MADDOG'S LAIR
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact

Perhaps the strangest article I have ever read!

10/9/2016

Comments

 
Loathe the Great Outdoors? This Gear Will Help

"WHEN I TRY to recall my earliest memory of the great outdoors, what comes to mind is a yellow permission slip: a three-page form that would allow me to participate in my elementary school’s field day. This momentous event was to be held an hour north of New York City, where I grew up and where my exposure to flora and fauna had been limited to strolls through Central Park, usually on the way to ballet, piano or math tutoring.
​

The permission form came with a dire list of warnings and suggested preparations. Since we children would be in proximity to unmown grass and native shrubbery, we were advised to wear light-colored clothing. That way, disease-inducing ticks—presumably waiting to leap onto us from every leaf—would be easier to spot. Pants were to be tucked securely into our socks. And our parents were urged to spray us with bug repellent that had a high enough concentration of DEET to asphyxiate a small mammal.

Field day was a bust. I spent most of it in the on-site lodge, trading lunchbox contents with nature-averse classmates."
​

As a child in Kalamazoo, Michigan, I spent all my time during warm weather plunking around in the stream down behind the houses on the other side of our road. We would gig frogs, or wade, or swim in the swimming hole, or spot fish. If we were not there, we were catching bees in glass jars, or spying on Swallowtail butterflies. Sometimes we would cross the back fence and wander into the farm fields, there were always snakes, and loads of Walking Sticks, Praying Mantis, Ladybugs, and all sorts of other interesting things. Or we might spend the day picking and eating various vegetables out of the garden. Unless, of course we were shooting each other with arrows, or pummeling each other, wrestling, I like the wrestling the most, well except for the distance contests we boys had, you know what I mean.

Even when young, the family vacations were either camping, trimming/cutting Christmas Trees at the farm, spending a week or two at grandma's ranch, or some other suitably outdoorsy activity. Grandma's was particularly enlightening, each day she would hand me the Winchester Model 1890 slide action .22, and a box of shells, and tell me I could not shoot the horses, or the dogs, or the cats, or the house, or the barn. I was maybe 8, so I suspect a daily retelling of the rules was a good practice. I mostly just shot targets that I made up, or old fence posts, but I shot one hundred rounds or more every day. By the time we moved to Portland, and build a gun range in the basement, I was an accomplished shot.

Even after becoming an adult I spent most of my summer days outdoors. With the family, we spent two decades waterskiing, wake boarding, and swimming off the ski boat. We would anchor up just off East Island in the Willamette River, nearly every day in the summer, take our dinner after skiing/boarding out the kinks, then walk the island spotting various animal tracks, deer, raccoon, coyote, possum, nutria, muskrat, mouse, among many others. Then I would pick blackberries for a nightly pie/cobbler, and we would head home about dark. 

I spent years kayaking the Willamette River year around, whether hot summer, or ice crusted winter, 20 miles per day, 200 days per year some years. On a very few years, I was on the river about 300 days/times per year counting both kayaking, and ski boating. 

Winters found us oft in the motorhome up at the Mt. Bachelor Ski Resort where after the lifts closed we would snowshoe again spotting tracks, of the local bunnies, big cats, and other creatures. 

I don't remember ever using DEET, and only needing sunscreen for a month or two before becoming impervious to the sun. I have been in water so murky I would have sworn I could walk across it, and laid on deserted beaches across from the hubbub of downtown Portland. 

I cannot imagine being trapped in a city without the outdoors near, or around me. Concrete, glass, tar macadam, steel, and people, hoards of people is no way to live. People are hell, or so I've heard. I avoid 'em when I can. 

I would much rather watch an eponymously named Kingfisher fish for a living, or an Osprey, or Bald Eagle. I have stories. I would rather watch an otter dive under my kayak, investigate me from below before surfacing behind me. I would rather be the curious object for Seals, or Seal Lions while crossing the Gulf of Georgia, or Rosario Strait, then be the curious object for the conformists the downtown calls non-conformist. Ever notice how they all look alike, barely variations on a theme?

A few years back, I was teaching Maddogsson to pheasant hunt, he was a dead eye shot, but only 15. Some days we would only have the most marginal luck. On those days he would spend his time accumulating pockets full of frogs, snakes, and strange insects. I would make him let them go before we left, but I cannot fathom a childhood without the intrigue of finding the next new bug or critter. What can the city offer in exchange? Variations in tar macadam? Striation patterns in concrete? 

Odd, but I never met a man in the country carrying a gun I didn't want to talk with, nor a man in the city caring a gun I did. The city is a place of fear, because it is full of people. The country a place of wonder, because it is not.
Comments
comments powered by Disqus

    Author

    Maddog

      Blog Subscription

    Subscribe to Blog

    Archives

    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016

    Categories

    All
    1000-ways-to-die
    Abortion
    Amazon
    America
    Antisemitism
    Anti-semitism
    Bible
    Blogging
    Blue-model
    Book-links
    Booze
    Bus
    Cancer
    Children
    China
    China-ccp
    China-gdp
    China-ghost-cities
    China-ponzi
    Climate-change
    Coast-guardrescue-swimmer
    Cold-war
    Concealed-carry
    Constitution
    Cool-stuff
    Corruption
    Creative-destruction
    Crime
    Crisis-change
    Dead-guy-vote
    Dead-pool
    Death-of-the-pc
    Declaration-of-independence
    Deflation
    Democrat
    Demographic-decline
    Diet
    Earth-hour
    Ecommerce
    E-commerce
    Economic-change
    Economy
    Education
    End-of-history
    Energy
    Environmentalism
    Epa
    Eric-barker
    Europe
    Executive-outcomes
    F35
    Faith
    Family
    Fascists
    Financial-irresponsibility
    Financial-times
    Firearms
    First-world-problems
    Fitness
    Flight-to-security
    Food
    Fourth-turning
    Free-eye-exam
    French
    Funny
    Gdp
    Gdp-usa-vs-britain
    Gdp-usa-vs-germany
    Gdp-usa-vs-sweden
    Generational-theft
    Global-warming
    Government-incompetence
    Government-we-deserve
    Happiness
    Health
    Helicopter-parent
    Hell
    Holocene
    Honor
    Housing-affordability
    I-love-beaver
    Imf
    Immigration
    Independence-day
    Inefficiency
    Inflation
    Innovation
    Intelligence
    Intergenerational-conflict
    International-relations
    Investing
    Iran
    Iraq-war
    Islamic-reformation
    Italian-travel
    Japan
    Jodie-foster-effect
    Kayaking
    Keynesian-economist
    Kurdistan
    Law
    Leave-nato
    Leave-the-un
    Light-rail
    Maddog-story
    Marine
    Marriage
    Media
    Medical-insurance
    Medicine
    Middle-east
    Military
    Military-waste
    Money
    Monopoly
    Nanny-college
    News
    New-seasons
    Nirvana-is-another-name-for-hell
    North-korea
    Nukes
    Obama-doctrine
    Oil
    Oregon
    Organic
    Parenting
    Partition
    Pearl
    Pensions
    Peter-principle
    Police
    Politicians
    Portland
    Portlandia
    Portland-transit
    Predictions
    President-bush
    President-feckless-odither
    President-obama
    Psychology
    Race-huckster
    Rape
    Recession
    Recipe
    Replace-the-un
    Republican
    Research-studies-are-always-wrong
    Reviews
    Russia
    Salafism
    Sanctions
    Science
    Science-versus-faith
    Self-defense
    Self-drive-vehicle
    Sex
    Shale-oil
    Shia
    Sjw
    Sleeper
    Smart-growth
    Socialism
    Sovereignty
    Sport
    Sunni
    Supreme-court
    Syria
    Tax
    Technology
    Terrorism
    The-fed
    The-house-of-saud
    The-last-economic-superpower
    Therapy
    Trade
    Transit
    True-believer
    Tvfilm-review
    Un
    Union
    Urban-planning
    Urinals-of-note
    Venezuela
    Voter-fraud
    Wages
    Wahhabism
    War
    War-crimes
    Weird
    Weird-science
    Welfare
    Whole-foods
    Work



    RSS Feed

​Maddog's Lair is copyright 2016-2018 by Mark Sherman. Please feel free to quote from this site provided you link back to the original article.
Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact