Going Home

I packed up camping and came home on Tuesday. It was just too windy for me to deal with for another day. Had a nice drive home; saw some more coastline, and took my usual lovely drive through Jenner, Duncan's Mill, Monte Rio, Forrestville, Sebastapol, Agua Caliente (I'd love to live in a town named "hot water"), on into Santa Rosa and Sonoma, and home. Oh, and I took pictures. Lots of pictures. I'll post some as soon as I get a moment to sit down and upload them.

The camping trip was very helpful in clearing my mind and relieving some stress. I just needed to get out of town and remind myself that the world is a beautiful and wild place. Living in a big city sometimes weighs me down and I forget there's a great big world out there where things are different, and that I can be a part of it once in a while.

I really connected with a phrase in "Wild At Heart" where the author noted that, after God created the world in Genesis, God call it "good". This huge wild world, with bears, tigers, snakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, wild rivers, towering mountains, crashing ocean waves, deserts, rain forests, bugs, eagles, kittens; creatures that would just as soon eat you as look at you; things that can kill with a single sting or bite;.... everything from the gentlest, most helpless baby and beautiful vistas of mountains or sea, to the most dangerous grizzly bear and fiercest hurricane.... God created it all and called it "good", then told man to go subdue it. Mankind (in general, but here I'm talking about me, a man, personally) was not made to spend time in an office. Oh, he can adapt and learn to live in an office, but I think the heart of most men is not IN that office, but someplace else. Somewhere he's challenged and at least made to feel a little alive. I believe, just as the author of Wild At Heart does, that the essential heart of a man is wild. It was made that way, to live in this wild world. It's complex, but that's the allure of camping and the outdoors for me. I'm not a thrill-seeker or great mountain climber, but I enjoy the outdoors in way that moves my heart. That's why I go to the coast or on drives to the mountains to clear my mind.