Went out in the kayak for the first time yesterday, two separate outings. It's very responsive and took/will take some getting used to, but we all made a lot of progress yesterday and are getting pretty comfortable on (in?) it.
I had pictured these campsites further apart and separated by significant strips of forest, the way northeastern campsites are. But these are like suburbs, all arranged nicely in a row, equal space (which of course means no space), same shape, practically the same number of trees (around eight). It's almost democratic, except that most of our fellow campers live in subdivisions, which means that they left home and came up here to live exactly the same way, just without the house, and with the showers further away. So this is the rustic vacation; the domestication of what's left. That might seem a little harsh, but it bugs me. Yesterday I was standing on the shore of the lake watching Eve or Richard kayak and a duck and her five ducklings stopped to clean themselves not five feet from where I stood. That isn't supposed to happen. It's a park, but it's more like a recreation center. Out of the suburb and into the tenement.
We also saw the headwaters yesterday. A small line of rocks creates a false beginning to the river, a nice distinct stream rather than the more nebulous true beginning through a swamp, which means...well, (A) that the Minnesota DNR was at least honest enough to admit its little “beautification”, even if it keeps it, and (B) that things can only get better from here. Right?
***
Eve and Richard were talking earlier about their goals for the trip and how they need to start working on them. People fall into patterns and habits before they realize it, and E and R are trying to avoid concentrating on the practical elemtns of the trip to the point where it (the practical elements, and it/they?) practically negates their ostensible reasons for doing the trip. They're not worried exactly, and neither am I (editor's note: five days hence, we will all be considerably less worried), but I would like to have a masterful control of the actual physical trip so that they're freer to actually get shit done. Because honestly, if I try to participate as a full collaborator, I feel I'll come off as a little boy whom his older brother has been forced to bring to a slumber party. Then again, I worry about seeming bland or banal, and that if I don't actively participate I won't be earning my keep or, worse still, won't even be deemed worthy of trying to earn my keep. These are very neurotic, unfounded fears--oh, here's another. I worry that even if I do seem smart/interesting/competent/whatever, it's only because of that knee-jerk reaction mode I get in when I meet someone new, where I basically become the kind of person I think they want me to be and do lots of work and just essentially am awesome, until maybe a few weeks (or less--not fewer, less) in I start turning back into baseline Mac, and be kind of snotty and immature, and not ony that but if they don't seem to notice my shifting personality it's because their first impressions of me are blinding them and that just isn't fair or honest. Because it's a vague, thin line between annoying and endearing.
Here, the journal ends, the writer having either disappeared into a black hole of his own neuroses (gross) or been too tired to continue all this kvetching. Here is the rest of the page.
I've killed so f***ing many mosquitoes.
I must stop biting my nails.
Being around a British person is making me quite conscious of (A) my grammar and (B) the many British phrases I use to sound pretentious, or maybe just because they're excellent phrases.
Eve and Richard were talking earlier about their goals for the trip and how they need to start working on them. People fall into patterns and habits before they realize it, and E and R are trying to avoid concentrating on the practical elemtns of the trip to the point where it (the practical elements, and it/they?) practically negates their ostensible reasons for doing the trip. They're not worried exactly, and neither am I (editor's note: five days hence, we will all be considerably less worried), but I would like to have a masterful control of the actual physical trip so that they're freer to actually get shit done. Because honestly, if I try to participate as a full collaborator, I feel I'll come off as a little boy whom his older brother has been forced to bring to a slumber party. Then again, I worry about seeming bland or banal, and that if I don't actively participate I won't be earning my keep or, worse still, won't even be deemed worthy of trying to earn my keep. These are very neurotic, unfounded fears--oh, here's another. I worry that even if I do seem smart/interesting/competent/whatever, it's only because of that knee-jerk reaction mode I get in when I meet someone new, where I basically become the kind of person I think they want me to be and do lots of work and just essentially am awesome, until maybe a few weeks (or less--not fewer, less) in I start turning back into baseline Mac, and be kind of snotty and immature, and not ony that but if they don't seem to notice my shifting personality it's because their first impressions of me are blinding them and that just isn't fair or honest. Because it's a vague, thin line between annoying and endearing.
Here, the journal ends, the writer having either disappeared into a black hole of his own neuroses (gross) or been too tired to continue all this kvetching. Here is the rest of the page.
I've killed so f***ing many mosquitoes.
I must stop biting my nails.
Being around a British person is making me quite conscious of (A) my grammar and (B) the many British phrases I use to sound pretentious, or maybe just because they're excellent phrases.
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