Once or twice a year my parents would drive my brothers and I to the beaches of the Santa Cruz area for a picnic. We boys would swim joyfully in the ocean in ragged and worn jeans that had the lower legs cut off; for hours and hours. Body surfing down the wave fronts, and diving under the breakers on the way back out to sea. Time and again, until our parents would drag us out kicking and pleading, pack us up and head for home.
And during that same period in time I began backpacking, camping, and hunting in the foothills and mountains of California. End of day would come, friendship around the campfire while supper cooked, and then off to sleep on the ground next to the fire.
I am 55 years old now, and I have
lived a significant percentage of each year since I was 8 experiencing all of
the wonders of the wilds. Touching,
tasting, and living immersed in the reality of nature.
My father is a well read and educated man. He maintains that he hasn’t read a single work of fiction since he left school, and I believe him. But he reads voraciously. He reads about history and nature, geology and astronomy, physics and chemistry, biology and every other thing that you can possibly imagine. He worked his entire adult life testing materials and designs to determine how and why they failed. And that has encouraged his native desire to learn more, constantly.
Growing up as a young man I read a lot of Isaac Asimov, both his fiction and his science. He wrote hundreds of books and thousands of papers. He explained physics and astronomy, mathematics and chemistry in terms that everyman could readily understand. And history, all of his explanation works seemed to include a great understanding of history and how our understanding of any issue has changed over time.
And then there’s the works and reasoning of Sagan and Darwin, Newton and Copernicus, Einstein and Hypatia of Alexandria; and all of the other remarkable minds that have studied the laws of physics, and nature, and man, and the planet.
As a group, the best understanding available is that this ball of metals, minerals, organics, and gases that we ride round and round the sun has been spinning along happily for some 4 Billion, 600 million years now. And like my father before my, and as an extension of my youth, I read voraciously. I read to stay current with discovery and advancement and learning.
And I still hunt, and camp, and hike, but I sleep on a cot these days. And I swim in the ocean, and rivers and lakes, though often in a wetsuit now.
For try as I might, and read what I will, I have yet to find one of these learned men and women who can successfully explain to me how it is that in just these past 35 years the ground has gotten so much harder, and the ocean so very much colder.
My father is a well read and educated man. He maintains that he hasn’t read a single work of fiction since he left school, and I believe him. But he reads voraciously. He reads about history and nature, geology and astronomy, physics and chemistry, biology and every other thing that you can possibly imagine. He worked his entire adult life testing materials and designs to determine how and why they failed. And that has encouraged his native desire to learn more, constantly.
Growing up as a young man I read a lot of Isaac Asimov, both his fiction and his science. He wrote hundreds of books and thousands of papers. He explained physics and astronomy, mathematics and chemistry in terms that everyman could readily understand. And history, all of his explanation works seemed to include a great understanding of history and how our understanding of any issue has changed over time.
And then there’s the works and reasoning of Sagan and Darwin, Newton and Copernicus, Einstein and Hypatia of Alexandria; and all of the other remarkable minds that have studied the laws of physics, and nature, and man, and the planet.
As a group, the best understanding available is that this ball of metals, minerals, organics, and gases that we ride round and round the sun has been spinning along happily for some 4 Billion, 600 million years now. And like my father before my, and as an extension of my youth, I read voraciously. I read to stay current with discovery and advancement and learning.
And I still hunt, and camp, and hike, but I sleep on a cot these days. And I swim in the ocean, and rivers and lakes, though often in a wetsuit now.
For try as I might, and read what I will, I have yet to find one of these learned men and women who can successfully explain to me how it is that in just these past 35 years the ground has gotten so much harder, and the ocean so very much colder.
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© Marty K Vandermolen 2013 All rights Reserved
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