“Well you roll on roads over fresh green grass…”
Dateline: Inside the outside
“‘There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is.’”
Albert Einstein
Someday there will only be…inside.
We will have covered the place, enclosed all of it, in 3017 Earth will be floating in space in some sort of Ziploc bag.
That is, if we are still even here, and not out there somewhere in space suits, living under space bubbles and flying in cars while Rosie the Robot takes care of all things people once did.
To the Jetsons, or anyone else in 3017, we are the cavemen.
And they will be right because we, still, have caves.
And they will be right because we, still, can walk barefoot in grass.
And they will be right because we, still, have rivers, still have wind, still have rain.
We still have the planet as God meant it to be.
Be of dirt and grass, bugs and birds, mountains and valleys, ponds, rivers and oceans.
Be of wild and wildlife, be of open spaces and smiling faces, mysterious and sometimes scary, wet and dry, hot and cold, tall and deep.
And he made just one blue rock in all of space, no matter how far we look out there into the darkness we never find a mirror, we never find anyone looking back, we never find anything just like us.
And there are stars like our sun all over the place but none of the rocks they light have grown into anything like us.
Blessed be the Earth.
Blessed be those people who take care of it.
Blessed be those animals that roam it.
Blessed be the wilds.
For it won’t be here forever.
“…and you make them long, and you make them tough…”
I’m a fan of Texas, and all those who take care of it, especially the dudes at the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department…and I don’t even know them except one or two through facebook.
This Texas Fest gig is about helping them out, to be honest when B.A.S.S. starts talking “strategy,” “goals” and other corporate buzz words I pretty much zone out and go to my happy place that is a beach with my wife, wine and chicken wings.
My buddy and fellow writer, Craig Lamb, wrote a pretty cool piece that explains all the in’s and out’s of the shindig so I bow to him and his story, check it out if you want concrete details.
But just to show you that I know where the number lock is on my keyboard, check this out, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department dudes (dudettes too) run some 90 plus parks, something like an unbelievable 4 1/2 million, dudes MILLION acres or 2.6 percent of Texas.
And hey, the “Wildlife” part, where the deer and the antelope roam, if in fact the antelope have heard of and moved to Texas, the wild of Texas is something like 700,000 acres, which by the way is larger than the state of Rhode Island even when counting all the Dunkin Donut shops.
The other 4 1/2 million acres they oversee, that’s roughly the size of New Jersey.
Yep, they got that gig too.
“…but they just go on and on, and it seems that you can’t get off…”
“Without new experiences, something inside of us sleeps. The sleeper must awaken.”
– Frank Herbert
In Craig’s story he talks about money raised through the tournament will go to “two of its core programs that promote fishing to youths and urban dwellers.”
I write this column as one of them, me, I’m an “urban dweller,” I’ll show you.
This is where I grew up for those wonder years of child-to-teen, right there where the Google Earth pointer thing says, 32 Victoria Blvd.
I had a four row backyard.
Four widths of the push mower covered the whole thing.
Basically every third house had a tree out front, that house to the right of mine that’s where my buddy, Denny, lived, our bedroom windows faced each other and we would sit on stools, open the windows, and talk with each other, neither one of us had to shout.
I zoomed in but couldn’t see if the three tennis balls and one hardball baseball was still in the gutters where I left them.
Between the backdoor slamming behind me in the morning and the street lights coming on around dinner time I would jump on my Red and White Huffy Corvair bicycle ride down the street, waving at Aunt “L” on her porch, and my Uncle Kenny with his head stuck under the hood of his Belair station wagon, cross Elmood Avenue, walking my bike and looking both ways, down two more streets and then, within 10 minutes, give or take an ice cream at Aunt “L’s” I would be in my WILDS.
Here look this is them there.
Cool, I see they’ve planted two more trees.
“…well you’ve cracked the sky, scrapers fill the air…”
“I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees.”
– Henry David Thoreau
Growing up these were all the wilds I knew, and I loved them, especially when Penny Heaven, or as her mother called her, Penny Woodrow, and I went behind the one bush that was there.
Millions of people all over the world have wilds like these and think nothing of it, stand in the middle of Central Park and take away the taxi horns, the roller bladers, the boom boxes, the street hawkers, the police/fire/ambulance sirens, the street musicians, the approach to LaGuardia, and the canyon of apartment buildings on Central Park West…and you would think you were in the wilds, which in fact are only about six blocks to the south.
Or the Bronx.
I met one of those millions of urban dwellers who lived within sight of a tree or bush one day years ago in the East Village in one of the oldest taverns in NYC, McSorley’s Old Ale House, and as I was trying to figure out the extensive beer offerings which consisted entirely of, “Light,” or “Dark,” ale the dude in the white button down shirt next to me started talking.
To me.
How rude.
We are in fact in a joint that’s been around since 1854 and whose motto is, “Be good or be gone,” and this guy who smelled like the leather goods department in Orvis says this to me, “So what do you do?”
“Huh?”
“Or sorry, WHAT DO YOU DO?”
“Um, I write about fishing and the outdoors?”
“Where?”
“Um, you know, like out there.”
“Right out there.”
“Huh, ah yep, you know several hundred miles south and west of the Verrazano bridge.”
“Cool. You fish?”
“Some.”
“You an outdoor guy?” he says while looking at my Cordova Brown Wing Tips.”
“Nope, make me sneeze.”
“Me too, I’m not a big fan of the outdoors myself but do you want to know something?”
“Um…no….”
“I work on Wall Street, leverage, and you know what I’m not a big fan of the outdoors myself but I need you to keep doing what you do, you know why?”
“Light please….um what…”
“I’m not a huge fan of the outdoors but when you write about it, and I read it I know the wilderness is still out there, I don’t have to be in it I just need to know it still exists. That’s your job, to tell me it still exists and I’m okay with that, I don’t have to be in the outdoors to have a dream of being in it, you and guys like you, you keep my dream alive.”
I never told the Wall Street guy that at the exact moment of our quick talk I had actually written all of three stories about the outdoors, his dream.
But whoever that guy was if you read this please know this, those first three stories I pretty much just winged it, the hundreds of stories afterwards, I never type a word without you whispering in my ear.
Never forget that for some, we write about dreams.
“…but will you keep on building higher til there’s no more room up there…”
“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.”
Albert Einstein
We have but one true thing that binds every soul on this planet to every other soul and that is the Earth that cradles us all.
Dr. Carl Sagan is quoted as saying that we are made of stardust, and I’m sure that is true, but what I know to be the case is that we are all made of dirt, we are all made here on Earth.
Mother Earth.
I’m not a tree hugger, let me take that back, I’m sort of not a tree hugger, I just finished reading the book, The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate—Discoveries from a Secret World, flat out it is the first book like that I have ever read but it freaked me enough that I will never look at a tree or forest the same again.
Read it, you may change your mind as well.
I’m writing this not for all you outdoor types, you know what I’m talking about, but I’m writing this for all the folks out there like me who have nothing against the outdoors, but no real need to be inside the outside.
Me.
The greatest movie, the greatest TV show you’ll ever see can be found in your backyard, can be found in your local park, can be found between the exits on the highway, between the off ramps of life.
You need to go out and see it, and you need to take someone out their with you.
Bring a child outdoors.
“…I know we’ve come a long way we’re changing day to day…”
“Not all those who wander are lost.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Blessed be the wilds.
Blessed be the children who will inherit them.
Blessed be us to be gentle with their Earth.
I was 55 years old before I ever saw an eagle that wasn’t stuffed, behind bars or chained to someone’s arm.
I may never have seen the symbol of America fly in the sky above it.
A few weeks back at Toledo Bend I was leaning up against the B.A.S.S. stage when a shadow crossed the empty chairs out front of the stage and when I looked up this is exactly what I saw.
It is a majestic animal, it rules the sky it dances in, imagine having a child, your son, your daughter, grandson or granddaughter holding your hand and looking up and seeing an eagle fly by.
Not an eagle in a text book or taped on a blackboard, not an eagle on a bank, dollar bills or on Google images.
For a city boy like myself to have the shadow of this bird cross my face was damn near mystical.
I never in my life imagined I would see one in the wild, and that, THAT is the whole point of the folks at the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and all those departments like them throughout the country.
You know as well as I do in times of government budget cuts inside the outside is an easy target, who speaks for the animals, who speaks for the wilderness, here where I live in Connecticut they have cut down to 35 full-time parks workers t0 take care of 110 statewide parks.
How do you think those parks are going to look?
Good luck in Connecticut finding a park, a clean well maintained park to take the grandkids too.
How come we never get to vote between the wilderness and career welfare, I vote for trees and the eagles who sit in them.
Here’s a link to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department folks, click on it, see for yourself how much they do, do as much as you can to help them do what it is they love to do.
Here’s a national nonprofit called The National Parks Conservation Association. They’ve been around since 1919, almost 100 years now.
And here is how you can find a state park near you no matter where you live in America.
To all the people of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department I was looking forward to this event to meet you and shake your hand but unfortunately I’ve been grounded for a month because of health reasons and medical testing.
I do though want to say personally to you…thank you, thank you for your dedication to keep the inside of the outside accessible for the children and all the folks in Texas and those who visit there.
I hope to one day met you and thank you in person, shake your hands, buy you a root beer.
Blessed be those who care about others.
Blessed by the wilds.
Blessed be the miracle we have named, Earth, visit it as often as you can.
“…but tell me, where do the children play.”
Where Do The Children Play
Cat Stevens
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“Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing the lawn. Climb that (blank) mountain!”
– Jack Kerouac