Mirrors of my thoughts

I think out of all those in the audience, Sam will appreciate this most of all:

What can I tell them?  Sealed in their metallic shells like molluscs on wheels, how can I pry the people free?  The auto as tin can, the park ranger as opener.  Look here, I want to say, for godsake folks get out of them there machines, take off those fucking sunglasses and unpeel both eyeballs, look around; throw away those goddamned idiotic cameras!  For chrissake (sic) folks what is this life if full of care we have no time to stand and stare? eh? Take off your shoes for a while, unzip your fly, piss hearty, dig your toes in the hot sand, feel that raw and rugged earth, split a could of big toenails, draw blood!  Why not?  Jesus Christ, lady, roll that window down!  You can't see the desert if you can't smell it.  Dusty?  Of course it's dusty--this is Utah!  But it's good dust, good red Utahn dust, rich in iron, rich in IRONY.  Turn that motor off.  Get out of that piece of iron and stretch your varicose veins, take off your brassiere and get some hot sun on your wrinkled dugs!  You sir, squinting at the map with your radiator boiling over and your fuel pump vapor-locked, crawl out of that shiny hunk of GM junk and take a walk--yes, leave the old lady and those squawling brats behind for a while, turn your back on them and take a long quiet walk straight into the canyons, get lost for a while, come back when you damn well feel like it, it'll do you and her and them a world of good.  Give the kids a break too, let them out of the car, let them go scrambling over the rocks hunting for rattlesnakes and scorpions and anthills--yes sit, let them out, turn them loose; how dare you imprison little children in your goddamned upholstered horseless hearse?  Yes sir, yes madam, I entreat you, get out of those motorized wheelchairs, get off your foam rubber backsides, stand up straight like men! like women! like human beings! and walk--walk--WALK upon our sweet blessed land!

Edward Abbey - Desert Solitaire (290-291)

We have agreed not to drive our automobiles into cathedrals, concert halls, art museums, legislative assemblies, private bedrooms and the other sanctums of our culture; we should treat our national parks with the same deference, for they, too, are holy places.

Abbey, Desert Solitaire (65)

Nature was here something savage and awful though beautiful. I looked with awe at the ground I trod on, to see what the Powers had made there, the form and fashion and material of their work. This was that Earth of which we have heard, made out of Chaos and Old Night. Here was no man's garden, but theunhandseled globe. It was not lawn, nor pasture, nor mead, nor woodland, nor lea, nor arable, nor waste land. It was the fresh and natural surface of the planet Earth, as it was made forever and ever,--to be the dwelling of man, we say,--so Nature made it, and man may use it if he can. Man was not to be associated with it. It was Matter, vast, terrific,--not his Mother Earth that we have heard of, not for him to tread on, or be buried in,--no, it were being too familiar even to let his bones lie there,--the home, this, of Necessity and Fate. There was clearly felt the presence of a force not bound to be kind to man. It was a place for heathenism and superstitious rites, --to be inhabited by men nearer of kin to the rocks and to wild animals than we. We walked over it with a certain awe, stopping, from time to time, to pick the blueberries which grew there, and had a smart and spicy taste. Perchance where our wild pines stand, and leaves lie on their forest floor, in Concord, there were once reapers, and husbandmen planted grain; but here not even the surface had been scarred by man, but it was a specimen of what God saw fit to make this world. What is it to be admitted to a museum, to see a myriad of particular things, compared with being shown some star's surface, some hard matter in its home! I stand in awe of my body, this matter to which I am bound has become so strange to me. I fear not spirits, ghosts, of which I am one,--that my body might,--but I fear bodies, I tremble to meet them. What is this Titan that has possession of me? Talk of mysteries! Think of our life in nature,--daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it,--rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?

Henry David Thoreau, Ktaadn

Wilderness appealed to those bored or disgusted with man and his works.  It not only offered an escape from society but also was an ideal stage for the Romantic individual to exercise the cult that he frequently made of his own soul.  The solitude and total freedom of the wilderness created a perfect setting for either melancholy or exultation.

Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind

Anyone who knows me well knows that I get claustrophobic... not a diagnosed claustrophobic, but my own kind of phobia--people.  After spending 3 months in Europe, the thing I miss most is Colorado.  From there, I plan to never leave for as long as this again.  By Colorado, I do not mean the rectangular state in the central United States--I mean Colorado almost as an adjective, for the wilderness, a Coloradan Wilderness.  I miss the open.  I am not as much afraid of people as I am of a situation where I do not have the OPTION to leave.  As long as there is that option--even if I never take it (which I will, trust me)--I am okay.  

When I get home, I am heading out for a nice refreshing trip.  Training can wait a day.  I can have a life still, even if that life comes only once or twice a month with a lonely trip into the uninhabited wilderness.  Don't get me wrong... I am NOT Christopher McClandless; I do not have a recluse mind.  I do, however, have to get away at times. And this is what I plan to do.

The only company that I would certainly enjoy would be Ashley and Meghan--for them I have missed the most, and would certainly need a whole week of time to tell them all of my stories from far-away Europe.