111.

[horace kephart at his camp on mount kephart, 1925]

i'm preparing for some potential changes. some big ones that have been coming around the mountain for a long, long while. with change comes a certain feeling of being unsettled, unrestrained, uprooted. these feelings in isolation, and welcomed as visitors, all have the potential to shake things up just enough to inspire and reignite. i aim to settle certain parts of my wandering soul for a little while and i hope this not knowing manifests in that way somehow.

in the midst of being unsettled a dear friend channeled the thoughts i was carrying with me, the too big for your britches kind, and sent me some words to remind me to embrace my adventure, uncertainty and all. 


to the not so obvious and to listening very, very closely...

***

To many a city man there comes a time when the great town wearies him. He hates its sights and smells and clangor. Every duty is a task and every caller is a bore. There come visions of green fields and far-rolling hills, of tall forests and cool, swift-flowing streams. He yearns for the thrill of the chase, for the keen-eyed silent stalking; or, rod in hand, he would seek that mysterious pool where the father of all trout lurks for his lure.

To be free, unbeholden, irresponsible for the nonce! Free to go or come at one's own sweet will, to tarry where he lists, to do this, or do that, or do nothing, as the humor veers; and for the hours, "It shall be what o'clock I say it is!"

Thus basking and sporting in the great clean out-of-doors, one could, for the blessed interval,

"Forget six counties overhung with smoke,

Forget the snorting steam and piston-stroke,

Forget the spreading of the hideous town."

...The charm of nomadic life is its freedom from care, its unrestrained liberty of action, and the proud self-reliance of one who is absolutely his own master, free to follow his bent in his own way, and who cheerfully, in turn, suffers the penalties that Nature visits upon him for every slip of mind or bungling of his hand. Carrying with him, as he does, in a few small bundles, all that he needs to provide food and shelter in any land, habited or uninhabited, the camper is lord of himself and of his surroundings.

"Free is the bird in the air,

and the fish where the river flows;

Free is the deer in the wood,

and the gipsy wherever he goes.

Hurrah!

And the gipsy wherever he goes."

There is a dash of gipsy in every one of us who is worth his salt.