Tag: True Environment

Fear Based Folly Meets WildernessPunk

I ended up really liking Camp 4 and could see myself going back there. As anyone who has read even one of these WP can grok, I’m not a big fan of crowds, yet, when I am isolated, I’m not immune to the Heebie Jeebies and I’m not talking about my favorite Flagstaff band.

 

camp-4

 

I know this goes a little contrary to the ‘Leave All the People Behind,’ idea, but when I get into the burly regions where nature still rules, like I mentioned before, places close to their True Environment, I tend to feel a certain unease.

 

Thoreau didn’t have such concerns on Walden Pond. A trip and slip or a dash of frost bite might have been his chief concerns. The west is a different creature. I’m not saying animals rush you left and right, but in the wilds and alone, a person does take some risks.

 

waldon-pond

 

Yet, I’m thinking this improved vigilance is a good thing. I’m certainly not trying to suggest the hyper vigilance many children, urban dwellers, and some abused people worldwide are forced to deal with is a good thing. Never being able to relax leads to lives of woe. Yet vigilance in nature is another issue. Perhaps closer to being a solider than battered child.

 

You can train and be more prepared, similar to a warrior. You can have the right gear, like a soldier tries to insure, but when you are on your own, you can only look so many ways at once.

 

Sometimes your mind can play strange tricks on you. Movement, then nothing. I might need a haircut. Why does my swinging hair have to be the same color as a grizzly’s coat? Okay, a really dirty grizzly, but those are the worst kind.

 

camp-4-view

 

And there is that one in a hundred times an animal is there and suddenly you go from flipping a playing card to protecting your family.

 

But is this really what I’m talking about? It is not so much that you could have something happen as much as being ready for it. You feel a little more real checking your own trail for venomous vipers in order to take a leak than shuffling barefoot down a hallway for the 70,000th time.

 

Western Diamondback Rattlesnake

 

 

 

 

That is the difference between this type of survival and walking by a gang to get something for your mother. Perhaps the latter is far more intense, but something about removing other humans from the equation changes things.

 

Sorry if I offend anyone, but humans are mostly assholes. Many evolve above this state, but it’s our base selves and truly our animal self.

 

dumbies

 

We are smart enough to think past it, but it’s not a given. 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.

 

We take this Animal State, but pervert it with a concoction of mangled Law swirling like a self-important crust attempting to form around a vortex of chaos. All the while we’re proclaiming this is normal and correct, when nothing is static or accepted for more than a decade or two. Yes, yes some concepts like take care of your children and hmm… maybe there is a god or something, but those are archetypal, which is the part of human existence which changes the slowest if at all. I’ll be discussing those at a later date.

 

witches-wizards-4611Let’s focus on Trump’s Make America great again. So that proposes we go back in time. 160 years ago it was legal to kill a slave. Is that when we were great and the laws were right? When Native Americans were cheated out of their land or killed. Did America rock then?

 

No of course not, but my point is those times were not too long ago and we had Laws some majority managed to get onto the books which we would think are insane now. I have a point, really I promise. So to assume. given our history, we are somehow 100% doing things right now is a belief only a fool could possess. Again, grasping at a point. Humans are a shit show. We need to get better, not go back, but what does this have to do with the boy walking by the gang versus the solo campers in some lonely canyon?

 

chaos-humans

 

 

Humans are a strange mix of Law and Chaos, we expect problems, but random chance, luck, and reason can solve an issue. You can’t talk your way out of a snakebite. The can’t verbally spare with a mountain lion. Bears can’t be bribed with money or favors. In doesn’t matter what your GPA is or if your brother runs the biggest gang in the area, if you fall off a cliff or get hypothermia. The challenges in nature are raw. It is the great equalizer. The real you faces them. Gone are awards, degrees, longevity at the workplace, your ability to wow people. The challenges big and small are met by you. The self you speak to at night and in the morning. No excuses, no mercy, you do it or it doesn’t get done. You stay safe or a Jesse Ventura said, “You lose it out here and you’re in a world of hurt.”

 

jesse-ventura-as-blain-in-predator-1987

 

So who wants to go camping with me next weekend?

 

Tune back in as I return to the southern desert and finish what I never started.

 

water-and-sand

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

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little-camp

 

True Environment and WildernessPunk

What you gonna do?

Call the Lilly Ponds Camp 2.

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Lilly Long

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Yeah is there really anyplace better to call Camp 2? Sure I could be in Arivipa or Coyote Buttes, but if I was, I’d probably just be doing the Wilderness and have to minus the punk pretty quick as I set off on a quest to insure I survive. I may have sacrificed a few things to get here, but I’m still riding on the wave of reciprocity I received for E-Jacking Kurt into the world of ShareStorm by making all his platforms for him. It took all day, but it was well worth it for both of us. He got and will be getting, about 1000$ worth of services for tossing me some grub, a few beers, and driving me up to the Lillies.

 

Yep, not a bad requirement to have to drive yourself into paradise.

 

I write while he gets his nature photography on. Not a bad deal. I will join him down by the ponds when I am done with this. I don’t feel behind in my game for I already took a dip last night before sunset.

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Kurt Camera

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With just a few supplies in hand life becomes easy on this end. Water and Sun. Good times and fun. Like a Disney world for adults, or at least adults who like to experience things closer to the real, closer to a state where one strips away as much of the clingings of civilization as possible. Moving through the woods with just a spear, dagger, and the clothes on my back

 

The land has an eerie calm today. Not a leaf moves. After all the rain, Northern Arizona has received a green carpet of life, which sweeps through the brown spikes of the forest. Even the bugs and birds go quite as the sun holds its breath, like the world is waiting for something to happen.

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Camp View

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Perhaps the real me is what’s about to happen.

 

What does it mean to attempt to get closer to the true environment? How can you do it? What would it look like if you succeeded and how would you even know if you had?

 

Big questions, perhaps too big to answer, but maybe taking small bites would help. So let me back up a little and create a new term. True Environment (TE). True Environment is a concept I would like to throw out into the world. I’m not saying I’m inventing as much as defining something.  True Environment is the idea you are in a place existing the way it would whether humans lived on our planet or not. So in a sense one could call it an area where humans have not altered the environment away from its natural state.

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Hair Washing

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In many cases this would not be an all or nothing situation. Most of existence is measured on the bell curve as would TE. Think of Antarctica on the TE side and Manhattan on the other side which we can term  HE, or the Human Environment.

 

Sure with a little effort most of us can get to some places with a high TE score which would be close to how a place would be with or without human involvement, but we must also be careful not to oversell a space in the TE scale.

 

Of instance, I LOVE the Lilly Ponds, but… We have sheep being herded in this area, houses are really not too far down the dirt road, a mile away lumber is being harvested, and Boy Scout camp lurks to the southeast. Also people have been collecting firewood here for decades. A wonderful gift for all who encounter this place, true, but are these woods and waters the same way they would be if humans didn’t exist, close, but there would be differences surly. Bears and Mountain Lions might be more common in the area just for starters. More animals might be migrating through as well. And I won’t even bring up the Crawdads again.

 

So obviously a place even as close to Nirvana in so many ways, as the Lilly Ponds, would not receive a perfect TE score. Sometimes when it comes to human survival, having a lower TE score can even help, remember when I found the huge tile during the rainstorm and used it to cover my tent? Then I used an old tin can to help dig post holes to make the poles holding my ramada more secure.

 

Human things help humans. It’s that simple. Face it, toilet paper is a good thing to have. However, an area’s TE rating does not revolve around how well it helps humans survive, it’s based, again, on how untouched a region is by the hands of man and womankind. It is that simple.

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Cat tails

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Now you understand the concept and I think the next step is to develop a system of measurement, because that is what OCD math-mind oriented people like me do. But that will wait until next time.

 

Improve, test, and reward your body and mind. Yeah, I just gave you some homework.

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Trail II

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Thanks for listening and turn back in to see how my Trip back to the Lillies goes. Will I have to fight off dogs? Will there be enough beer for me to share with the frogs?

 

Grab some of my SkinJumper-Punk fiction here

 

Lilly Cliffy