people, or a lack thereof
Every so often I think about how nice it would be to get off somewhere away from everyone and have some time to myself.
I thought about this a lot this summer, particularly when planning the 50-mile hike along lake Michigan's Sleeping Bear National shoreline. You would think in a National Park there would be at least an absence of people...right? Well...turns out it's a recent park, and more than a few people already had residences there when the park was created. They've got 99-year leases now, and then they have to pack out--technically. Actually, most of them are challenging the leases in court even though their grandparents agreed to the idea.
It is really hard to truly get away from people...I mean, in anyplace that's not clearly inhospitable. There's hundreds of thousands of square miles of desert and mountain and tundra and whatnot that nobody lives in, but it's pretty obvious why. I like exploring...I think the whole idea of being the very first person to have a look-see around something--or at least the first person in a very long time, I'm not too picky--would be totally awesome. That's probably why the oppurtunity crops up so often for the folks in my book. I love writing about exploring and describing--and drawing--unknown places, mysterious landscapes, and ancient ruins, and most especially exploring them alone. I wonder why, specifically, that should be? In any case I think I'm pretty good at it...heh.
The thing is, though I certainly do like being around all my friends here, I spend an awful lot of time by myself, and that by choice. As a kid I was never much of a people person...I typically had precisely one best friend at a time. I spend a lot of time in...what do they call it, my internal landscape? By which I mean, I think about a lot of things, a lot of the time. So while I like being around everyone, it's not my "original" people-related behavior...and I think I like myself being like that.
That was a little disconnected. Oh well, it makes sense to me.
I thought about this a lot this summer, particularly when planning the 50-mile hike along lake Michigan's Sleeping Bear National shoreline. You would think in a National Park there would be at least an absence of people...right? Well...turns out it's a recent park, and more than a few people already had residences there when the park was created. They've got 99-year leases now, and then they have to pack out--technically. Actually, most of them are challenging the leases in court even though their grandparents agreed to the idea.
It is really hard to truly get away from people...I mean, in anyplace that's not clearly inhospitable. There's hundreds of thousands of square miles of desert and mountain and tundra and whatnot that nobody lives in, but it's pretty obvious why. I like exploring...I think the whole idea of being the very first person to have a look-see around something--or at least the first person in a very long time, I'm not too picky--would be totally awesome. That's probably why the oppurtunity crops up so often for the folks in my book. I love writing about exploring and describing--and drawing--unknown places, mysterious landscapes, and ancient ruins, and most especially exploring them alone. I wonder why, specifically, that should be? In any case I think I'm pretty good at it...heh.
The thing is, though I certainly do like being around all my friends here, I spend an awful lot of time by myself, and that by choice. As a kid I was never much of a people person...I typically had precisely one best friend at a time. I spend a lot of time in...what do they call it, my internal landscape? By which I mean, I think about a lot of things, a lot of the time. So while I like being around everyone, it's not my "original" people-related behavior...and I think I like myself being like that.
That was a little disconnected. Oh well, it makes sense to me.
posted by James Pray at
9:42 AM
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