, and you’re paying for the privilege of polluting more and being less healthy. And if you spend money at a fitness business and drive yourself there, because you don’t think you have the time to do your own calorie burning tasks by hand, you just lost more time, used more resources, and created more pollution, while decreasing your cash flow.

I’m not trying to be the ultra-downer. I’m just trying to bring up the idea that if you need to exercise to stay in shape, perhaps you can do tasks which help the environment, instead of hurting it, and save yourself money instead of wasting it. It is a long road toward being an environmentalist, but we all just got one step closer.

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You can check out some of my fiction here, where Detective Dak is placed in charge of the anti-clone task force. His main problem… He’s dating one.

Skinjumpers

WildernessPunk: Getting Rude About Food

Looks like I took another mini break from WPing after my last camping adventure. What have I been doing besides bingeing on ‘True’ Horror stories and proofing my newest novel which probably will never be published? After celebrating Patriot’s Day, I also hit one of the rare and lonely rivers which cuts through southern Arizona, the San Pedro. But enough about me, for I intend to finish something I have started. I hope my parents haven’t just fainted.

San Pedro log

What I’m talking about was addressing the list of the 6 things we can all accomplish, within our urban environments, which will help lower our Negative Environmental Impact (NEI).

Here’s a quick review of those six ideas

Minimizing Food Waste
Commuting by Bicycle, Walking, Buses
Use Energy Wisely such as high efficiency devices and keeping them unplugged
Consume less
Eating for a Climate Stable Planet
Recycle, Reduce, Reuse

And as at least three of you might know, number 1-4 have been covered bringing us to… Eating for a Climate Stable Planet. No, I’m not coming for your hamburger, but I do intend to toss some data out there. But before I do…

I’ve noticed some interesting things since I’ve begun to seriously investigate our NEI. (Some of you might want to stop reading now) Most of the people I associate with all claim to be environmentalists and interested in helping the environment. But despite their claims, they do little more than the average Trump supporter to accomplish anything to really reduce their NEI. Most people, recycle, have maybe one small pet project, post a few anti-pollution memes on Facebook and call it a done deal. Meanwhile, in this country, the average person pollutes about 200 times more a day than someone living in India. Think about it, chances are, if you’re reading this, you’re 200 times worse than someone living in a more traditional environment. If we went back 10,000 years your current lifestyle would be causing about 1000 times more damage than Rutroo the Barbarian.

rutroo

I’m not demanding you change, but unless you’re living in a tent in Alaska, I think few are the Americans who can claim to be environmentalists. “Hello, I’m part of the worst polluters the world has ever seen, but I’m an environmentalist.”

Still, what are the, would be, heroes of the Earth to do?

I hope we wish to do more than admit we’re hypocrites and wander off mumbling. Part of having to power to change is the knowledge of how things currently are and what could be done. This being said, let’s look at the environmental cost of what we eat. Buckle up people, because for most of us, this is going to hurt.

Many may remain unaware the consumption of food creates to highest NEI for humans. It beats out the resources we use for running a house and transportation. So if eating creates the highest impact on our environment, rethinking and adjusting our eating patterns might be the easiest way for each of us to lower our NEI, or is it?

personalfootprint1

Obviously the first, but perhaps not the easiest step, would be for as many humans as possible to become vegan or at least vegetarian. Yes, this would help, but it’s really not so simple. For instance the difference between low meat eaters and vegetarians is only a 12% drop. This is great and if everyone did this, terrific, but this still doesn’t address the remaining 50% NEI vegans create. Even the difference between a guy who eats a steak every night and a vegan is only double. It seems strange you have to change your whole life, and make things rather difficult for yourself in multiple ways, just to cut this in half and then be stuck. We just can’t lose this 50% best case scenario NEI creation… or can we?

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So if we’re looking at a 50% NEI even if we’re trying our hardest with what we eat, lets looks at where this 50% comes from. It isn’t too complicated. Plants and meat cost energy and resources to produce. Then more to prepare and package. Then still even more to transport to our local store. Then a bit more to remain in a temperature controlled building until we purchase it. Still not done, even at our home we’re using energy to keep the refrigerator running and then cooking our yummies for consumption.

Since this is a lot to take in, I think we would be better tackling these one at a time. So here’s the list of

Food’s Baseline Negative Environmental Impact

Food Production
Food Preparation
Food Packaging
The Transportation of Food
Housing Food
Maintaining Food

Food Production:

We already know producing meat can up to double your NEI, depending on how much and what type you eat regularly. But whether you’re vegan or on the cowboy diet, this is still contributing to your food’s baseline NEI. Eating less meat will help this greatly but as previously stated the difference between a light meat eater and a vegetarian isn’t huge.

WildernessPunk Suggestions:

Grow your own food, raise your own animals, and reuse grey water to do so whenever possible.
Eat foods which require less resources and energy to produce.

Food Preparation:

Apparently this is considered part of the food production process, although producing food seems different than preparing it to come to us. Interesting to note, whether one’s vegan or on the Cowboy diet, this is one the highest producers of NEI through the food cycle, if you include huge amount of food waste which occurs as is mentioned in WildernessPunk: The Number One Thing. https://bit.ly/2KVVHGQ

WildernessPunk Suggestions:

Grow your own food, raise your own animals, and reuse grey water to do so whenever possible.
Do not shy away from purchasing food which appears imperfect.

Food Packaging:

There is less data available in regards to what percent of a food production of NEI is creating by its packaging. One interesting trend appears to be the more (better) food is packaged, the less food is wasted. Still part of me wonders how our dystopian ancestors will feel while walking through fields of Styrofoam when they hear “They had to make everything as perfect as possible for three generations or so and placed Styrofoam under each piece of meat. This helped people live to an older age, so they could pollute even longer, now go eat the caterpillar paste out of the communal pot and remember to share your fork with the whole village.”

WildernessPunk Suggestions:

Buy bulk when possible, but be sure not to do this if it creates food waste.
Attempt to buy food with the least amount of packaging possible.
Recycle, reduce, and reuse this packaging as much as possible.
Buy unpackaged foods.

FoodPackaging-CountriesChart

Transportation of Food:

This is where vegans create as much NEI as the biggest carnivore. It appears transporting food creates roughly 11% of its NEI and is in many ways what we might have the least control over, but let’s take a stab at it anyway.

WildernessPunk Suggestions:

Grow your own food, raise your own animals, and reuse grey water to do so whenever possible.
Research what types of food are produced near your area and try to eat these whenever possible.
Buy food at local markets.
Avoid exotic foods.

Storing Food:

This appears to be the smallest producer of NEI. Only 5% of the overall NEI is created by maintenance and storage.

WildernessPunk Suggestions:

Use energy efficient transportation when buying food.
Smaller more focused trips to the store help reduce food waste.
Research which of your local stores are more eco-friendly.

Maintaining and Preparing Food:

The average citizen of the United States’ use of electricity makes up 14% of their NEI. Refrigerators make up only 8.8% of this. So roughly 1.2% of our yearly NEI is created from refrigerator use. Which is probably one of the most reasonable uses of energy in our country. This is only increased with the knowledge the best thing we can do to lower our NEI is to limit food waste. (See WildernessPunk Number One Thing) Also interesting to note our refrigerator use alone produces twice the NEI the average man in India creates with everything he does.

Cooking food creates slightly less NEI than refrigerator use and is easier for us to avoid by purchasing more food which doesn’t need to be cooked.

WildernessPunk Suggestions:

Keep refrigerator on a higher temperature.
Be efficient when removing items.
Try to compost food which gets too old to eat or feed it to animals.
Try to avoid buying more than you can eat before the food goes bad.
In most cases, give the expiration date on food an extra week or two.
Eat food which requires less energy to prepare.
Recycle time saving products which are big energy wasters.

Food Production is one of the hardest things for the average consumer to influence. Of course, limiting your meat intake is the best way to lower your contribution to our NEI. Producing as much or your own food as possible is also a strong play.

This may seem like a hard bunch of data to take in, but if we think of things as a national effort, we would start looking at huge improvements. If as a country, we could produce 20% less NEI the effects would be staggering. And as always keep in mind all these improvements, help the environment, our country, and our personal finances. We have nothing to lose but our NEI.

I think its time to wake up and get started.

Garden

You can check out some of my fiction here, where Dak has to decide between is lover and his job, but will either choice be able to save them both?

San Pedro north

WildernessPunk: A Spring Thing

You know what? I think it’s time I take a break and mix it up a little. My last four or five posts have been rather serious and… it’s Spring. Coinciding with this fresh get out of the house feeling I have, is my first solo camp of the year and a renewed decision to avoid banging my head up against the steel wall of what our current politics has become.

Sometimes you just need to shed yourself from all this damn humanity. Ergg, we’re all so narcissistic and self-important. Humans do this. Humans want that. Humans are entitled to… Sometimes I just want all the talking heads to shut up, but since they never will, I’ll just take myself to a place I can’t hear them. Here, by the edge of the Gila River, it’s just the murmuring current and the talking beaks.

Gila camp

Strange how moments alone, especially when off the grid, allow and perhaps force one to reflect. Spring is important to animals. As one, we emerge and renew our methods used for The Strive.

The Strive: Whether personal or natural, the search to find the techniques and methods which will allow us to complete our goals.

gila rapibs.jpg

Could focusing on what your Strive was through different stages of your life help you to look back and chart your growth or at least your adventure? What was your Strive last Spring, the Spring before that, and the proceeding one? Should someone have a Strive which progresses through the years or would this be little more than stagnation?

For the sake or creating an outline for reference, I’ll toss up my last three Spring Strives, which have occurred since WildernessPunk began.

Last Spring: I was evicted and had new goals only months after finally having a new foundation.
Two Springs ago: I was preparing to escape the clinging fingers of the mountain town I’d called home for so long.
Three Springs ago: Evil acts had cost me seeing my children, my job, my vehicle, my home, and started me on the WildernessPunk journey.

This spring well… I know I need to change, improve, and evolve, but no dread and doom looms over me. No fist of dismay, hovers through my waking thoughts remaining me of faults and malingering problems. Of course many still exist, but not the crippling kind which cause you to live within a rotting tent in the woods.

Gila North

In the end what motivates us more, having it all yanked away or enjoying the support of a stable environment? This is an interesting question. Let’s break down to possible pros of each situation.

Aids to accomplishment provided by a Fortified Environment

Utilities allow one to work during any hour of the day
Enough food and water provide the strength to work longer hours
Rooms designed for purpose and equipped with gear allow for a larger range of accomplishment
Less time is used for daily maintenance needs
Emotional support and pleasurable pursuits help recharge the soul

Aids to accomplishment provided by Challenging Environment

If isolated, less distractions could be present
Many luxuries which eat time such as televisions and the internet may not be present
Living closer to the edge can create a burning desire to improve one’s situation
One has more freedom to explore various paths
Exploring diverse paths is more likely to provide greater inspiration and sometimes opportunity

These are just a few ideas, but it really becomes a balance between equipment and inspiration because people can be inspired by different things. Many are those who can be inspired through the works of others. When this is the case, a stable environment allows for more information to be absorbed, but also you can only read one thing at a time and even at my worst, I’m never without a book.

gila paint.jpg

Still it can mostly come down to the person and like so many things is really a dual between law and chaos. What helps you succeed more, an organized house, complete with food, and temperature controlled, filled with all the supplies you need to get the job done? Or does the same four enclosed walls start to wear on you and leave you feeling uninspired as each day your experience drifts you further from any interaction with the True Environment?

For others, traveling, meeting new people, and seeing new beauty and places recharges the mind and leaves one eager to get started on the new adventure or project. Others find the time it takes to survive and travel through such areas a drain on their physical and mental resources and will get little done other than just making it through the day and then falling onto their cot exhausted.

gila Chair.jpg

Of course age and other factors affect such things. A retired man might very well get more done on his computer in a comfy chair, while a younger woman might try to stay within her apartment as little as possible.

So which are you, a more lawful based person who thrives when you’re in your comfort zone, or a chaotic person who likes to explore the new and the different?

Something to think about as you Strive to achieve the goals which stretch before you, for life is a short ride and we should all be sure we’re traveling along the right road.

Gila me.jpg

You can check out some of my fiction here, where Dak has to decide between is lover and his job, but will either choice be able to save them both?

gila tunnel

WildernessPunk: Lessening Our Negative Environmental Impact

I’m hoping most of the folks reading this also read my last WP post, The Number One Thing, where I discussed how the easiest thing we can do in this country to combat Climate Change is insuring we minimize food waste which causes huge amounts of methane to enter our atmosphere. This limits our personal contribution to climate change while helping our country, and also our personal finances along the way.

Josh

But how do you top a concept which can be embraced by everyone cross culturally which also has a huge positive affect on everything from environmental health to blue collar worker’s wallets?

The answer would be to find something even better.

But first I wanted to toss out a Mission Statement of sorts for WildernessPunk, you know because we’re so professional and all:

WildernessPunk is the concept of moving past accepted norms in the pursuit of engineering a life which minimizes our environmental impact on our planet.

Valley of the Goda

A little more WP Housekeeping. For the Hell’s of lit, I went ahead and started a WildernessPunk Blog and FB page. I’ll start posting an old posts on both of these every day. I’ll still post new WP posts here on my main page, but in the future there will probably be a benefit having them all in the same place.

So back to this find something better concept.

Chocise

There are many different lists and suggestions to be found on the internet and within the reports written by environmental scientists. However, many of these lists involve legislation and making huge sweeping changes in our technology or culture. But what about things which rely on the individual? What could you do tomorrow to help without needing to call your congressperson, collecting signatures, or investing a few thousand dollars?

Let’s compile a list of the top contenders. I know we talked about minimizing our food wastage, so I’ll just place this at the top of the list.

Ways an Individual can Lower their Negative Environmental Impact (NEI)

Minimizing Food Waste
Commuting by Bicycle, Walking, Buses
Use Energy Wisely such as high efficiency devices and keeping them unplugged
Consume less
Eating for a Climate Stable Planet
Recycle, Reduce, Reuse
And Eating Bugs

Bike wet rain

After a review of the current literature, this is the list of top things we can each do on our own which were mentioned in the most of the various articles. Of course there are dozens of things we could do as a party or a country or a world, but most experts agree individuals should be doing as much of the above list as possible.

I might blow off the eating bugs idea. I mean it’s just so simple why outline it, unless you want to discuss how to build ant farms for fun and dinner. However, since I already started with the first one, I might take a WildernessPunk crack at the others. Perhaps we all might learn something.

Old Faithful

You can grab some of my fiction here, check it out.

bone empty lecture

Can you go Back? WildernessPunk

They say, “You can’t go back.” Which is of course false, because you can go back, it just might not feel the same way. Yet, what makes it different? I often look back at even recent times in my life and marvel over how much has changed in just a couple of years, but things can become dissimilar for us in just a few months as well.

Preroof and tarp

Sometimes situations change for the worse, but as darker fluctuations occur, at times they can also force us out of stagnation. Although many of us like to feel cozy and warm in a predicable life, one also runs the risk of trading the unknown for the known and lack of variety and adventure can often be the price you pay.

Boney Utah

As the sun begins to set on this mystic Baccanaught, I look back at where I was when I started WildernessPunk 18 months ago. I lived much of my time in camp 1 between Flagstaff and Walnut Canyon. I spent the days and nights alone with only the minimal equipment I could transport to the forest by bike. No fires, simple foods, mostly reading and writing until the battery on my loaned laptop died.

Now, not too long after, I’m living in a home with heat and water, dating a lovely goddess of a woman, seeing friends every week, and most importantly getting to have my boys stay with me.

boys

Yes, much can change quickly, but this only made it more exciting when I had a chance to return to Camp 1 recently. It felt fitting I hiked up into the forest alone. Within are pictures of Camp 1 taken in 2018, 15 months after the last night I slept there.

Trail

In theory, I had returned to clean up and perhaps salvage anything worth grabbing, but as I followed the old trail, which hid my homeless refuge, other more complex thoughts moved through my mind.

in the distance 2018

I felt grateful. Where so much had turned against me, now so many things have fallen into place. Yet as the readers of WildernessPunk might appreciate, with this turning of the tide, something was also lost.

Camp 1 view

One feels a pride persevering through obstacles and living low to the ground with limited resources. Nature is the great equalizer. Rich or poor, members of every race and belief are all treated the same. Only your ability to prepare and work to improve your state changes things in the real world.

Was this the Real World or is my normal house more real? Hard to say. I felt alive in a different fashion then. Am I more of a winner now or less? I’d get different answers from each person I could ask. Yet, the bottom line for many of us becomes our children, family, lover, and friends. Are you going to live for yourself and ideals, or jump into the mainstream so your can uphold different goals and ideals?

Perhaps one can do both. Wish me luck.

AZSunset

You can grab some of my fiction here, which I promise has nothing to do with this, Hell, my hero is a cop, go figure.

WildernessPunk 6/12/17 Glenwood

To reach Glenwood New Mexico, from this hidden river/forest paradise, one has to leave the Apache Nation and travel through a hundred miles of high desert forest. Then you drop down thousands of cliff covered feet into the arid jagged rock which rings the west side of the Gila Wilderness.

Our little group of adventurers left the forest later than I would have liked, but ended up discovering the hotel we stayed in last time was condemned. Found a newly renovated place and strangely spike the high life in the middle of potential future tribulations.

Glenwood ghost

Almost nothing in the way of business is alive in this shady ghost town. I have been coming here for over a decade and each time I see it die in stages. First time, both the hotel I stayed in and the lonely lost tavern I enjoyed, both gone. The only store in town, now gone. This trip. Sad attempts at restaurants leaves only a single pizza parlor open three days a week for four hours a pop.

Glenwood Bar

Odd to see things go ghost in just part of your lifetime, but shouldn’t this mean the rent would be cheap here? Desert shade and hey a river runs through it. Sure, a lack of money or any normal type of job might slow me down, but hey. Still, when the reality store says open, but the dust covered door is locked, it might be hard to find an angle.

The one thing which is progressing in this town is the recently remodeled, Los Olmos Lodge. One can tell a lot of love, thought, and sweat went into making a relaxing gathering of cabins near both the river and several frog covered ponds. I love my frog friends. With this couple striving to open a restaurant and re-open the general store, they have more work ahead. Yeah, I offered to help, but might be taking nine months before the caretaker’s job opens. Ergg.

Glenwood swamp

Is there such a thing a fate? Why were my thoughts drawn here so often over the past few months? Still the nearest place to buy beer is 20 miles away and uphill. That could prove pretty rough.

Funny how me staying here today is a reality check of sorts. There is no place to buy food, ale, or anything else. If I didn’t bring it with me, I don’t have it. Unless I go hunt wild game, going to be hard to increase the larder.

Life without a store… (Or I have food I bought at a store with me.) still feels weird to need to stock up, not be able to, but yet be in a place where people live. Look there goes two now? I wonder if they brought their own dinner?

Glenwood pool

Could this be what civilization means. Spending money on food. Maybe it just is that simple. Water, food, shelter.

I have some cans of food several years old, which have already been used today. Another odd thought, I worked for a company, I haven’t been with for over a year, but today, I will be surviving off this old effort. It’s my older son’s 6^th birthday weekend and he’ll have a few days in the rough lands, half steaming desert and abandoned shops with a little pool time thrown in.

Glenwood Green

So I’m shutting this down so I can live off the corpse of my former life as this place of luxury and fun battles against the tide of the crumbling forgotten years which surround it.

Glenwood Stage

You can grab some of my fiction here, which I promise has nothing to do with this.

Glenwood Frog

I’m Back the Return of WildernessPunk

Hello again, surprised to hear from me? I know I’ve happily spilled all sorts of jargon about the integrity of WildernessPunk and I still believe in what I have said, unlike the vast majority of our current politicians. But if there is anything I learned from this last election, truth, decency, and consistency are not considered important to most people living in the USA. Hell, if Trump can lie through his pouty lips and still get elected, why shouldn’t I be able to write about WildernessPunk from this rat room which keeps a ceiling over my head for another two days?

tucson

First off, let me piss off, well almost everyone. In some respects, I’m happy Trump won. No hate mail yet, hear my out. I always knew this country had a slimy underbelly of horrid people and it took an ass-clown like Trump to help us determine how bad it really is.

Trump is like a bug exterminator who, instead of bringing poison, covers himself in dead meat and candy. All the human cockroaches filled with racism, entitlement, and hate rushed out of their dark corners and latched onto him. Trump didn’t create these people, he gave them an avenue where they no longer felt they had to hide their true selves and let’s face it, their true selves suck.

trump

Of course, not every Trump supporter is an evil, bigoted a-hole, some may have voted for him for reasons other than an agenda of hate, yet we still have to come to grips with the fact millions of people voted for a person who has no one’s interest in his heart other than his own.

Still, let’s back up a little. Oh yee of the left. Did you think there would be no consequences to your ever-constricting noose of political correctness? Did your concept of urban intellectual superiority and your removal from the people who struggle in the earth for a living work out well for you? All of you thought Hillary would win, didn’t you? Because you live in your own circles of self-indulgent rhetoric. You see things improving…getting better, but then you kept pushing, every increasingly obscure scrap of ‘God is Dead’ let’s replace his books with what we feel is correct and if you don’t like it, you’re a backward primitive.

politically

Guess what, the ‘backward primitives’ won. You pissed them off for so long they all poured out to vote for this one. Finally, a man for the people who hates the people.

But again, the veil is down. We elected a fascist. Mostly politicians try to hide their fascist leanings, but Trump just came out with the ‘why bother’ technique. He took a gamble. He believed there were enough people full of hate for their fellow humans he could just come out and be honest about his evil tendencies and policies and win. Hey look, he was right.

So, what does this mean? Are we all just puppets to the wealthiest one percent? Well yeah. Money runs things and the amount of money and power some people possess now is truly sickening. Everything else is just a joke. Issues are used to distract or fulfill an agenda. We are all so polarized we don’t notice the world creeping towards its doom while we scream at each other. And as we workers do this, the elite sits back and laughs and laughs.

pychoville

Despite his endless lies, in many ways Trump may be the most honest man we have elected. It’s all out on his 10,000$ sleeve. He’ll send drones to blow up families with a heart full of glee and then brag about it. He’ll remove children from their parents and have people tortured and make no excuses. Laws and decency mean nothing to him. He is the pure id of the 1% exposed.

So, I ask you one last thing. If he feels safe showing this country his true self, what does this say about the rest of us?

trump-women

I’ll make sure I’ll remain a very hard man to track down.

electric-forest4

You can grab some Skinjumper-Punk here and help support your friendly WildernessPunker

skinjumpers

The Nature of Nature in WildernessPunk

Since I promised you, my gentle reader, I would cheer up at the end of my last post, I’m going to discuss the nature of Nature. You’re all well aware there’s little which cheers me like Nature.

sharestorm

We already discussed the theory of True Environment. True Environment is an area which would be the same whether or not humans existed. So obviously the areas of Alaska’s interior would be damn close to 100% True Environment, while the average street in the Bronx might get about 2%.

Disregarding those extremes for a moment, let’s consider a typical western home. Does shutting oneself within a box completely cut you off from Nature? Could it be that having plants, pets, or even photographs and art count as something? What if one opens a window? Are we closer to nature now?

tunnel-entrance

Enter the back yard. Plants are there, often arranged by human hands, but behaving naturally. Perhaps a pair of birds twitter in a tree as a bee comes by to investigate your shirt. I think it all helps. Humans need grounding.

tunnel-light

We have been removed from the animal, from the environment, and told it is okay, in fact the more removed the better. Air conditioning is way better than a swamp cooler and if you live in Phoenix and don’t have either, you’re considered a loser and DCS will be on their way to take your kids. Make more money, so you can have a bigger home, and have more rooms between you and the outside.

electric-bike

And what does Nature mean for most industrialized people? Maybe you might go jogging down a trail which has seen a hundred thousand footfalls. Or perhaps you will save up some money to have an allotted nature experience and travel to an endorsed, Nature Zone, to view some wonder next to two hundred other people and then go home.

tunnel-light-ii

Have you ever considered humans only focusing on humans and human inventions is a little strange? Maybe it’s good to experience things where we’re not 100% in charge. Let’s consider two scenarios.

tunnel-ii

Scene 1: A couple grabs their wallet, gets into their heated car, and goes to a restaurant. They know around what the bill will be, they pay it, and return home.

couple_dining

Scene 2: Couple rides their bikes out to Walnut Canyon. Makes their way into the canyon, perhaps walking where no one has for decades. It starts to rain, so they hunker under a cliff and eat a few power bars. The sun is starting to get lower in the sky, so they hurry back to their bikes and rush home.

walnut-canyon

Say both couples have to return to work Monday. In scene one, they reinforced nothing but human based valued and felt almost no aspect of the True Environment. Group 2 though, they placed themselves outside of the world of human.

They challenged themselves, yes. They experienced more of the True Environment, yes, but what is the difference for them?

It is so easy to accept this artificially created life and feel it is normal, even though 90% of what we do every day has only been possible for a few generations. How real is something which has only been present for .000001% of humanity’s existence?

“Well, of course it’s real, dummy, I’ll prove it to you. Look my Netflix account works just fine, let’s pick which one of these thousand movies you’d like to watch.”

Let me just ask you this, if we are focusing 90% of our time on things that didn’t exist a hundred years ago, what 90% of our lives were replaced? Many of us feel wounded and confused in life. We muggle through our jobs and relationships while always feeling like there’s something missing. Perhaps, just perhaps, it is that 90%.

tunnel-light-at-the-end

I hope I got you thinking a bit. Drop by Flagstaff and I promise I’ll take you into Walnut Canyon.

skinjumpers

Grab some Skinjumper-Punk here and help support your friendly WildernessPunker