May
16, 2020
Today's
observation- Iowa has joined the fray to commence the soft reopening of the
economy beyond essentials. The Purgatory
Pub's parking lot had a sizable population of motorcycles and pickups; patrons were
all inside. I passed a gregarious outdoor scene at a local café and bar, which must
have been almost forty folks dining outside and listening to live music on the
lawn. The front door of a chocolate shop
in a river tourist town was open, and an a-frame sidewalk sign reminded viewers
that chocolate is an essential commodity.
I agreed with that, but I didn't stop.
I'd
loaded my kayak for a paddle, the first of the year, and I chose a launch ramp at
a county park and marina just off the Rock Creek in Clinton County because it has
canoe trails that network a big area.
While rental boats were not out and available, many private crafts were
on the water. And I counted my blessings
to have a wide aquatic berth between me and the ticks. The trunks of hardwood
trees in the bottomland forests wore stripes like a wildebeest. It had not been long since the river had receded
from that soggy bottom. The woodpeckers and swifts were the dominant birdlife
out today, and a few river cooters sunned on protruding logs. This float helped me dissipate my angst from the
information overload of the past days. Better
to imitate the river flotsam and just go with the flow.
Malcolm
Gladwell says it is a good sign when people seek moments of normalcy amid a
crisis. The park was brimming with this today, and I think that most of the rabble-rousing,
to reopen non-essential businesses we've been reading about, is an effort to
reclaim normalcy. Albeit, that overdramatic
response would cast this pandemic (and the federal and state governments'
efforts to mitigate infection levels) as a political ploy to subjugate the
working class. The stories we tell
ourselves!
Leaving
the river, I pushed my outing further with a visit to Eden Valley Nature
Reserve, an old homestead made into a public natural area. Here too, many others needed to get out of the house and the neighborhood. They had set up their campers and RV's or were playing
in Bear Creek, or rambling the trail network.
But it was not crowded, much to my relief. Such a sweet spot for a homestead,
here was a fertile arable bottom off a healthy little river with tall gnarly
limestone outcroppings, making a sheltered palisade into walls and corridors. It did
resemble a little Eden and probably has been inhabited for thousands of years before these
settlers. It's that kind of place. I imagined up until the invention of internal combustion engine vehicles,
this was remote living. Maybe the family
saw their neighbors a few times a month and during winter, less than that. Days filled with chores, disciplined and rhythmed
to keep entropy at bay and crisis mitigated. A different life dance than we expect
today. When did we shift to living a
life that is so presumptive and pleasure-expectant, one that
measures success by the amount of leisure time and stuff? Have we actualized our parents'
dreams for the privileged life, made in a moment of frustration with poverty? That
thought makes me wonder. What is the implicit dream that I put forward for
my sons to actualize?
There
is an art of patience that dwelled in these farm families because the land demanded
it. Hardships were a dime a dozen and easy flitted past like the birds and
butterflies. In places like this homestead, I think of self-reliance as a
successful symbiosis with the place.
Is it too late for a revival of pioneer literature and the transcendentalists? Are these stories and philosophies ancient history, the common threads frayed and falling apart? I get it, that frontier mentality was a big problem. But what endures a crisis is timeless. These
stories intersect with our life to remind us that things will be inconvenient, stressful,
painful, dangerous, and even grueling but these times define us. They hold the opportunity to galvanize and distill out
the best parts of us, or to render us to our worst. In the end, entropy will rule the day, always has, always
will. So in the meantime, let's exercise the one thing we can control, how we
treat one another, and how we live on the planet.
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