Patriot Earth

Well, work begins this week-- At looong last! I'm ready to be making money, and doing something quasi-meaningful with my time again. And I'm so very ready for the bleak PNW spring cloudiness to be over, which it seems that it is now... now that I've left. Now on to breathing forest fire smoke and sage pollen in the dry eastern sierra. hehe

Actually I'm going to Utah this week to re-certify my my "C" (expert) crosscut saw felling credentials. Basically a paid vacation on my first week of work to go cut down big trees with primitive tools.

It's good to be going back to a job for a change instead of on to a new one; cuts down on the stress big time. But yeah, as you can see by the above photo... I am in all likelihood going to be burning a lot of gas this summer. My poor truck... and wallet. hehe No point lamenting the trouble though... There's a script for sure, but for the most part we choose our own realities.

Oh yeah, and for tomorrow, congratulations to the People of Puebla on 151 years of sticking it to the French. Neat city, good mole... and lots of shoe stores. ~cough~

Well. There's not much new to report, which is good. I'm in Portland. I'm doing my spring selling stuff thing to streamline my life a little bit and to raise cash for this summer's new toys and work gear which are largely the same thing since I play in the woods for a living. =)

I bought some fugly uncomfortable 8" logging boots for about $100, which is a really good deal, so I could destroy them on front country, and possibly fire-line work instead of my $200 and nicely broken-in Scarpa SL M3s. I'm sure you've heard me mention it before but my feet eat boots. Seriously, I can wear boots without socks, hike all day and my feet wont blister, they'll just wear a hole in the boots' liner. I'm not even shitting you. That sounds cool, but unfortunately it gets expensive. Some people can wear the same boots for work, even in my job, for 7 years, but if I get 2 seasons out of anything I'm lucky. Schmeh...

Anyway, I bought a new daypack this year too which I'm very excited about. The model is an Osprey Stratos 34. Osprey makes the best backpacks, period. They think EVERYTHING out. The only question is if the model you're looking at had what you intend to do with it in mind. I'm not 100% sure this one does, but Osprey guarantees everything 100% no questions asked forever, and so does REI where I bought it with my annual membership coupon. This thing is replacing my smaller, less comfortable, overbuilt, less intelligently designed Maxpedition "pygmy falcon" pack, which was tough and had nice water bottle pockets, but... well that's about it. The Osprey, while more delicate, has a taught suspended mesh backpanel which keeps you much, much cooler and drier when hauling ass up a hill in the Sierra sun. And it has a good waist belt to put the weight on my hips where it's not going to F-up my back... that and a whole bunch off other things that Osprey does right.

I've heard it argued that most non-essential purchases are made, psychologically speaking, in response to pain. In my opinion, truer words have never been spoken. Hehe. I've tried to keep that in mind this winter. It's tricky though, because obviously my life has needed some overhauling. And, also obviously, I had been hurting.

For example, my wardrobe was badly in need of rebuilding after 3 years of wearing grungy camo BDUs, t-shirts and polar-fleece in the woods. So I rebuilt it. But I mostly did that because I was hurting and wanted to look better to feel better about my chances out in the world of being single. It probably needed to happen, but, realistically I could have saved the cash because-- really... when have I ever been short of female attention for any significant period of time?

Then there was the Kindle... I bought it because I couldn't sleep and was too depressed to get up to turn on and off a light to read. ...yup... But I've barely used it, because... well. Shortly after buying that I met Holly. And she fixed my insomnia immediately. Haha. Yup... Yup, I know... I guess I'm pretty dependent upon having (someone I perceive as) a good woman in my life. That's a whole 'nother post, but suffice it to say I'm OK with that. My own company is good sometimes, I couldn't do what I do if it wasn't. But it becomes dangerously nihilistic after a while. Humans are wired to be around each other, even if I, personally, have some serious provisos in that regards. ~cough~

But.

Then I bought a fuck-ton of books. I dunno. I just like books. Learning is exciting. It's too bad that our school systems are designed to exclude its possibility; I would probably be a career academic. But I suppose those purchases were a response to pain too. A LOT of my time that could have been used for intellectual pursuits had been wasted in mental suffering... and I wanted to make up for lost time. And really, I have. I've drunk poetry and prose like a fish in the sea. Powell's is my new new best friend and nemesis; my wallet must avoid that place like the plague.

And then the worst of it all. I bought an iPhone. I know. Fuck.

It was the pain of feeling disconnected... having lost several spheres of friendship, because of my arrogance, my neglect, the treachery of a deeply troubled ~~woman~~ girl, and a life on the road.

I don't need people much in life. So I don't pursue friendship with the zeal so many more-dependent people do... But, I do need people sometimes. I needed them this winter. And I was very, very fortunate to have just enough friends, just close enough to see me through the mess I'd made of my life. But I don't like walking the line that closely. And despite the few really good friends I do have, my life is definitely short now on people to burn things with on the weekends.

Its a shame really because I think I've probably grown enough by now, lost enough of the cruelty in my judgmental bullshit, that is, to be a very good friend in return to people... and to be one when the chips are truly down. But despite all the logic of having a low maintenance high loyalty friend like me, few people are interested. Maybe it's just that I don't take the initiative, in fact I'm sure that's most of it... But part of me wonders if most people would prefer to feel secure over connected. And one can certainly be provided an illusion of security by quantity in friendship ignoring quality. ...Schmeh... Maybe it's just our new normal... I hope not though, because if that's the case, then we humans are fucked; that nihilism I spoke about before could easily mold over our entire planet.

Hmm... If that's all so... then I don't know.

I guess we'd best come up with some really good new alternate reality drugs if we don't want that big red FUCK-IT button to get pressed on humanity.

Anyway, I'm not really feeling compelled to buy much at the moment. And in the words of Martha Stewart, "Its a good thing."