not all those who wander are lost

"NOT ALL THOSE WHO WANDER ARE LOST."
J.R.R. TOLKIEN

KAPAPAMAHCHAKWEW
Cree leader, Wandering Spirit

Saturday, November 28, 2015

THE MUD HUT, POUNCER BOUNCER AND A FEW OTHER ITEMS

POST # 192

A week ago I was in Vancouver, preparing to board a flight to Los Angeles, and then from there to Tucson.  After an overnight at the airport, I was picked up by my friends Guy and Karen, and we drove to the Mud Hut, where I've been located ever since.


THE MUD HUT AND GUY

As an added bonus to spending time with my friends Guy and Sheila and Mike and Karen, I was asked to do some pet sitting for a few days.  Mike and Karen have recently adopted a wonderful little furball named Pouncer Bouncer.  They were going to be away over the long weekend, and needed someone to care for him.  Enter, the housesitter.


POUNCER BOUNCER

During this past week, I was fortunate enough to participate in the latest Nature Bats Last radio show which can be found here.

In addition to that, Ivey Cone produced a short video with regards to the 7th stage of grief.  I was one of the participants.  The video is embedded below.


I think that will do for this week.  More news from the Mud Hut on December 7th.

Happy Trails,

Paul
The Thoughtful Wanderer

PS; Dad's birthday today. He would have been 99.

Saturday, November 21, 2015

THOUGHTFULLY WANDERING- AGAIN

POST # 191



November 21st is always a memorable date.  It was on this day in 1978 that I flew to Antarctica.  Today isn't anywhere near as spectacular, but I will be flying again.  This time it will be from Vancouver to Tucson Arizona, via Los Angeles.  I'm en route to the Mud Hut in New Mexico to visit my friends Guy and Sheila, and Mike and Karen and others.

Digging through some old photos during my time here in Vancouver, produced this gem from October 1979.  Spot the Canadian.  Hint- white skin.  This was on board a freighter from Ambon to Surabaya in Indonesia.  Five days, on the Banda Sea, with nothing to eat but plain boiled white rice and dried salted fish.  But the crew were great.  Just don't expect to beat them at the game of chess.




Happy Trails,
Paul
The Thoughtful Wanderer





Saturday, November 14, 2015

DOES THE DAMN THING WORK?

POST #190

Being back in Vancouver for a while has allowed me to comb through the extremely limited collection of things that for one reason or another, I still have some difficulty parting with. Among that collection are a few books, including a rare book of fiction.  Rare, in the fact that fiction is not something that I spend much time reading these days.  However, this book made the cut many years ago when I was focused on everything Antarctic.  I was in the planning stages of a solo expedition to that continent, so anything even remotely related to Antarctica, caught my attention.  It was easy for this book to do so, because the title of it is "Antarctica."  Included in this work of fiction is a flow chart (see below), and having come across it again, I now realize why I have held on to this book for so long.  No matter how often I look at the flow chart, it makes me laugh, and that's a good thing.  Plus, I think there is some wisdom to be found here as well.  Now that the chart is here on my blog, it will be easy to let go of the book.  One less thing to own.  Bit by bit, my road to simplicity continues.



Maybe if humans had had the wisdom of this chart 10,000 years ago, or 5000 years, or even prior to the discovery of fossil fuels, we wouldn't find ourselves in the predicament we are now in.

Now, here we are in late 2015 and I think that there are an ever increasing amount of humans who might be feeling like the goat in the photo below.

A PHOTO I TOOK WHILE ON A BIKE JOURNEY YEARS AGO IN NEW ZEALAND

The goat is trying to convey to all those condo owners in Miami Florida, that maybe it's time to get to higher ground while they still can.

I think that's enough for today.

Happy trails,
Paul
The Thoughtful Wanderer

Saturday, November 7, 2015

BABY BOOMERS AND SHADOW

POST # 189

On a stroll to the market this morning, I passed by the local news agent.  A headline in the "Globe and Mail" caught my eyes.  Above the fold, there is a photograph of a smiling older couple, and the two captions read as follows:
"SO LONG SUCKERS" and "GOOD LUCK WITH THE NEXT COUPLE DECADES"

Silly, silly me.  After reading the above quotes, for a brief moment I began to think that the editors at this national newspaper had finally come to the acceptance phase of NTHE (near term human extinction), and decided to make it front page news.  After all, it should be front page news.

Alas, it was just an article about the aging baby boomer cohort, and even though I didn't read the article, it's easy to work out the gist of it.   In other words, it's the baby boomers saying to the younger generation, too bad and tough luck that you weren't born when we were, as we've got all the assets now, and you're left holding the bag.  It kind of reminds me of the Charlie Brown Halloween, where all the other kids get the goodies, and poor old Charlie Brown ends up with a rock.  A comment by lwa at Nature Bats Last sums it up pretty well:

Mom, Dad … there seem to be no jobs after university in this new globalized world you voted for, and also no possibility for me or any of my peers to purchase a home to live in either, like you and guys had in your generation’s era.”
Oh shucks Henry, this new generation sure does do a lot of complaining doesn’t it? Say dear, the real estate value of our two cottages and three rental apartments just rose again, isn’t that swell?” How about you and I go to the coffee shop and celebrate by getting one of those grumpy University grads to make us a nice double latte?
.
 I imagine that the article doesn't mention the fact that it was cheap energy via fossil fuels that we have had the use of for so many decades (certainly all of the decades that the baby boomers have been alive for), that has provided for all of this accumulation of assets, and now that the cheap and easy to get at energy is long gone, so are the dreams of the younger generation, even though I doubt that very many of them understand just why things have been going sideways for them.  After all, they managed to get their University degree, and they all have smart phones.  Life's good, right??

However, much more important than that, is the fact that as a result of the burning of all of these fossil fuels, we have now managed to destroy the very habitat that we, humans, and all other life on the planet depend upon for our very existence.  Fossil fuel usage has increased dramatically in the past few decades, and the baby boomers of the world most certainly have burned up a significant part of what was available.

So, a better article perhaps, could have been written about the effects of industrial civilization, its imminent demise, and the catastrophe that it has wrought on the earth, but of course, that will never happen.  Pretty soon, I think that we're all going to be feeling like poor old Charlie Brown, baby boomers included. "Hey Charlie Brown, what did you get?"  CB: " I got a rock."

So as I have stated before on this blog, it's always about the economy.  That's what makes the headlines for now.  However, I don't imagine that it will be too long into the future, where most people, including all of those baby boomers, are going to have more important things to worry about than just how they're going to spend all of those assets in their retirement years.

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On the house/pet sitting front, I have a new furball to care for.  Actually this is my third time with Shadow the cat.  He's a real treat, and very easy to spend time with, so I will try to keep him as happy as possible while I am here. On day one, he lived up to his namesake, just a shadow of his former self.  I went out for a while and when I returned he was nowhere to be found. Eventually, after my third look under the bed, I saw his eyes staring back at me. Phew!!!  I wouldn't want to lose him on the  very first day, or any day for that matter.

A BIT BLURRY, BUT YOU GET THE IDEA- HE'S ONE BIG FURBALL



Shadow has moved since our last visit.  He's gone from a single family home cat, to a CONDO CAT. He has always been an indoor cat, so this transition doesn't seem to have bothered him one bit.  And now, he's on the third floor, and surrounded by trees which are usually full of birds.  So he literally has a bird's eye view.  Let's see, a warm place to sleep, food on demand, a cat friendly house sitter and a bird's eye view.  What more could Shadow ask for?

Happy trails,
Paul
The Thoughtful Wanderer