Me climbing the east ascent of Cadillac Mountain yesterday. I used two arms, two legs going up, two arms, two legs, and one ass going down.
Gorge Trail, runs from Loop Road to saddle between Dorr and Cadillac Mountains, is an amazing feat of trail building.
Today our last in Acadia. We're gonna Sargent Mt, Gilmore Peak, and Parkman Mt. Beyond end of vacation blues themselves, it ends just as I'm gaining confidence in my footing on difficult trails - I have poor balance to start, and what eyesight I've lost is at the bottom of my field of vision. Just gaining unconscious knowledge of when to use the left foot instead of the right for this leap, the right instead of the left for this blind lift takes me days. I lost what I learned last year, just felt it coming back yesterday. I've got good wind, I can go forever, my arms and legs are strong, and now that I can do that two foot hoist or slide down that four foot chasm on my ass without thinking twice, we're almost done. I wrote this last year, probably. I'll write this next year, probably.
- That's the view from the porch as I type thisat 530 this morning. It's a non-hurry morning - our hike today has plenty of parking, the week's earlier hikes had limited parking, we were out the door early. Earthgirl's still asleep, here are some links I own you.
- fish? This is why I keep a blugrall called Moribund.
- Floating Ghosts.
- Tactically-told truths.
- Quick! (since the 2020 Democratic POTUS primary season is on) - Why Leftists don't trust Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Deval Patrick. Why Leftists HATE! the corporate Democrats promoting them.
- Reminder re: the above. Also, also too.
- Hate is the new sex.
- Stuck in Rural America.
- How he got barred from posting on twitter (not me).
- Something genuinely good the internet has allowed (and is illegal).
- Clouds.
- Why can't he be like Endicott? Not for the earworm, for the story.
- Organize your bookshelf randomly so you find things you didn't know you were looking for while looking for something else.
- Arthur says he's writing, still needs the coins in your pocket.
- Stream Dischord's catalog for free.
ON THE MOVE
Thom Gunn
The blue jay scuffling in the bushes follows
Some hidden purpose, and the gust of birds
That spurts across the field, the wheeling swallows,
Has nested in the trees and undergrowth.
Seeking their instinct, or their poise, or both,
One moves with an uncertain violence
Under the dust thrown by a baffled sense
Or the dull thunder of approximate words.
On motorcycles, up the road, they come:
Small, black, as flies hanging in heat, the Boys,
Until the distance throws them forth, their hum
Bulges to thunder held by calf and thigh.
In goggles, donned impersonality,
In gleaming jackets trophied with the dust,
They strap in doubt – by hiding it, robust –
And almost hear a meaning in their noise.
Exact conclusion of their hardiness
Has no shape yet, but from known whereabouts
They ride, direction where the tyres press.
They scare a flight of birds across the field:
Much that is natural, to the will must yield.
Men manufacture both machine and soul,
And use what they imperfectly control
To dare a future from the taken routes.
It is a part solution, after all.
One is not necessarily discord
On earth; or damned because, half animal,
One lacks direct instinct, because one wakes
Afloat on movement that divides and breaks.
One joins the movement in a valueless world,
Choosing it, till, both hurler and the hurled,
One moves as well, always toward, toward.
A minute holds them, who have come to go:
The self-defined, astride the created will
They burst away; the towns they travel through
Are home for neither bird nor holiness,
For birds and saints complete their purposes.
At worst, one is in motion; and at best,
Reaching no absolute, in which to rest,
One is always nearer by not keeping still.