Hello. Ah, so... this is interesting. You'll never guess. I'm sitting in the truck, yes, the forest service truck. The computer is plugged into the cigarette lighter, because the batteries are dead, because I just drained them watching Blazing Saddles. Rough work, this Ranger business. Hmmm... I was thinking about what I would write earlier this evening walking down the trail, but now the bright computer screen is hurting my eyes and I can't think of anything witty. I guess I'll just have to go with stream-of-consciousness and hope that something really profound is unwittingly left hidden in the chaos for the careful reader. But then we all secretly hope for that casual genius, don't we? I should just cuddle up to the fact that this is nothing special... just... me.
Lots of bears today. I didn't see any, but all the visitors did. Supposedly when you're near a bear you know it because you can smell a very rank odor. That's news to me. I've bumped into plenty of bears in my day, but never thought one smelled especially foul. I was mulling that over, and it occurred to me that in all likelihood I smell even worse than my ursine neighbors, five days into a ranger stint or backpack trip. Anyway, enough about my work. Let's get to the important stuff. (Wait, none of this is important.) (It all is.) (Parenthesis indicate failure to organize thoughts.) I talked to two Clark's nutcrackers yesterday, and they stopped to chat. I felt like I was having a breakthrough with one of them, but he bored and departed my company. Got in a great sunset though, wind in the hair, cold clouds whipping my stinging cheeks, the usual eye-watering atmospheric splatter.
One time, I was a good writer. Then I decided that for my writing to mature, I had to show that I had matured also, and the best way to implement that was to overwhelm the reader with mature subject matter. I considered that exceptional and unapologetic displays of vulgarity and erotica mixed in with unaesthetic subjects was the most likely way to allow my writing to reach the darker depths of my inner consciousness. I tried that out once, in a college writing class. It became readily apparent that excessive vulgarity in writing is the sign of a fool with a meager vocabulary, not a writer tackling heavy, edgy topics. Perhaps there are writers who can use rough language to describe rough ideas, but that writer is not me. Who was I kidding? Dark depths of consciousness? I'm as innocent and carefree as they come.
So instead, I talk about nutcrackers. Sunsets. Wind and dark skies and stars. Which I'm unable to gaze at right now because the whiteness of the word processor is blasting my rods, swelling my cones, and otherwise blinding me to the specialness of my second-to-last night as a ranger. Damn you, blog-readers! Do not talk, listen. Do not describe, see. Yet I proceed. I'm sure I'll be done soon, mercifully.
I noticed the big W constellation as I stepped out here. Which is that? Cassiopia? A swan? A crown? I'll come up with my own story for it. Feels funny, almost being done here. Everything is so real, so immediate. I want to laugh at myself, reading books that tell me precisely what I'm going to see and experience in a far away African country. What do I know about that? What business do I have being over there? I know this place, this land, and it's good. There's happiness here, and it's simple and uncomplicated. Why do we strive to complicate things? Do I really want for more than this, or do I only feel vague pressures, that mysterious 'others' expect something more from me? More than to be simply happy. More than that? What could be more than that? To give, to take, to be greater than those around me, to be a god in the eyes of men, a Man in the eyes of God? Ha... silly thoughts. I like this work. Rangering, Ranging. I like transience, impermanence, freedom. I like working with my hands. I like not really knowing whatever the hell it is that I'm supposed to be doing. I like getting paid. I like feeling like I am a protector of something much greater than me... of loving a place, a tangible yet indescribable slurry contained within a geographic circumference. That slurry is “mine.” I am it's. (I want to be.) I belong, I'm happy, I can't describe this shit, so screw off. I like trees.