It doesn't seem like such a great idea to camp on a bare ridge of sagebrush during the monsoon season. Lightning can be pretty scary. It seems better to have some trees nearby. But I don't want to go into a thick and gloomy forest.
That is the value of a tree island near the higher end of the sagebrush, and just below the lower tree-line. It is pleasantly surprising how attached you can become to a tree island. By luck there was a two-track road ascending the ridge-line behind my dispersed camp in this photo. It looks like such easy pedaling in the photo, but I had to push the mountain bike in a couple places:
There is an entrapment pond on the far side of the tree island. But it is so close that it provides an entertainment show for me. I saw my first weasel. Disgusting little creature: a snake on wheels.
Something strange happened when camped near this tree island. The wildlife became individuals, with quirks that identified them as the same individuals, day after day. A raptor developed noisy arguments everyday with my dog; and in doing so, it ceased being anonymous; nor was it merely some abstract being that expressed the quality of "raptor-ness." It became something more solid and real. Contrast this with the usual eyelash-fluttering over wildlife as a symbol of something, perhaps of pseudo-religious holiness or perfection.
The middle of the tree island is quite dense, but here and there you can see through it. I could actually cut a nice clean walking path through the tree island, using nothing more than hand tools. It is a little bit astonishing that a forest could be so finite that little ol' me could affect it.
This experience was the very opposite of the romantic approach to Nature. Here I wasn't swooning over Vastness, freakishness, Infinity, the Perfect, the Pristine, Solitude, Mystery, or any other abstraction loaded with religious imagery and causing palpitations of the heart.
How sane and solid this makes the human mind. Perhaps I am under the influence of the evil Baron d'Holbach, one of the leading atheists of the Enlightenment, a couple decades before the French Revolution. In quote after quote, he castigated the meaningless word-play of theologians and metaphysicians. He thought a finite creature like a human being, should concern himself with finite issues, described by meaningful language. Only then would he be able to improve real life.
Yes, I know. The term, atheist, sounds unsociable and disrespectful of other people's feelings. But I am not really interested in a religious debate or in offending people on their religion.
Rather, I see it as beneficial to apply the atheistic mindset to how I visualize nature, in order to avoid excessive romanticizing. Let me balance my perspective by looking at nature clear-eyed and realistically, as the Baron was trying to do with other things.
And isn't that why we read books: to assimilate and to apply the general principles in the book to our own situations?
That is the value of a tree island near the higher end of the sagebrush, and just below the lower tree-line. It is pleasantly surprising how attached you can become to a tree island. By luck there was a two-track road ascending the ridge-line behind my dispersed camp in this photo. It looks like such easy pedaling in the photo, but I had to push the mountain bike in a couple places:
There is an entrapment pond on the far side of the tree island. But it is so close that it provides an entertainment show for me. I saw my first weasel. Disgusting little creature: a snake on wheels.
Something strange happened when camped near this tree island. The wildlife became individuals, with quirks that identified them as the same individuals, day after day. A raptor developed noisy arguments everyday with my dog; and in doing so, it ceased being anonymous; nor was it merely some abstract being that expressed the quality of "raptor-ness." It became something more solid and real. Contrast this with the usual eyelash-fluttering over wildlife as a symbol of something, perhaps of pseudo-religious holiness or perfection.
The middle of the tree island is quite dense, but here and there you can see through it. I could actually cut a nice clean walking path through the tree island, using nothing more than hand tools. It is a little bit astonishing that a forest could be so finite that little ol' me could affect it.
This experience was the very opposite of the romantic approach to Nature. Here I wasn't swooning over Vastness, freakishness, Infinity, the Perfect, the Pristine, Solitude, Mystery, or any other abstraction loaded with religious imagery and causing palpitations of the heart.
How sane and solid this makes the human mind. Perhaps I am under the influence of the evil Baron d'Holbach, one of the leading atheists of the Enlightenment, a couple decades before the French Revolution. In quote after quote, he castigated the meaningless word-play of theologians and metaphysicians. He thought a finite creature like a human being, should concern himself with finite issues, described by meaningful language. Only then would he be able to improve real life.
"In a word, whoever uses common sense upon religious opinions, and will bestow on this inquiry the attention that is commonly given to most subjects, will easily perceive that Religion is a mere castle in the air. Theology is ignorance of natural causes; a tissue of fallacies and contradictions. In every country, it presents romances void of probability, the hero of which is composed of impossible qualities...
But men, prepossessed with the opinion that this phantom [God] is a reality of the greatest interest, instead of concluding wisely from its incomprehensibility, that they are not bound to regard it, infer on the contrary, that they must contemplate it, without ceasing, and never lose sight of it."
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| A distant laccolith through the end of my little tree island. |
Rather, I see it as beneficial to apply the atheistic mindset to how I visualize nature, in order to avoid excessive romanticizing. Let me balance my perspective by looking at nature clear-eyed and realistically, as the Baron was trying to do with other things.
And isn't that why we read books: to assimilate and to apply the general principles in the book to our own situations?
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