18 September
Spent the last half of last week at Nags Head, NC. It was mostly cloudy, occasionally rainy, and because Hurricane Florence had recently passed by we weren't allowed to swim for the first few days (I did anyway and got reprimanded by the Coast Guard), but I read some books, played some games with my family and did a good bit of relaxing. I also got a speeding ticket on the way down there about 10 miles away from the house for going 64 in a 50 speed zone on a four lane, totally empty highway at 4:30 in the morning. $30 ticket, $110 in court costs...
Here are some pictures.
 
Makes you wonder if Mark Rothko spent much time at the beach...
1 September: Where am I from?
In a week, almost exactly eleven years to the day after I moved to Pittsburgh, I'm moving away. Erin, who has been commuting an hour to Laurelville Mennonite Church Center, got the program director job, which requires that we live on camp. I will continue to work on the North Side for the rest of the school year (probably at least an hour and a quarter in rush hour), then see how the commute is sitting at that point and make a decision about the next year. My life goal, if you had asked me my senior year of college, was to live in the country and make pots. It is a very real possibility that I could build a kiln out there and have a studio and fulfil that dream, if I decided it's still what I want... and I have to admit, it's tempting to try to take that step sometimes, but at this point I really like my job a lot and am not at all willing to give it up. I am also not anxious to give up my ties to the city, which brings me to the title of this entry:
I am frequently asked where I'm from, and this has always been a stumper for me (see my about page for more details on my living situation). A few years ago a guy at a show asked me where I was from. When I responded that I had lived here for eight years and asked if that counted, he scoffed at me and said "no." The fact remains, however, that not only have I lived in Pittsburgh longer than anywhere else, I have lived the entire time (with the exception of one year in an unfortunate apartment in Shadyside) in Highland Park and East Liberty within a mile and a half of my first home here on the corner of Stanton and Negley. It may be odd, but one of the things that bothers me most about this move is my strong desire not to be "from" Mt. Pleasant.
I have always felt sort of sorry for people who live their entire lives in one place - I have learned much from each place I have lived and would not give any of them up. This is why my reluctance to move suprises me. When I moved to this town I was dubious - I considered myself a country kinda guy and wasn't sure at all about this city business. For the first several years I lived here I swore the next year I'd be gone. But, Pittsburgh began to feel like home, and eventually I switched to "I'll stay until I've got a good reason to leave." And so I'm leaving, and yet I find myself fighting to keep a foothold in the city. We're not selling our house, and I'm making arrangements to stay in town maybe one night a week.
3 August
 
 
Erin and I just got back yesterday from hiking the Laurel Highlands Trail. We did all 70 miles, north to south, in eight days. It rained most days, but we got extremely lucky in that we only got seriously wet once - the rest of the time we got to watch the weather from our shelter. Being in the woods is interesting because I often go in expecting enlightenment - you know, the romantic notion of being out in nature, having time to soak in all the simple lessons that it can teach you... And there is a lot of truth to that, but really, the bulk of the time when you're hiking, you're just walking through the woods - for hours and hours, and if I was thinking anything, it was "Wow, that orange fungus looks like a sea anemone" or trying to figure out what percentage of the days hike we had already finished if we started around mile-marker 58, had just passed 54, and the shelter area was a little bit past 47. But I think, in a way, I needed all that space to clear my head, and by day six, I actually found myself doing some thinking about things other than my immediate environment. Not that I found enlightenment or anything, but here are three simple (and fairly nebulous) little things I thought about life and how I live it during the last couple days on the trail - if you find them interesting, I'm glad. If not, go take your own hike.
1. I often gravitate toward lofty goals, sucked in by the romance of them, without always thinking about what it actually means to do them. I want to run a marathon (I did, Pittsburgh, 2003), I want to hike 70 miles, I want to make a record, etc... This allows me to do some things I wouldn't otherwise do, but it also sometimes takes my focus away from the actual doing of them, if that makes sense. I get caught up in my idealized goal and stop paying attention to the journey - the process - all the life it takes to get to where I'm going.
2. Sometimes, when the reality of working towards the goal becomes difficult, this lack of focus on enjoying the process makes me wonder what I was thinking in the first place, and leaves me much more prone to quitting.
3. When Erin and I were debriefing during the last couple days on the trail, I realized I could not remember significant portions of the earlier days of the hike. All I had was a feeling about what they were like rather than specific memories. When we talked about the hike, we saw the whole eight days kind of as a single entity. There were really good parts, and pretty tough parts, but it all flowed together to make one larger experience. And maybe this is contradicting #1, but I guess I wish I saw life more as a big picture - It's filled with lofty goals, and little everyday experiences to try to enjoy as they pass, but in the end it fades together and some things get lost, and some things make a lasting impression, but really it's the patterns that stand out. It's the things that you do over and over again that matter.
This is what we did: We walked, carrying heavy bags. We stopped to rest, to drink water and eat gorp, to look at interesting mushrooms, and rocks, and flowers, to eat peanut butter and honey pita sandwiches. We talked. We laughed. We walked some more. We unpacked and cleaned up. We cooked a variety of meals over the camp stove (some were tastier than others). We read The Hobbit out loud. We slept in shelters. We got up early. We packed. We walked again. |
