Читать книгу Off On Our Own - Ted Carns - Страница 13

Having grown up camping a lot, I remember the route of invention we traveled to make our campsite comfortable, convenient and downright delightful. It’s a very certain path or way of thinking that pursues utility in sight of transiency, a semi-permanence in what is passing. The main compass of that route guided us on an expansion and elaboration of necessity. We dressed what’s necessary with frills and filigree.

Transiency and necessity are like kissing cousins. When you know your mortality to the very core of your being, desires lose their power to grab your mind by the throat. Forget your mortality and you begin seeking the unnecessary. In truth, there is a point to necessity but there is no point in raw desires for excess. Necessity is like a deep water sailboat with a great rudder to guide it straight through random blustery winds. Cut off the rudder and you have a life of desire guided by random impulses.

I think The Stone Camp is like the ultimate delightful camp. It is a very high elaboration of necessity. I think in essence it’s the same “Ben Franklin” phenomenon, only magnified to stunning. It is the “life of the savage” synthesized with modern convenience but with little compromise.

People instinctively yearn to live in harmony with the land whether they’re aware of it or not, and whether they admit it or not. So how people react here may have a rational basis. There may be no spiritual or supernatural attraction whatever. But . . . when you see people begin to weep, begin to shiver – and I hear a recent visitor who’d just spent 12 years in the slammer say over and over, “This is one degree shy of heaven” – the rational brain starts to stutter. About a month ago a man claimed, “This place is the very center of the universe.” And another walked in and said, “Wow – this reminds me of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory!” Go figure.

I don’t experience any of that cool stuff. I’m just repeating what I’ve heard with my own ears and seen with my own eyes. I’m making no claims. I mean, how could I or why should I? That’s a sure path to insanity.