August Apprisals
One of the main reasons wealth makes people unhappy is that it gives them too much control over what they experience. They try to translate their own fantasies into reality instead of tasting what reality itself has to offer.
~Philip Slater~
Happy September / my favorite month of the year! I hope you all enjoyed your Labor Day Weekend.
Ultrasounds are so cool! We had our 20-week last month, and ... it was so cool!
August was a welcomed month of Less To Worry About. Since the final nails were driven into our newly fitted coffin of home-ownership — I mean, since we officially closed on the house, we've been able to enjoy a little more freedom of the moment. And it's nice.
We spent some time in Phoenix, making a few quick stops at some of the sites on the way home: Grand Canyon, Marble Canyon, Horseshoe Bend, Zion, Bryce Canyon (above). All beautiful places to see, but watching a storm move through the Grand Canyon was probably my favorite one — even if it was a little risky.
Our friends Kyle and Jen were in town for a visit — always a fun time! They've been doing the #vanlife for over a year now, so we've made sure to cross our western paths a few times. Though we neglected to get any group pictures this time, here's one from our visit to the Redwoods last year. (If you squint, you can see us in front of that giant tree.)
I've been staring at the Bridger Ridge every day for the last 6 months. So Kyle and I decided to finally hike it — which means we got off the Couch of Inertia and Poor Fitness ("Yeah, I'm into fitness: fitness whole pizza in my mouth.") to hike 19 miles and 6,500 feet on an unplanned whim. (This is also known as "just another day.") And we could not have been dumber in picking the day to do it, since this also happened to be the day of the 2023 Bridger Ridge Run.
Our hope was for a fairly casually-paced, no-other-place-to-be, just-enjoy-nature ridge hike. (I imagined whistling the tune to The Andy Griffith Show the whole way.) Turns out, it takes some serious mental gymnastics to enjoy nature when you have to "share" a very narrow trail with 250 trail runners on your heels. But we managed.
Thankfully, we got an earlier start than the runners, and the first section of the hike could not have been better. The last time I talked Kyle into a sunrise hike (i.e, on the peak at sunrise), it was Mt. Osceola, the one mountain along the Kancamagus that was completely socked in that day. Our view on foggy Osceola was a clear three feet in any direction.
We had better luck this time around.
Of course, we said hello to our friends on top of Sacagawea on the way through. It is their house, after all.
Eventually, the heavy traffic let up and we were able to enjoy the rest of the hike. Here's a shot about a third of the way through the ridge, looking back at Ross Peak. (Arrow points to Sacagawea.)
(The view of Ross from the other side is just as impressive.)
At some point, I'll get some pictures put up into albums, but I've only just begun to organize photos from our time out here.
Jack is still Jack. We've been taking baby steps toward getting him to swim. Though he's very water-shy, he gets quite excited around it. He had a big moment last month, outside of Tortilla Flat, Arizona, when he walked in to Canyon Lake and activated his doggy paddles all on his own. He has big dreams now that someday, when we visit out here again, he can enter the doggy dock diving competition at his favorite park here in Bozeman. (We believe in you, Jack.)
In the meantime, his latest obsession is "diving" into the tallest grass he can find, chasing bugs and feeling the foxtails and ryegrass on his face.
Sarah Hendren wrote a short thought on two different modes of thinking that she calls the tent and the estuary. As you can probably guess, estuaries are more complex, life-affirming places — "generous and generative," as she puts it.
You know what else is an estuary? The Damariscotta River. Here are a few fun facts about it, including its history of shipbuilding going back to 1770, and the fact that 80% of Maine's oysters are grown here.
An aerial view of the Damariscotta River looking south, with the town of Damariscotta at the bottom and the Atlantic ocean at the top. You can see Boothbay Harbor at the top right.
Here are a few things worth reading or listening to:
- Since Meghan and I had some time back on the road in August, we listened to the "The Witch Trials of JK Rowling," narrated by Megan Phelps-Roper. And it's very good. The telling of Rowling's story is exceptional, but the whole story it tells is much wider than just her more recent publicity. (If you're unfamiliar with either, you can read about the podcast and about the narrator here.)
- If I can use the phrase "vintage Freddie deBoer," I'd say his piece "Prologue to an Anti-Therapeutic, Anti-Affirmation Movement" is exactly that. For a similar — and similarly "vintage" — piece that I don't think I ever got around to sharing (though it's referenced here), you should absolutely read "You Are You. We Live Here. This is Now." Honestly, deBoer cranks out more words a day than can possibly be healthy, so I don't recommend trying to keep up with him. Heck, I do my best to "follow" him and I probably only read 1/20th of what he puts out. But his writing is a river and a reality-check worth dipping into from time to time.
- I really appreciated Samantha Shokin's essay in Tablet, "Letters from the Past," on the search for her Ukranian Jewish heritage and the fate of her great-grandfather, Hersh, at Babyn Yar.
Looking back, one thing that I can now say with certainty is that both identity and remembrance are volitional acts.
And here are some things from the commonplace blog in August:
- Toward a Philosophy of Vulnerability
- A thought on those past (and present) lives we don't lead
- The mental (and literal) frontier
- Some related things on the significance of having — and finding and cultivating — ideals
- Flagellum and Jetsum (I probably shouldn't have written this. I know it's beating a dead horse. But I do think it's true, and I do think it's important, and it is a little funny.)
That's it for August! Our time here in Bozeman is nearing the final stretch. The next time I write to you, we'll be on the road to Georgia to pack up a U-Haul trailer bound for the great state of Maine. Lots of things taking shape in our little world right now, though a lot of it is just barely still out of view. We're excited to hit the road home and see where it goes.
Here's William Bronk's "At Tikal."
At Tikal
Mountains they knew, and jungle, the sun, the stars—
these seemed to be there. But even after they slashed
the jungle and burned it and planted the comforting corn,
they were discontent. They wanted the shape of things.
They imagined a world and it was as if it were there
—a world with stars in their places and rain that came
when they called. It closed them in. Stone by stone,
as they built this city, these temples, they built this world.
They believed it. This was the world, and they,
of course, were the people. Now trees make up
assemblies and crowd in the wide plazas. Trees
climb the stupendous steps and rubble them.
In the jungle, the temples are little mountains again.
It is always hard like this, not having a world,
to imagine one, to go to the far edge
apart and imagine, to wall whether in
or out, to build a kind of cage for the sake
of feeling the bars around us, to give shape to a world.
And oh, it is always a world and not the world.
View of the Mayan ruins of Tikal, in the Guatemalan rainforest
Thanks for reading! For more commonplace stuff, you can go to tinyroofnail.micro.blog. Or you can email me at tinyroofnail@hey.com. Or you can just wait for next month's newsletter.