Rain in Black Fox Hollow

     The bad weather which was promised for this evening set in shortly after noon.  There is now a pretty steady rain which the birds at the suet and sunflower seed feeders are ignoring.   It is interesting to notice that the rain seems to trigger greater cooperation among the birds. Two and three species sit next to each other feeding.  A Downy woodpecker is sharing the suet with a Carolina Wren.  Even the Cardinals, who are giants compared to most of those at the feeder and who usually cause those gathered to scatter, is sharing.  

     I'm sitting at the window looking out into Black Fox Hollow.  Of course my eyes are attracted to the little blue flags that mark the new trees in the hollow.  That's because six of those flags are for trees that I just planted yesterday.  I knew that the rain was coming and I'm lucky to have them all in.  We return west next week.  We've been working to find under-story trees and large trees that will be able to replace our big mature trees when their time comes.  In the succession of a temperate deciduous forest we have a mix of the last two stages - mature forest (oak, hickory) and climax forest (beech, sugar maple).  Fortunately we are more in the mature forest succession which will hopefully give us time.  We do have one elder beech, but most of these last succession trees are still young.  Of  course Pamela and I won't see the fruits of this labor of love in our life-time, but if we are followed by people who will continue to protect this patch of forest, that seems to be more and more surrounded by the starkness of suburban sprawl, we will be happy. 

     Water is already gathering in an area just west of  the trail and our depression.  I think, if we really pushed it, we could get the area designated a wetland.  It takes very little water to have a couple of inches standing.  The depression - we have been told it isn't a sink hole - has a giant Beech standing like an island in the middle, flanked by a Sycamore in the lowland and a Chestnut Oak on slightly higher ground.  We have two PawPaw (Asimina triloba) between the Beech and Sycamore.  They like wetlands and will be good under-story trees.

     The county agent, who gave our trees a clean bill of health, said that he wouldn't be surprised if our depression isn't an entrance to a nearby cave that has filled in.  He knows that it goes under the school less than two-hundred yards away.  There are a few deep, dark holes that make us wonder.  Actually, if it is a hidden entrance, it most likely connects to the famous Mammoth Cave.  The Mammoth Cave National Park is less than sixty miles from here. Black Fox Hollow sits right in the heart of the Western Pennyroyal Karst area.  Our magnificent limestone outcroppings attest to this.  Digging in the hollow is anything but fun. If you don't hit rock you hit tree roots.  In attempting to plant one of the Eastern Red Buds I had to try three times.  But I wouldn't give up a single rock or root.

     Given the privilege of protecting this parcel of natural history is what keeps me sane as we return twice a year to visit family in the over-populated eastern US where you can not drive anywhere without being in sight of human influence.     

Is time precious?

Powderhorn Wilderness, CO.  credit thearmchairexplorer.com

     Scott Stillman, in his 2018 book “Wilderness: gateway to the soul”₁, raised a profound question in a very casual way.  He asked “Is time precious?”  

     I do believe that very likely a majority of westerners – US, Canada and Europe – would reply with a resounding “of course”.  Why would they do that?  Because we’ve all been taught since childhood that ‘time is precious. You don’t waste time’.  How many times in your life have you heard someone say or tell you ‘time is precious’.  I don’t want to get off the subject, but this is very typical of a capitalistic, consumer society.  We have been taught a concept of time as an entity that is fixed and can be wasted.  Not doing something which contributes to the promotion of the capitalistic consumer society is considered a waste of time.  But what is time? Really. 

     Martin Heidegger, the famous German philosopher of the early twentieth century, wrote a book in 1927 entitled “Sein und Zeit”  (Being and Time) which spends 529 pages making an ontological argument about the relationship between being and time.  Albert Einstein’s General Relativity (1905-1915) basically destroyed our simplistic concept of time as a fixed entity.  Most people think a minute is a minute is a minute.  Einstein showed that space and time are intertwined and that gravity causes masses; e.g. the Earth; to warp space-time around them.  In other words, time is not a fixed entity.

    So, what do we have?  We have those who believe time means taking action which is beneficial to the capitalistic-consumer society, we have those who relate it to our finite existence and those who see it as a factor in relation to gravity and space.  Wow!   The only one who calls time “precious” is the one who is benefiting from the labor which you contribute to their wealth and success. 

     In my mind this is all calling into question whether or not one can waste time.  If one’s life is as happy and content as possible, can we accuse that person of wasting time no matter what they do or do not do?  Whether or not we waste time is obviously a subjective determination dependent upon who pulls your strings.  If you are a good child of modern capitalism, it is that society that is convinced that we must do everything possible to contribute to the capitalistic society no matter what it does to us personally. No matter whether we find life happy or content.  

     That, of course, still doesn’t answer the question of whether time is precious?  I like Scott Stillman’s answer as he shares his experience of Powderhorn Wilderness, Colorado.

   "Is time precious?  What's more precious, time or the present moment?  Up here clock time is gone. Distractions are gone. In their place - peace, pure essence.  The essence of life.  I'm content to let things be as they are. If it rains let it rain. If it's windy let it blow. Everything I need I have.  There is nothing else to even decide, apart from should I eat, should I drink, should I pee?  Besides basic survival nothing has to be done at all.  The brain takes a well-deserved rest and meditation becomes my reality. What if there were a secret back-door portal to enlightenment?  A shortcut, so to speak. I believe that the answer lies here, in wilderness."  (p. 44)

    If you were expecting me to give a definitive answer, I’m sorry to disappoint you. Like so many things in life, you must experience to understand and find the answer for yourself.  Fortunately, we still have wilderness in North America that hasn’t been given to some corporation to mine, drill or otherwise destroy for the sake of profit. Wilderness where you will find what you cannot find in the chaos of modern life. Wilderness filled with peace, tranquility and enlightenment. Go and learn the answer for yourself.  It will give you new life and save your soul.  

FOOTNOTES:

1.      Stillman, Scott. (2018). Wilderness: gateway to the soul.  Boulder, CO.  Wild Soul Press.  (available on Kindle) 

Personality Disorder

Several years ago I had a meeting where a young graduate student, who was doing a practicum with one of the mental health care providers, started telling me about an amazing man he had met right there in the office.  The man, he said, was unbelievably intelligent, and responsible for all the progress in the company’s care program but couldn’t get the job he deserved heading up the agency because of staff jealousy. The young grad student was going to go to bat for the persecuted genius.  I didn’t need to be told this phenomenal person’s name. I knew him well. He was a patient of mine.

The truth. The man had a personality disorder (PD). This poor persecuted man had been recently released from a hospital for the “criminally insane” (archaic term but what it was called).  He had been incarcerated there after being caught baiting pre-teen girls.  I won’t share the gruesome details.  I somehow became the clinician responsible for his behavior program; i.e. keeping him out of trouble when the State turned him loose.  He lived with two other men with similar histories and full-time trained caregivers.  He had convinced authorities that he was cured and had gone for some years without any serious violations of the rules. 

There is no cure at this time for personality disorder (PD). People with PD almost always present as “normal” (whatever that is), very intelligent, even when they’re not, and being persecuted by an ignorant world that just doesn’t know or understand. They are always right and will throw a temper tantrum, even, as with this man, becoming violent and vindictive when their story or behavior is challenged.  Since I never saw a mild case, all of my PD patients were either in prison or a mental institution. I spent a lot of time trying to get judges to put them an institution instead of prison. Sadly, the judges all knew that the State would soon come along and discharge them and the process would start over.

Having convinced authorities that he was cured and not a threat to himself or others, this man gained more freedom even though there were always trained staff nearby.  It was a very short time later that staff caught him sneaking into a computer where he was cruising social media for young girls and had two pre-teen girls ready to meet him. It was also learned that he was telling at least one young woman at the sheltered workshop that he was going to marry her and take her away because he was really very rich and people were just jealous of him. Not surprised.  I’ve had a lot of patients with PD and they’ve all been very good at convincing the unsuspecting that whatever they say is true no matter how improbable it may sound. That might be because they really believe what they say so they speak from commitment. I’ve had physicians ask me why a patient was “incarcerated” until that “poor person” started acting out, throwing violent temper tantrums and telling people the physician was poisoning them.  

It is very hard for staff, and even clinicians, to keep in mind that people with PD are, in fact, mentally ill. Working with them is stressful and exasperating at best. It is made even more difficult by the PD’s total lack of remorse when they hurt someone, always blaming it on someone else, and their willingness to say absolutely anything to gain control or manipulate even to the point of making up horribly harmful lies. They can literally be caught with their hand in the proverbial cookie jar and swear it wasn’t them then become violent when they are not believed. When they make false statements about a caregiver the government has no choice but to investigate even if they know the person has PD and the statement is obviously false. This makes getting caregivers for them extremely difficult because, if the media gets hold of one of these false statements, it can destroy a person’s career and life.

Personality disorders are really quite frightening.  I was lucky.  I got through over thirty years of practice with no major accusations against me.  I think that is because, despite their thinking they are the smartest person on the planet they usually are far far from it, and they thought I had some tremendous authority that I didn’t really have.  I did get physically attacked on occasion and took a couple of good thumpings, but it was all in a day’s work.  It is very hard to balance their human/civil rights with keeping them, and those around them, safe. 

If you know a person with PD don’t confront them or try to deal with their behavior yourself.  Try to be patient with them and do your best to get them professional mental health help.

Reducing our personal carbon footprints - 25 ideas

To reduce our carbon footprint, clean our air,  reduce our landfills, keep trash out of our oceans, etc., we all need to conserve and practice some very serious "R"s - reuse, recycle, re-purpose, rebuild, re-think.  What always makes me a bit angry is that those who don't want us doing these things; viz. the supercaps (1) who continue to grow their fortunes by maintaining a consumer society;  have people convinced that practicing the Rs is hard, will cost the consumer money, and reduce your quality of life.  Nothing is further from the truth.  Simple logic tells us that if we stop our continuous, copious consumption and learn to practice conservation and the Rs we will save money and have a far cleaner environment. None of the ideas I mention here are hard. Almost all of them will save you money. And besides improving your quality of life, you will probably find some of them actually fun.  Obviously the supercaps  will be furious because they do not get richer if you don't buy more and more and more. 

The following ideas are things which Pamela and I have been doing since before we became nomads.  You don't have to be nomads to do them.  They are so natural to us now that we don't even think about them and do them no matter where we are.  In fact, they are so much a part of our everyday life that I spent an entire evening just coming up with this list, and I'm sure it isn't complete.  

1. Pamela cuts down coated cardboard milk cartons to make storage dividers.  What she cuts off can be recycled.  My point is ... she uses everything.  Little goes to waste.  It might be a jar that is particularly good for storing leftovers instead of buying more plastic.  It might be some sort of packaging material that she reuses as draw dividers so things don't slide around as we travel.  
2. Mend torn or worn clothing.  This requires minimal skill and it can often be done while enjoying an evening around a fire, or sitting with your spouse. Creative thinking might also turn a worn garment into something new and exciting.  
3. Shop at a thrift store.   You can get some really nice things that are like new.  Some poor person just outgrew them.  Some of my favorite shirts came from a thrift store and I got a pair of boots that look and feel good.   If you have something that you can't give directly to someone else, give it to a thrift store.   We always try to give things away first.   We know so many people, especially women, in the desert who have been screwed by the system and are now living in cars and vans on less than $1200 a month.  Many are college educated and some have been professional women; e.g. a newscaster for a major network. When we visit in Hopkinsville we list the item(s) on a forum and have actually delivered them to single mothers who had no transportation. 
4. Vinegar is a phenomenal product.   A small amount mixed with water in a spray bottle has so many applications I'm not sure I could list them all.  It cleans, disinfects, is cheaper, not toxic to the environment and you haven't purchased yet another bottle of dish soap or spray cleaner that may or may not end up in a landfill.  You can actually do dishes with vinegar and water spray.  Everything from dishes to cleaning the truck.  We used vinegar and water to get the mud off the back of the camper each night when we were at the Arctic Ocean. 
5. Consider solar energy.  If you have a large house it can be an expensive outlay, but it pays for itself in an amazingly short time. The cost of the panels, batteries and electronics is coming down.  The best batteries available used to cost >$1200 each. Today the same battery can easily be had for <$900.  We use AGM which cost us just under $300 each, but we get a lot of use out of them and they provide us with 120 amp hours of electricity.   We went 100% 12-volt because it is easier, safer and a whole lot cheaper in an RV.  Most people run up close to 50% of their cost by buying inverters to turn 12-volt into regular 110 house current.  It takes twice the energy to do that. Why bother? A lot of people want to run air conditions, microwaves, coffee makers and hair dryers so they are willing to put out the big bucks for the big pure sine-wave inverters. We like 12-volt.  It does everything we want and need. We save money and reduce our use of fossil fuels.  Based upon a 60 month battery life, our power costs are $43.33 per month for five years. After the five years that cost will drop to around $10/month. 
6. Washing dishes by hand can save you and the environment a great deal.  It also isn't hard work.  The average dishwasher uses 6 gallons of water per cycle.  An Energy Star rated machine uses 4 gallons, so at best you are going to use 8 gallons of water and emit 2.13 pounds of CO2 per load.  Besides energy use, this costs you money.  We use around 2-3 gallons of water a day.  We do dishes in a small basin and use the dirty dishwater to flush the toilet.  No difficulty. No big deal. Lots of personal and environmental savings.  
7. Use your own reusable bags when you go shopping.  There are times that we take the plastic bags because we reuse them as trash liners or poop bags.  If you're not going to reuse them, don't take them. We carry a canvas bag full of shopping bags in the backseat of the truck. 
8. Carry your own drink cup and reusable straw.  What a savings!  And it's easy.  Pamela and I have not had a single restaurant, fast-food joint or gas convenience store refuse to let us fill our own cups. 
9. Compost.  When we're on the road we don't have anywhere to have a proper compost pile, so we have to contribute to someone else's. That, however, isn't a problem for most people.  
10. Use "Sponge Cloths".  They are amazing.  100% natural and compostable, they last forever, do a great job, replace paper towels, and can be washed in a machine 300 times. We love our sponge cloths and they are not only convenient but they are environmentally friendly and a great money saver.  
11. Use produce bags when you go to the grocery instead of the store's plastic.  You can use your bags not only to transport, but they are good for storing veges in the fridge.  If you want to get an idea how much plastic you will keep out of the environment by this simple and very convenient practice, just stand in the produce department of a supermarket and watch people pull off a plastic bag for everything they buy.  All that plastic has to go somewhere. 
12. Related to that, don't buy single wrapped, plastic wrapped or fancy boxed goods.  Yes, we get some strange looks from young cashiers but we will show up at checkout with one apple, one orange, a couple of bananas, two or three onions, a couple of tomato, etc.   None are in the store plastic.  
13. Save coffee bags, heavy mailers and other non-recyclable containers instead of throwing them away.  They are very useful for disposing of broken glass, nails or pieces of metal from a project.  They are also very useful when a regular bag isn't going to do the job.  They will eventually get thrown away, but they'll get a second use before that. 
14. Lots of recipes produce very nice liquids and broths that end up getting put down a garbage disposal, which, by the way, we don't use.  Put the stock in ice cube trays or plastic storage containers. Once frozen you can put them in bags or some other more convenient storage container.
15. 

    Pamela loves her Thermal Cooker.  A Thermal Cooker uses minimal energy.  There is a pot inside the thick insulated device. You boil the contents of the pot for three minutes and close it inside the Thermal Cooker. Six hours later, no electricity or other energy required, you have a perfect meal.  You can even bake in them.  They are a marvel that makes life on the road simpler and saves tremendous time and energy.  Those of you still in the workforce and living in stick-n-brick (a house/apartment) can start your cooker before work and have a complete meal when you get home without using any energy.  Safe and cost efficient. 
16. Do not buy water in individual bottles.  I'm sure you know that companies like Nestle are taking water from people who are suffering from drought and selling it.  If you are buying water, as we do, buy it in bulk with your own container.  It keeps plastic out of the land fills and oceans, reduces our carbon footprint, and doesn't promote water theft by companies like Nestle.  We have a 40 gallon fresh water tank on board. That lasts us about two weeks. But we prefer to use that only for washing, bathing, etc.  We buy our purified drinking water from vending machines for about twenty-cents a gallon in desert states. In Montana we get it free from mountain springs. In both cases we keep four, one-gallon containers.  
17. Fix and refinish furniture.  Paint or sand and stain cabinets instead of ripping them out and sending them to the landfill.  You can create beautiful and unique pieces.  If the cabinets are so bad that they just have to go, look for someone who can make use of them.  You would be amazed at how many people want your old cabinets.  You might even find that you can use them in a workroom or shed.  If you have to break up cabinets or other wood items, salvage as much of the wood as possible.  Have a scrap/used wood box. I have built gates and made useful items completely from a scrap box. Not only does this help reduce trees cut and hopefully make lumbering virgin or old-growth forests unnecessary, but have you looked at the price of wood recently?  You'll save lots of money. 
18. I'm the cook in the family. Pamela is a good cook but just doesn't like to cook. I love to cook and I love my cast iron cookware.  Until I gave it some thought I would have never put it on a list of environmentally friendly items.  Cast iron heats more evenly and is easier to clean than any fancy new product on the market. As a result you are going to save time and money, and probably pass it down through generations instead of loads of cheap aluminum going in the landfill every time the coating gets scratched.  
19. Avoid glass bottles unless you are regularly in an area that recycles glass. 
20. Buy things you use regularly and go through quickly in larger quantities then fill smaller reusable containers. For example, we buy the larger bags and recyclable containers of sweetener and coffee creamer and put them in more convenient and easy to use small containers. It dramatically reduces the amount of waste and recycling.  I use Lucas for the vehicle engines. I used eight of the small single dose bottles and kept them. Now I get a quart bottle and fill my small bottles leaving me with one bottle to recycle.  The smaller ones are easier to store and use, and the process saves me lots of money, keeps lots of plastic out of the landfill and CO2 from production out the air. 
21. Avoid deep frying.  It creates a lot of nasty waste.  Trying to dispose of rancid cooking oil is as difficult as disposing of the oil from your crankcase.  
22. Even camping on the Arctic Ocean we turned our furnace off at night.  We don't use AC unless it's just too miserable and we have shore-power available. Both save lots of money and help the environment. A good feather quilt is a marvelous investment.  No matter how cold it gets outside our feather quilt keeps us comfortable.  (P.S. don't buy a down quilt. You don't want to know what cruelty the animal suffers for us to have down.)   If you live in sticks-n-bricks (a permanent house or apartment) consider turning your heat down at night.  Good for the environment and good for your pocketbook. 
23. Consider what I call an "Irish shower".  When we lived in Ireland we quickly learned how precious water is.  Our Irish friends didn't use showers because showers are, by nature wasteful.  They put an inch or so of water in the tub. When I take a shower it is simply (i) get wet, (ii) immediately turn off the water, (iii) soap down and wash, then (iv) turn the water on a rinse . . . . quickly.  The average American shower uses 17.2 gallons of water.  Remember we only use about 3 gallons of water a day.  That's a big savings for your pocketbook and the environment. 
24. Collect rain water for yard, garden and non-potable use.  
25. Fix it. You would be surprised how often items can be fixed. Recently I fixed a child's music box that is almost 40 years old. Saved it from the landfill and the kids (and even adults) love it.  Of course the supercaps don't want us to fix things. They want us to buy new.  Afraid to take it apart?  Why?  The alternative is to throw it away. The worst you can do is fail to fix it, not be able to put it back together and end up throwing it out. At least you gave it a shot. The best case scenario is that you will be able to fix it, save yourself a lot of money and keep it out of the landfill.  You will be amazed at how many times you will succeed. 

I am absolutely certain that I've forgotten many things, but this list should help you get started, give you ideas, and start you thinking in terms of conservation, reuse, recycle, re-purpose, rebuild, re-think.  The effort is minimal.  The benefits are tremendous.  

FOOTNOTES:

(1)  supercaps =df  the super-rich capitalist who, despite being only about 1% of the population, literally own most of our country and who need us to continue consuming at an ever increasing rate to keep them rich.  Capitalism is not a sustainable system but that's an entire book. 

The prescription for human survival

When we start talking about surviving as a species or environment or conservation there are many who will avoid the subject by saying "it's way too complex."  Yes, there is a side to this that is very complex.  Nevertheless, we can not ignore what we must do to survive or avoid acting because it will require some serious effort.  Our first step is, for some, the hardest; i.e. admitting that we are neither the most important nor smarter than nature.  We know its true, but arrogance gets in our way. Narcissism hominum. At the same time these three steps are very simple. They don't require money. They only require a commitment to being a part of nature, not an enemy of nature.  "Try it. You'll like it!"

#environment #nature  #ecology #SaveOurPlanet #survival