My Fourteen Year Plan

I have increasing relied upon one truth: the better I understand the truth, the better I can say the truth, and the better I can see the truth, the better person I am, and the better my writing is.

So it sucks that the truth is I’m such an odd ball! I don’t fit in very well; always been a bit set aside. That’s okay; I’m used to it – it’s just the way it is. (I’ve never meant harm to a single soul, so I think, I’m good, right?)

But then there’s that whole “fitting in” problem. Sigh.  Chuckle! (Ya gotta laugh, right?)

Such a conundrum! I have a heart bred for loving, filled with compassion, the essence of hope. A soul burdened, held down. A spirit that thrives, sometimes barely, but always persisting. A willingness, born of love, to give anything, do anything, die even, for any one person that I love. (And I am so blessed to have so many people to love!)

And I could no more sit down with them and feel loved than I could dance across the mountains on the moon. 

I am an island, I guess, after all, try I might to be otherwise.

In the meantime, of course, I’m still falling down and gathering scars, trying this and that, finding this treasure and that one, this wound and that pain. Trying to live in the present, and in the present, to understand this confusion, this truth.

And time goes by, my plans of before now dust, a few desperate sprigs of hope the only evidence of my caring, of my giving, of my loving along the way.

And I feel a little bit wasted, not drunk, ya know, but wasted effort, like trying to block the ocean.

With a kids shovel and a bucket.

Time whispers past my ears like the Spring wind through the trees.

My friend of seventy lies home, waiting to feel better to come to me, so we can go off into the mountains as we have so many times before. I begin to wonder if he’ll ever come, ever be well again. (I think I will go to him, perhaps). But the truth that resounds in my ears, is that he never drank, he never smoked, and he was always much active than I have been, and seventy seems to be the point that he’s just too worn out to do what he wants.

He can’t do what he wants to, and he’s seventy. I’m fifty-six. So maybe, if I’m lucky, I have fourteen years to do what I want, and that’s it. Then I’ll have to do what I can from a more limited situation, and I don’t like that. Not a bit. I want more time. I want to do EVERYTHING! I want to experience EVERYTHING! I want to understand EVERYTHING!

But I can’t. I can only choose a thing, or two, maybe. One of them, I would choose, is to know how to feel the love that my friends and family so freely give. But really, I think it would be a waste of time. I can say it. I can think it. I can notice it. But I don’t really feel it, like there’s a shell around me that keeps any love from sinking in. (It kinda sucks really, wish I knew how to change it).

And beyond that, I just don’t want to waste any life. It’s such a cool thing to walk down a trail on a mountainside fresh with the morning’s dew and fragrant with the smell of pine and wild flowers. It’s a thrill to see a granddaughter grow into adulthood, a grandson to be born into this world, a son, a daughter, both making good. It's exciting to make technology work, to create a new something. It’s sweet to know the smile of a neighbor or friend who cares if the lights are on, or if there’s food in the fridge, or if my heart’s doing okay.  

And I don’t know what else to do. 

But tomorrow’s opening day (though where I fish it's open year round). The jeans I wore last summer won’t button, having shrunk, (I guess!) So I am hiking down to Warwoman Creek tomorrow, perhaps in the rain, and fishing. And noticing how spring comes to these mountains, maybe getting wet. And maybe, these answers will come to me (or maybe not).

Maybe they’ll come to me as I catch my breath at the top of a steep mountain incline. Maybe I’ll just understand the question(s) better. Maybe nothing will happen, except catching a bunch of trout.

(I always catch trout!)

So, for this minute, that’s my fourteen year plan.

What’s yours?

Facebook Thought Control?

Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson both alluded to the fact that Democracy (and its associated freedoms) is reliant upon its citizens being well informed. One would think that almost twenty years into the information age this would be easy – never before has information has been so readily accessible.  But perplexingly, this sea of information is filled with millions upon millions of voices. (It is currently estimated that there are nearly 50 billion pages on the Internet!)

                Anyone with a $50 cell phone can make a video. An internet connection can enable a free blog. $20.00 buys a domain name and web server. In short, anyone can add their voice, information, ideas, point of view, or blatant attempt to misrepresent the truth easily into this sea of information. Meanwhile, our own ability to sift through this depth of information (and misinformation) is diminished by lack of time due to job, family, etc., and a predisposition to, frankly, more enjoyable pass times. 

In the Viet Nam war era, one could get a fairly good view of what was happening in the country and the world by watching the evening news and scanning a newspaper. The public clashes between journalists and other entities gave us reassurance that our news was accurate and truthful. We felt we could make our decisions, especially as related to politics, on this information solely.

                This is not the case now. Many of our publicly aired newscasts are biased. Some have their own obvious politically motivated messages, such as Fox News, while others are likely more motivated by pleasing their advertisers. A few, such as PBS, don’t accept money from corporations and claim they have no political views, providing perhaps our best hope of getting accurate, unbiased information.

Increasingly we are getting our news from the Internet. A 2012 survey by Pew Research indicated a rise in online news and decline in broadcast news. Further, 64% of Americans would prefer to get their news from an unbiased news source, but 26% would prefer to get their news from organizations holding similar political views. 

Why It Matters

                Just as Hitler did in WW2, many governments have attempted to control the media in order to control their populations. Recent examples of this include Syria, Iran and China. Likewise, savvy advertisers and those running political campaigns just as badly want to control our thoughts.

It is evident that our access to the truth of what is really happening that will help to ensure our freedom in the future. An informed populace remains the key to an effective democracy. But now that the shape and form of our information has changed so dramatically, we must struggle to find the truth in a sea of (mis-) information. 

For example, I have noticed on FaceBook an unending cycle of graphics posted regarding Obama’s recent Executive Order on gun control, usually with a grim-faced person stating how they can have their gun when they pry it from their cold, dead fingers, or something to that effect. More called for Obama’s impeachment, and some, even, for his assassination. However, when I asked a few of these people (and yes, it took great courage!) why they were against his efforts, in every case they said something to the effect that he was trying to take away their guns. When I shared with them the actual content of his Executive Order, they quickly replied that this was just the first step, just the next move in the chess game of his conspiracy to establish the new world order. (No doubt, some friend of the NRA has been working overtime to churn out those catchy graphics!)

From my research it appears that none of these beliefs can be substantiated by fact. The point is that it has become very easy to manipulate our feelings about a certain topic. If someone can mix a bit of truth with a clever lie and play on our fears, turn it into a catchy, FaceBook sized graphic, it’s not too much of a stretch to believe that many of us would believe anything.  A cleverly prepared photo with many shares may be more effective at swaying us to think a certain way than any other media ever has – and that this is all happening while we are “enjoying” ourselves makes it even more insidious. 

So, where do you get your news from?

                For the record, I do support the 2^nd Amendment, I am a veteran, I like Obama (mostly), and own a gun; I don’t plan on giving it up. 

Recommended:

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Obama_Deception

http://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univision/Politics/obama-gun-control-plan-numbers/story?id=18229809

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2011/02/10/fox-news-insider-stuff-is-just-made-up/176184

And try this Google Search

 

 

Loving NE Georgia: A Backpacker’s Tale (Part 5)

After Ralph and Jay dropped me off I donned my bulging pack and headed down Glore Rd, trying to be quiet and invisible. It was like entering another world. The road was deeply rutted from the passage of countless four wheel drives and years of rain; in places the road was ten to fifteen deeper than the surrounding landscape, giving the illusion of being in a tunnel. Trees formed a canopy overhead, blocking the sun and providing a shady, cool oasis. It had recently rained, and everything glistened with moisture.

My back protested with each step I took, yet I kept going, intent on getting as far away from civilization as possible. My earlier experiences in the mountains of Oregon had taught me how to “disappear” into the forest; if no one knows you are there, they can’t hurt you. I was worried about what Ralph had said regarding the possibility of stumbling upon someone’s moonshine operation or secret pot field, but figured that once I got to Toccoa Creek, I could find a place off the road to make camp.

Photo by James P. Blair (Available at Allposters.com)

I walked by several turtles, some with shells nearly a foot long, whom I assumed were laying eggs in the muddy red clay. Several times I came upon clusters of swallowtail butterflies that gathered in groups from two to six, intent upon some mating ritual that I could only wonder about. Abundant red headed Woodpeckers ravaged the trees with an incessant knocking sound and a couple of startled wild turkeys took flight as I stumbled down the path. Three times I had to wade through tributaries of Toccoa Creek as they flooded across the rutted road. Little fish fled terrorized from the shallows to cover as I crossed.  

I’ve measured it since; it was less than three miles – (but I would have sworn it was closer to six!), before, to my dismay, I came to a blacktop road. I walked a short ways in both directions; there were no houses or anything in sight. Red blazes around a few trees, accompanied by little signs, confirmed that I was in national forest. I back tracked away from the road, found a likely place, and set up camp.

One of the biggest problems with backpacking is that it’s very difficult to carry enough food. I did my research before leaving, and even tried to believe that one of my little packages of rice and seasoning, combined with a small tin of chicken, would be enough for dinner. It did make a nice snack, but my body was craving protein in much larger quantities. It was obvious that my two weeks of food would last no more than one. 

That night, about two hours before sunset, I sat by my campfire, having just finished my second dinner, when I heard a dog bark. I thought it curious, as I was pretty sure there were no houses or anything nearby, but I was much more concerned about blisters on my feet and the blazing pain in my lower back, so I paid it little attention. Suddenly a pack of seven dogs came tearing around the corner and into my camp.

Snarling Dog

The Alpha, some type of terrier, charged within a few feet of me, snarling and growling. The others waited behind him, looking as if they were just waiting for an excuse to charge. All were barking, snarling, growling. I looked around me; not a stick or rock or anything within reach. The Alpha took another step closer and crouched down, as if preparing to attack. I did the only thing I could think of: I jumped up, throwing my hands into the air in what I hoped was a menacing gesture, and screamed. “ArrrrrrgggggH!” The dog pack fell back a couple of paces. I noticed that some of them wore collars, and they all looked well fed. I began to rethink my assumption that this was a pack of wild dogs. Just then a woman’s voice called out, and I saw a tall blonde woman come along the road. “Sorry! Sorry!” she called to me, while calling to the dogs in Swedish. She hurriedly walked past my camp, continuing to call the dogs (which didn’t seem to be listening) in that other language. Once she passed, the dogs followed. I sat back down, trembling, while I listened to the gentle murmur of the nearby stream, the winds wafting through the trees, and my heart pounding in my ears. 

That was not to be my only scare of the day. 

After dark, I climbed into my tent for the second night of my journey and fell fast asleep. It was about midnight when I heard a roar of machinery. I leapt out of my sleeping bag and unzipped my tent just in time to see a 4 WD pickup literally in the air as it careened down the rugged road. By the scattered light I could see someone standing in the back, rifle in hand. Their horn sounded the rebel charge, and in a blink they were gone.  

I stayed there for a couple of weeks, and during that time nocturnal four wheel drives frequently came charging down the road. The old, unkempt road was so bad, I would have thought it impassable to any vehicle, but nevertheless, almost every night one or two vehicles went by in one direction or another.

During the following week I realized my food situation was critical. Worse, I had already burned through most of my money, and I had serious doubts about how I was going to make it to the next month. 

I spent the days hiking along the various old roads and trails that ran through the forest here. Most were overgrown roads that just abruptly ended in the middle of nowhere. One led to a little cemetery with three graves from the 1800’s.  There were huge mounds of blackberries bushes anywhere the sun managed to get through the forest, and I ate them by the handfuls. Several times while hiking I came across large cat prints in the mud, and looking for snakes with every step became second nature. I quickly learned to always carry at least three liters of water; it really sucked to run out on top of a mountain, far from any streams!

To bathe I used the hydration pack in my backpack (some call it a water camel) hung from a tree after letting it lie in the sun a couple of hours to warm up. There was something about the soap or shampoo that always attracted yellow jackets, and it’s amazing how intimidating one little bee can become when you’re stark naked! (Face it: there are some places you don’t want to be stung!)



I spent all day just to end about a mile from where I started from!
(Blue is portion hiked, Red with Ralph, Green hiked from Glore Rd)



My food dwindled at an unsustainable rate, and even though I tried to ration it, it was obvious it would be out soon. I had less than ten dollars, and I was losing a lot of weight.  

Loving NE Georgia: A Backpacker’s Tale (Part 4)

In The Mountains of Northeast Georgia

"There is an intense but simple thrill in setting off in the morning on a mountain trail, knowing that everything you need is on your back. It is a confidence in having left the inessentials behind and of entering a world of natural beauty that has not been violated, where money has no value, and possessions are a dead weight. The person with the fewest possessions is the freest. Thoreau was right."   -   Paul Theroux, The Happy Isles of Oceania

(June 7, 2012). I’ve heard it said that the art of backpacking is in knowing what not to take. Accordingly, I had packed in what I thought was a minimalistic fashion, trying to take only what I needed for three or four days at a time. Clothes, bed roll, tent, emergency supplies (first aid kit and so forth), writing equipment, food, and water made up my list of “essentials.” None of that weighed much individually, but collectively it added up to well over sixty pounds and threatened to burst my pack, not to mention a couple of disks in my spine! Luckily, the full heat of summer had not yet arrived and the daily high temperatures were only in the seventies.

 Part of my map was gone, so I wasn’t sure of the distance at the time, but the plan called for me to hike six and a half miles, to the northwest up 17A, then to Chopped Oak Rd, and then to Lawson Lake. It didn’t seem too far at the time.

 Regardless, I was winded and sweating like a hog before I crested the first hill. Each step quickly became more of an act of will than a natural action and perspiration dripped down my face and into my eyes, blurring my vision. My hair became soaked, and even before noon came, I began to think in the back of my mind that I had seriously screwed up.

Finally Arrived!

I did see two things that that morning that brightened my mood: one was a beaver down in a drainage ditch, so engrossed in nibbling on some tender vegetation that it never even noticed me watching until I called out “Good Morning!”; and, two, the sign stating that I had finally, officially, arrived in the Chattahoochee Forest.

To my dismay, instead of encountering the total wilderness I was expecting, highway 17A continued to sprout little side roads filled with homes and farms. My fantasy of “hiking until I was tired” and then camping to rest quickly fell apart; much of the landscape was filled with privately owned lands. Hopeful that I would find less civilized land further down the road, I kept hiking. Traffic was light, with a car or truck passing every few minutes. The sun climbed higher in the sky and the temperature followed. My allotment of four liters of water began to seem insufficient.

Beaver

To make matters worse, the oatmeal I had for breakfast, combined with copious amounts of “GORP” (Good Ole Raisins and Peanuts), while mostly healthy and good for energy, had an undesired effect on my digestive system -- it became necessary to climb the steep banks alongside the road on several occasions to find a bit of privacy. Meanwhile, biting flies swarmed en masse and took turns trying to find what little bit of  unprotected skin I might have missed when spraying on my bug repellent. 

 I was not a happy camper, yet there was nothing else to do but place one foot in front of the other and trudge onward. Even had I chosen to go back, I couldn’t begin to afford to. I walked on, trying to ignore the pain of the pack cutting into my shoulders, the protests of my lower back, and the sweat dripping into my eyes.

 By early afternoon I had made good a couple, maybe three miles, and then climbed a bank along the road as it crested a gap in the mountains; a cool, strong wind was gusting through the opening and I took a moment to stop and rest, sitting on my pack, while enjoying both the view and the coolness of the breeze. My body was aching in places I had forgotten I had while a munched on another handful of GORP. Meanwhile, below me, I saw a red pick-up truck with a camper on the back drive by, slow down, and turn around and stop. With trepidation, I clambered down the bank to see what was up; I couldn’t know that this would be the beginning of the very last shred of “the plan”. 

 A young man, maybe in his mid-thirties, rolled down his window. The driver smiled over at me. And then, with a quality in his voice that expressed a sincerity I was grateful for, and a bearded, long-haired look that reminded of the biker bar I used to pass by, he introduced himself as Ralph and explained that he saw me walking along the road and wanted to be sure that I was okay. “I’d sure be happy to do anything that would help you,” he said. I was a little touched as I looked around the cab, trying to gauge its safeness. A little black and white dog jumped around the back trying to come forward to greet me; Ralph gently pushed him back. The dog affectionately licked his hand. “He must be cool,” I decided.

How To Make Moonshine

The other man identified himself as Jay and stepped out to help me with my pack, which I was gratefully shrugging off. He picked it up and casually put in the camper. As a stepped up into the cab a bolt of pain rain down the back of my right leg, proving that my lower back was out of place enough to be pinching the sciatic nerve. I explained that I was just going up to Lawson Lake, off Chopped Oak.

 “Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” he said. “Too many homeless people there. Sheriff’s gotta go out there all the time and take care of it. Not a good place for a woman.” 

 “Well, maybe I’ll just keep on going. It looks like there used to be a road there that connects to Pine Ridge.  I’m heading in that direction anyway.” I said, trying for nonchalance. 

 “Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” he said. “We got bear everywhere. It’d be too dangerous. And snakes too. It’s snake country over there. Ain’t no place for a woman.”

 Meanwhile, he turned the pickup onto Pine Ridge and I could plainly see farms on each side of the road. There was a house on either side, and a crowd of people standing in one yard. It didn’t looking very “wilderness-y.” 

 Having just refused the well intentioned and accurate advice of one of the locals, and having already regretted it, I decided not to make the same mistake again. “Yeah, maybe you’re right; maybe we should turn around.” He looked for a place to turn around while I frantically tried to come up with a backup plan.

 “You know, you’d be welcome to stay at my place, no strings attached,” he smiled.

 “That’s really nice, thanks!” I replied. “You know, I came up here to hike and camp and fish, and that’s what I really want to do right now. I was hoping the solitude might help my writing.”

Moonshine Kit

“Well, the mountains of Northeast Georgia ain’t no place for a woman,” he grumbled. “They make moonshine around here,” he warned, “and if you happen across the wrong spot they’re likely to shoot ya. Better you stay at my house. No one would bother you or anything, and we got plenty of room and plenty to eat.” 

 “I really appreciate that,” I said with a smile, “but I thought there was a road back towards town that cuts into the forest to the south, maybe a mile long. It might be fun to go back in there and explore a little.”

 “I wouldn’t do that,” he said seriously. “I think they’ve been building back in there, and the owners there are on the corner won’t let anyone down that road.”

“Really? --”

“Or maybe they got moonshine or pot. They’ll shoot ya for sure.”

“Well, it’s a public road from what I can tell I think that maybe I’ll give it a try. I need the exercise anyhow.”  He shrugged.

  “Mountains of Northeast Georgia ain’t no place for a woman.” He slowed the truck down. “Here we are.” He pointed to a dubious looking, red clay-road right next to a house. “I’m gonna go up the road aways so they don’t see.” He drove past the house there by the little road with no name, turning into the driveway of a different little house with an extra room and garage nicely added on. I admired the perfectly manicured yard while hastily sliding out of the truck, my legs again experiencing a bolt of pain as I twisted wrong. I tried to nonchalantly stretch my leg behind me, hoping to ease the discomfort, first one then the other.

   We expressed sincere good-bye’s while I recorded his number in my diary (a three college ruled tablet). I promised to call him next time I went to town and let him know I was okay. (As my money dwindled faster than expected, I had to let my cell phone expire). 

Glore Rd and US 17A,  Georgia

 He drove away as I breathed in deeply of the moist, fragrant countryside. Ahead of me was the road that had become just a little bit intimidating.