3 S's For Woods Wanderers

Slowing down is easier said than done.

I think the difficulty is the product of a socially ingrained inordinate need to generate some kind of   personal performance that we can measure by the same standards that are part of everyday life in a fast-paced world.  We have to be producing something, for some inordinate reason, that is measurable in order to feel we have accomplished something.

I remember back in my professional life when I would take a week of vacation twice a year. I could have taken two weeks at a time but felt my absence would create some sort of inconvenience for people that depended upon me.

People were expecting me to perform at a certain level. People pressed me to perform. I pressed myself to perform. That level became a personal standard for me week in and week out. A week-long vacation was just enough time for me to realize how performance oriented I had become. It would take three or four days for me to disengage and relax. Disengagement usually lasted a day before my mental transmission began gearing back up for returning to the performance routine.

I no longer measure myself according to standard social or cultural performance measurements and haven’t for quite a long time now. Those days, and those pressures, are far back there in the distant past. Busyness is no longer my business. Especially where outdoors is concerned. There is too much to miss out on in the woods by being too busy.

Busyness in the woods is a sure way to remain apart from the woods. Slowing down helps us reconnect and realize that we are a part of the bigger picture painted by the natural world that surrounds us.

We don’t have to get far off the beaten path or go miles to have a great experience in the woods. Any woodlot will do. Every woodlot, and every step in every woodlot, is a destination within itself.

Here is the nutshell version of my 3 S’s for Woods Wandering.

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Watch Your STEPS.

Take three and stop.

We’re not on a military forced march or any sort of power hike. We’re here for the pure and simple pleasure of being here.

Do a SURVEY

Look ahead where those next three steps will take you.

Survey around where you are standing.

Check overhead where your steps will be taking you.

Utilize Your SENSES

Open your gates and absorb all that you can through them … eye-gates, ear-gates, nose-gates.

The sights, sounds, and smells of the woods are in a constant state of change with the coming and unfolding of each season of the year.

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All of us that “take to the woods” do so for an assortment of recreational reasons and share a lot of common ground out there in the woods. Those of us that are seasoned Woods Wanderers are familiar with these 3 S’s in one way or another. 

Others may not define them with S’s. The essences of the S’s are there though in every wander that a Woods Wanderer makes in the woods.

Here’s a link to a blog article that Shirli and I collaborated on that talks about making the most of short trips.

http://woodsmokewoodcraftschool.blogspot.com/2017/01/making-most-of-short-trips_22.html

Little River

It’s misting a rain as I sit here in the cabin beginning this keystroking.

The mist in the air is the preliminary stuff ahead of the faint rumbling of that weather front that my sense of hearing is able to detect way off to the west.

We’d still be there enjoying a leisurely morning and going about breaking camp at a slow-mosey pace was it not for the weather images on our phones that prompted us to pack it in and get back to the cabin late yesterday.

There are a few things about this modern era that even a dinosaur can appreciate … a weather app on a smart phone happens to be one of them.

I’m not sure when it was that we personally discovered Little River. It was quite a while ago on one of our spur of the moment day-rides. Many of our day-rides have no particular destination in mind … we just hop in the car and take off exploring backroads and byways that would cause tears of boredom for a lot of the people we know.

Little River.

That’s what it was known as in the beginning when it was built as a State Park. The name, somewhere along the way of its existence, was changed to Claude D. Kelley State Park but everyone that knows the place still calls it Little River. Claude D. Kelley Recreation Area is its official name these days but that’s a lot more syllables to pronounce than the four found in Little River.

Little River sits fairly well in the center of the 2100-acre Little River State Forest. It was so named for the aquatic feature that meanders through it and makes its way to the Alabama River some twenty bird-miles to the west. Those bird-miles, translated into river-miles, are likely close to fifty miles with the greatest part of the distance unnavigable. Following the course of the Little River would make for a mean trip.

Little River Lake was not formed by damming Little River.

The small river is bridged just before the gatehouse on the way into the park.

The lake itself is fed by a couple of small unnamed creeks, one from the north and one from the east. Overflow from the lake, via the spillway, connects with Little River a couple hundred yards from the spillway. Also designed into the earthen dam (3/4 of the way across the dam from the spillway) is an additional overflow (A well-thought out just-in-case measure?) to keep the earthen dam from being cut and compromised by high water seeking its escape from captivity.

Little River is no longer a State Park.

We watched it lose its status and close down when the prior Governor mandated budget cuts as a band aid remedy for the budget crisis that he inherited when he took the Oath of Office. Closing Little River, one of fifteen or eighteen smaller State Parks, did not solve the budget crisis and came as a hard slap to the faces of residents in smaller less commercialized areas that used these parks for wholesome recreation on a regular basis.  

The first closing broke our hearts. It was our go-to spot. We lost our favorite place to camp. We had grown to know the staff that ran Little River. They were doing a great job. Little River wasn’t a day-job for them. It was their day-home and their grief at losing it, though they tried to not show it, was pretty obvious.

Since it is part of the Little River State Forest, responsibility for the park fell into the hands of the Alabama Forestry Commission. The job of the Forestry Commission is to manage State Forests. There is no clause in their job description that puts them in the business of managing parks. Their financial and man power resources are directed toward forestry management.

Two dilemmas were now at work. (1) Little River was closed to the public. (2) There is a clause in the original deed granting this land to the State. The clause says something to the effect … If this property ever ceases to be used as a public area, ownership reverts to the heirs of the original benefactors. It was no secret that those heirs wanted it back.

Little River was closed for a couple of years while the Forestry Commission looked for someone to step in to reopen it. A non-profit did step in (I’ll not mention the name), the park reopened, and everyone thought that all was well. Things were happening again at Little River. Then, without notice, these folks pulled the plug, fell off the face of the earth, and the gate was locked with an affixed sign that said Little River would be opened again when the Forestry Commission found a suitable manager.

We lost, again, our go-to spot. We lost our ideal spot to introduce people to camp. We also lost our ideal location to hold bushcraft training camps.

Little River reopened under new management last month.

We spiked our camp midday Friday. It was the first time to set up again since our last camp in April of 2016.

A lot of good Little River memories garnered over the years were relived during those 48 hours. And, as a small group of volunteers known as Friends of Little River, we were able to make a very visible mark on getting one of the neglected walking trails back into something that makes it a very pleasant 1.5 mile stroll through the woods.

There is something about Little River that grabbed us the very first time we drove through checking it out. That something attracted us at the beginning. It still attracts us and holds our attention and affection. Some of that something has to do with knowing the history behind it … how it came to be in the first place. Some of that something has to do with the way Little River extends an invitation to simply kick back, relax, and leave all the crazy hecticness of the world out there at the gate on Highway 21.

Check out the following links.

https://cccresources.blogspot.com/

https://forestarmy.blogspot.com/

Discovering The Awe In Going In

There is a lot that he said that I am able to personally relate to and understand. Here's a quote from him.

“I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.” John Muir

We all owe a debt of gratitude to Muir. Even if we are unfamiliar with his name and the important lasting work that he did. There are others, too, that are equally significant … people whose names and life-works are unknown to most … yet the lives they lived and purposes they fulfilled … their contributions … are still paying dividends forward in the lives of lovers of the outdoors and future lovers of the outdoors.

Unfamiliar with John Muir?

We are the Google Generation. A world of knowledge is at our fingertips. Go ahead. Exercise a few keystrokes and Google him.

Shirli and I consider ourselves extremely fortunate.

Somewhere, along the way, through the tangles and jungles of situations and circumstances associated with navigating the normal courses and rites of passages that are part of life in these modern times, we discovered and tapped into the going out is really going in realization that Muir mentions. An aha moment here. An aha moment there. A collection of aha moments over time that evolve and captivate.

I am of the opinion that we are all born with an inherent propensity for the outdoors. I think it’s something ancestral … something genetic … passed down in our lineages … common in all of us … tracing ancestral pathways and linking us to the far distant past and those ancestral primal others that occupied space and time. Life has become so demanding and frenetic in these modern times that it’s hard for people to slow down long enough to detect the throb of this propensity within the fibers of their beings; let alone spend time yielding to its beckoning.

The awe discovered in going in has no opportunity without going out. The awe discovered in going in has only a slim margin of opportunity unless we slow down and silence all the supplanting noises and modern everyday contrivances that most modern campers and woods goers surround ourselves with when they go out.

Most of today’s campgrounds, and the rigs that occupy them, are little more than extensions that do not interrupt or run counter to modern lifestyles – roll in, roll out the slides, attach the cords and hoses, turn on the tube, and conduct business over the phone and on a laptop via the free Wi-Fi offered as part of the camping fee. There is also a growing number of “campgrounds” that cater to those that pull or drive their rigs and refuse any camping clientele with intentions of erecting a tent. It can be a little challenging these days in this part of the world to find a spot in a campground to pitch a tent when you are motoring the distance between two destinations. In campgrounds where tents are “allowed”, it’s a rare thing to find as many tents as there are pulled or driven rigs.

Don’t misconstrue this to be an accusation or attack against anyone. It’s their dime and time. I’m good with that. This is, however, my observation and I’m sticking to it.

I will admit that there is a lot that I can teach people regarding the skills needed to go out, enjoy the outdoors for what it is, and get back to four surrounding walls after adventuring outdoors. The admission is not a prideful statement. The elements in a suitable basic outdoors skills set float back and forth over the opaque lines formed by labels such as camping, bushcraft, woodcraft, and survival.

 

These are skills. Skills can be taught. I enjoy teaching them, especially in a mentoring style. It’s personally very gratifying to have the privilege of investing myself in the lives of others … particularly in youth … in a way that’s a lot more personal than meeting a group or an individual for a weekend crash course. Part of the personal gratification is in watching them develop confidence in themselves as their skills and knowledge expand.

Going out is one thing.

Going out can be taught.

Going in is another thing altogether.

Going in is something that is caught.

People either catch it or they don’t. Catching it is something that I have no control over. There is a huge host of things running interference where the awe of discovery is concerned. As much as it is my desire to see people go in, the best I can do is introduce people to settings where the catching is possible.

The School of Wild Places

The wild places that he writes about are different from the ones I am familiar with. Embedded in the differences, nestled between the individual threads that create the obvious visual appearances of the fabric, rest a lot of familiar similarities.

Robert Macfarlane is a brilliant writer. He is an accomplished artist that paints with words. To say that The Wild Places is an excellent read is a limp understatement on my part.

His world of wild places becomes my own world of wild places. Not so much because of the natural wild scenery that he sees. More so because of the deep natural essences inherent within the scenery he describes … the deep personally felt experiences experienced within the obvious seen experiences.

Those of us that are familiar with the work and writings of Horace Kephart like to toss around something that he said … In the school of the woods there is no graduation day.

I think, more often than not, we are referencing the idea that there is always something more to learn in regards to outdoor skills and the environment where we practice these skills. There is no error in this referencing. There is a lot to learn in these regards.

I do believe that, if Kephart took a stroll among us here today, he would tell us something more about what he meant in that coined phrase.

That something more, in my opinion, is that we use the tangible to reach the intangible.

We use what we can experience with our natural senses to get in touch with and understand who we have become as individuals as a result of our ingrained indoctrinations, personal life experiences, and modern cultural grooming. Without experiencing the intangible, we can never overcome our biases, preferences, and prejudices.

Every age and era, every life for that matter, is rife with tragedies and crises of one sort or another. It’s the price we pay for being humans and participating in a world where humans often tend to live inhumanely toward others … and, worse yet, toward their own selves.

The school of wild places is a difficult school.

The greatest difficulty of this school is that it possesses the potential to make us see the reflection of what life without it has made of us and to recreate and stabilize us as individuals. The remotest of the wild classrooms offer the greatest potential for remedial illumination and opportunities for the application of the salve that generates and restores our human sanity … if we are open and receptive to it.

It’s a big if.

I did not know this if for the greatest part of my life.

Probably because there was nobody around that knew it or had ever heard of it.

This admission doesn’t mean that I was unfamiliar with being outdoors.

I’ve spent a lot of time outdoors doing outdoorsy stuff. Even as a small boy I was going solo into the woods. The woods, for me as a small boy growing up between two sisters, offered me a place to retreat to where I escaped the harassment of my sisters. This retreat was a key player during my elementary school years. Those years were a constant barrage of humiliation generated by class peers and social class. (I was one of some small few dirt-poor farm boys from hardscrabble farms forced to attend school with the offspring of well-to-do farmers and townie socialites. I have never once considered attending any of my High School Reunions.)

Afternoons after school, and on weekends and holidays, I fled to the woods to escape and discover solace. I can now, in retrospect, see that if was there in the woods but, as a child, the reality of if was far from my perception.

It was on the prairie of Northwest Kansas, shortly after the change of the Millennium, that I began to perceive something of this if.

That was a tough season.

I was in a clergy profession dealing with a bad lot of difficult and aggressive personalities. I tossed the profession and walked away. Then there was the weight of another divorce on my shoulders. I was in the middle of the country … almost the exact geographical center. Alone. No family. None that I could honestly call friends. And add to the weight the hopeful but fearful mixed emotions of a budding relationship.

I rode a lot of prairie dirt roads.

I camped in the prairie heat and cold prairie winds.

I watched the tumbleweeds rolling in the wind.

I watched the prairie grass and the fields of grain rolling … wave after wave.

I sat in my truck on a dirt road and watched an approaching storm. I watched a number of storms. This one was different. Half hoping a tornado would take me out of my troubles. Half hoping nothing cyclonic would come my way.  I sat and waited and watched … almost paralyzed by the excitement and anticipation. The wind was blowing like crazy. The sky dark and full of prairie dust. When the storm arrived, it rained a heavy layer of mud on my truck and everything around me.

It was soloing out there on the prairie where I began to sense something of this if. It was there that I began searching for that small person inside of me that was covered over by the layers of life-concrete that had been dumped on me the first forty and few years of my life. It was there … on the hard and harsh prairie … nearly twenty years ago … that I began to recognize and experience the remedial power of the school of wild places.