January 2011
22 posts
If they ask you
Whether I’m walkin’,
Tell ‘em I’m flyin’
—Philip Whalen
Go to sea, or work near water, and paddle your own boat.
—Ferlinghetti
The islands sheltered us fairly well from the cold north winds, but we were open and exposed to those from the south-east. The big winter winds from that direction would drive in from Puget Sound and Juan de Fuca Straits. Higher and higher would rise the tide and the seas. With great booming roars the waves would fling themselves against the cliffs, dashing and battering them in blind fury. The...
So it’s a provident and saving backcountry style we want. Lean. Ultralight. Appreciative of the wild as a refuge and sanctuary where we go to shake off the dust of the world. And because we know wild earth to be a kind of flesh, we go in a way not to wound it. We go light. As though, being stalked, we don’t leave a trace.
—Albert Saijo
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune, Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing, Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms, Strong and content I travel the open road. —Walt Whitman via Drew Kampion
Before I went to Paris I did an old traditional ritual. I went up to my cabin and vomited up the world for five days. No contact with newspapers, radio, nothing but running my dog. I think even Jesus said you have to step aside in the wilderness and rest awhile, an interesting view. You have to avoid suffocating in lint. We’re not choo-choo trains on a track. Nothing tells us we can’t...
We don’t want to live in the city no more, we don’t want to lose what we’re looking for. We don’t want to lean on the gallery bars, looking at things that’ll never be ours.
—Justin Rutledge from The Heart of a River
“Be interested in everything.”
—Dave Parmenter in The Surfer’s Journal, Vol. 19, No. 6
