Skip to main content

Camping

It has been years since I last experienced sleeping in a tent outdoors, but I recently returned from a camping trip in Watsonville, near the ocean, with a group of high school (or former high school) students and other adults connected to a local church. In the process, I met kind people and named my car; but what was perhaps most novel about the trip was the intersection of nature, civilization, and culture. Indeed, one of the first things we learned on arriving was that our campground was stationed next to an agribusiness-sized strawberry patch, pickers hard at work and a taco truck there to serve them, all within walking distance of the ocean and a short drive to a shopping center. To see these shades of American culture juxtaposed like this was at once unique, quaint, and telling. It was like reading The Grapes of Wrath and watching an episode of "Are You Afraid of the Dark," all on a smart phone.

After arriving, setting up our tents, and enjoying the beach for a time, we settled in the evening around a campfire, where the students roasted s'mores, an experience so ubiquitous in summertime campgrounds across the U.S. Soon after retiring for the night, we saw and heard several raccoons around our picnic tables, searching for food. They walked up to some of the adults in our group before those adults shooed them away. After falling asleep, I woke to near-complete silence, a silence so full that I could hear only what I thought was the movement of an insect on top of my tent. On the second night, a raccoon scratched at my tent less than two feet from where I lay inside.

We drove to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk on the first full day, played miniature golf, enjoyed the beach, and experienced nostalgia as we walked through an arcade with games from the 1980s. The drive home the third day, like the drive there, allowed us to listen to over half of my CD collection and (on the way home) play "Would You Rather."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Heroes

Although we have several examples of heroes in our day, one of the best known is of a woman named Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu (“Gonja Bojaju”), who devoted her life to sustaining the “poor, sick, orphaned, and dying.” Her venue was Calcutta, India, where she served as a teacher until she began to take notice of the poverty there. Seeking to do something about it, she began an organization that consisted of just thirteen members at its inception. Called the “Missionaries of Charity,” the organization would eventually burgeon into well over 5,000 members worldwide, running approximately 600 missions, schools and shelters in 120 countries; and caring for the orphaned, blind, aged, disabled, and poor. As her personal work expanded, she traveled to countries like Lebanon, where she rescued 37 children from a hospital by pressing for peace between Israel and Palestine; to Ethiopia, where she traveled to help the hungry; to Chernobyl, Russia, to assist victims of the nuclear meltdown there; and to ...
2 comments
Read more

The Nice Guy Fallacy

I read part of a poem recently by one of my favorite poets. It reads: I envy not in any moods The captive void of noble rage The linnet born within the cage That never knew the summer woods. I envy not the beast that takes His license in the field of time Unfetter'd by the sense of crime To whom a conscience never wakes. Nor what may call itself as bles't The heart that never plighted troth But stagnates in the weeds of sloth Nor any want-begotten rest. I hold it true, whate'er befall I feel it, when I sorrow most 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. At base, Tennyson contrasted a life of risk, and consequent pain, with one of security. He sides conclusively with the life of risk, and says he fails to envy those who have faced no hardship. I agree with him; and, for good or ill, his words are just as relevant today as they were in the nineteenth century. Like then, there are those today who choose to live their lives with as little risk as...
2 comments
Read more

Comparative Medical Care

One thing I'd like to understand is why there is such a difference between medical costs here and those in Haiti. At the time the book Mountains Beyond Mountains was written, in 2003, it often cost $15,000 to $20,000 annually to treat a patient with tuberculosis, while it cost one one-hundredth of that-- $150 to $200-- to treat a patient for the disease in Haiti. Even if the figures aren't completely accurate, the sheer difference would still be there. Indeed, the United States pays more per capita for medical care than any other country on Earth. My first guess for why the disparity exists is that there is a market willing and able to pay more for medical treatment, so suppliers see the demand and respond with higher prices. According to at least one doctor (go to http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2009/05/what_is_the_cause_of_excess_co.php), part of the reason is administrative prices here. People here have a higher standard of living, and so the cost of care is shifted to ...
2 comments
Read more