Today was a special day in the southern New Mexican highlands. Let me write about it before the memory fades. I had mountain biked on a paved road up the standard hill, until it was time to jump out onto a forest trail. The trail was so carpeted with long ponderosa needles that I wouldn't have been able to follow it if trees hadn't been marked, even though I was familiar with the trail. At the beginning of autumn I had been pelted by falling ponderosa needles near here. Wikipedia doesn't say whether ponderosas are semi-deciduous, but it sure looked like it.
Instead of being cold and dark at these higher locations like I feared, the forest canopy seemed more open than in summer. It was actually warmish, 25% sunny, and dead calm. Thus it was warmer than at the lower elevations, which are open, windy grasslands. The gaps in the canopy allowed me to always feel connected to the cold clear sky. I was giddy in a forest!
Previously I had belonged to a large school that dislikes forests and prefers semi-open landscapes. I had grudgingly come to appreciate a forest's summer shade. But now I realize that winter is the ponderosa forest's true season of glory. Any locale has its hackneyed complaints about weather, and the cold wind is ours. Not so! You just have to develop a taste for the misery of cold wind on the ride up to the ponderosas. It is Suffering that causes Desire, not the other way around as that false prophet, the Buddha, claimed.
Essentially this is an illustration of Schopenhauer's theory of Pessimism, which doesn't mean what it does in ordinary speech. Pain has the independent existence: Pain could exist without Pleasure, but Pleasure can't really exist without being preceded by Pain. OK, Pleasure can exist by itself, but it would be insipid.
This is the philosophy that many outdoorsmen have at least implicitly believed in, and have practiced. Runners, mountain climbers, backpackers, bicycle tourers, etc., have learned to relish the dialectic of Pain and Pleasure. These are such admirable people.
At the opposite end of the spectrum are the motorized tourists on their scenery-snacking July vacation: Comfort and Pretty Scenery are the only qualities that interest them. If you carry this culture to its reductio ad absurdum you end up with full time RVing, as it is most commonly practiced.
Comments
I actually hate quotes rather than speaking my own mind but I find myself doing it anyway.
You certainly do pack a punch. You went from ponderosa needles to the dark side of full-time RVing in just a few steps. LOL
Making judgments, like your analysis of pain and pleasure, is a two sided coin as well. You have decided that some folks are "admirable" and others are not based on certain of their behaviors.
We're all guilty when you look at human beings at this level; if not in one way, then in another.
BP
Please don't "hate quotes." Quotes need not be seen as an appeal to Authority or as a puerile psychological crutch. An explorer in unfamiliar country needs landmarks on the horizon as a navigational aid. The reader benefits too if he is vaguely familiar with these landmarks.