Boreal B[l]og

“Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Mark Twain

But be rational about it, remember to pay your debts, carry some form of health insurance, fund your retirement, and give back to society.

I admit it.  I’m jealous.  I’m jealous of the young guy with whom I hiked who had time and money to hike the three main N-S trails in the US: the Appalachian, Continental Divide, and the Pacific Crest Trails.  I’m jealous of those who have the time and money to travel the world, seeing places I will never see, doing things I will never do.  They have caught the trade winds in their sails, and they have explored, dreamed, and discovered.  I just wonder where they got the money and the time, how they are going to pay medical and other bills, how they are going to retire, and whether they are giving back to the world.  I never ask them, however, for it would be impolite. Besides, I might not like the answer.

Two years ago, I backpacked with a group in western Alaska.  One, 32, was a nurse who had been all over the world.  She made good money.  I made more at her age, but I back then didn’t feel then I could afford long trips.  Still, I knew almost nothing about her.  Another was a man who had a two month old back in England, and he was flying around the world alone, stopping at various interesting places.  After the backpacking trip, he was going to canoe in southeast Alaska. I needed to get home.

I didn’t ask where they got the time to throw off the bowlines.  I threw mine off for the first time in 1975 when the Navy ship I was on backed away from the mooring, turned the bow westward, and started steaming across the Pacific.  I saw a lot of things, mostly water, a young doctor—the only one on board—with a lot of responsibility and not nearly enough knowledge.  Back then, we had to serve in the military, and I was one of the fortunate ones who avoided combat duty.  But I still served, making good money, about $11,000 a year.  It wasn’t enough so I could bicycle the Silk Road, hike the Appalachian Trail, camp out on Easter Island, or take a year off to see Europe.  We had to serve, period.  Taking a year off cost money back then.  I think it still does.

Two decades later, a friend of mine was jealous of my traveling to South Africa for the 2001 eclipse.  I was 52, hardly young, and she and her daughter had not traveled much after they both had a month-long trip to Europe when her daughter was 21.  Why be jealous?  When I was 21, I was in college.  It would be eleven years before I saw Europe, and I was then in my first year of private practice.  First year.  At 32. I had debts to pay and a retirement to fund.  I couldn’t afford to stay long, and it would be a quarter century before I went back.

My generation didn’t have the chance to throw off the bow lines, except when the 1MC intercom on board blared, “Underway, Shift Colors.”

I didn’t have the opportunities that so many of the young today have, for I had to save enough, pay off debts, pay a mortgage and buy-in to the practice I had joined.  I was lucky.  I had no student loan debt, and the practice buy-in wasn’t onerous.  I was dealt different cards.

I was fortunate to live long enough to discover that I needed to get back into the outdoors more, so in addition to yearly trips to Zion NP to backpack, I started doing the same at the Grand Canyon.  In 1981, I took my first trip to the Boundary Waters in northern Minnesota, not returning for 5 years, but returning every year thereafter.

Most don’t get the breaks I did.  I took a leave of absence when I was 43 and volunteered for the Forest Service.  I didn’t go until I paid off the house, was debt free and had my retirement under control. After I returned, I slowly added each year to my portfolio of canoe trips in the US and Canada.  Along the way, I started chasing solar eclipses, the phenomenon’s dictating where I was going to visit.  I tried to see as many national parks as I could, one here, one there.  I discovered Alaska.

If you live long enough doing this, you see a lot of places in the world.  But you have to be fortunate.  You need a decent job—at least most of us—so you can have the money.  My philosophy is first things first:   We drove old cars, and our house, with all our cats, was not a place we invited people to visit.  We chose to have animals, but we chose not to have expensive toys.  Memories matter, so while I could have made more sooner,  I waited.  I wonder how many do that today.

Having voluntary military service helps.  Except not the country.  It is disturbing that a few serve multiple deployments and only one in eight of 25-34 year-old men is a veteran.  Half the men my age are.

As I entered into my 50s and 60s, I realized that my legacy to myself might be the places I had seen and camped, but my legacy to society was what I gave back.  Volunteering became important.  Still is.  I do have some skills that are useful at the Community College, so I help with math.  The hiking club needs leaders who organize hikes, the local planetarium occasionally needs somebody to do a show.

Explore.  Dream. Discover.  Yes, do all that, and do it when you can while you can, for there are no guarantees.  But remember that you also have to take care of yourself when you get old.  Many can’t.  I can afford to do this, and I can because I stayed in school a long time, worked long hours at a good job for which I was trained, and saved money.  I had the right genetics, too.  When I had time and sufficient money, I took it and used it.  I did what I could.

Every week, I update the calendar  with how many hours I volunteered.  I don’t know how much is enough, but I do what I think I can.  It’s my job to donate money, too, because I can, although I’d rather donate my time and my mind.  Few want the last.  Only the money, please.

If I live long enough and become crotchety enough, I may ask one of these younger folks how they got the money to travel and how they are going to fund their retirement.  But not now.  It would be impolite.

But I am quite curious.

“Excuse me, but this is a library.  Could you please be a little quieter?”  My wife asked two couples who were talking rather loudly in the ship’s library, where the rest of us were reading.  We were close and had looked over twice.  Another lady had looked over, too.  We were on a cruise to see the 2016 eclipse, lucky to go there, but our room number was a lot lower than theirs, I would bet money.  The first deck was for those who paid a lot less for the cruise.

Not only were they loud, the men were bragging.  They were talking about their season tickets to Ohio State football games, being on the Board of something or other, how they had taken “hundreds of cruises,” and all the places they had traveled.  They had seen stuff I never had or will, and I’ve been to fifty different countries. I had seen a few more total solar eclipses than they had, not that I was going comment.

I am not an OSU fan, something that isn’t rational, so hearing the specifics of a loud conversation about the Buckeyes added to the unpleasantness.

The quieter of the two couples were standing, the loudmouth, probably our age, was sitting, leaning back in a chair, as if he were holding court.  My wife and I decided to move, and I left first. I’m not confrontational.  The few times I have been have not turned out well, for I have a very nasty sarcastic streak, which makes me feel badly later, when I have a clearer mind.  If it is easier for me to disengage, I will.  As I left, I turned around to see my wife saying something to the foursome.  She then joined me. My wife isn’t afraid to call people out on boorish behavior and does it well.  Maybe as a woman, she has an advantage, maybe not.  I am afraid I probably will be slugged. Or shot.  This is America, after all, although we had all gone through a metal detector to come aboard ship.  I felt safe from that.

The comment from the guy holding court to her was, “What, did we wake you up?”

That was completely uncalled for.  It was not true; it was rude, boorish, and frankly shocking that a person called out on loud speech in a library, one who has taken so many cruises, obviously rich and powerful, for he was a member of so many boards, would say such a thing.  I’ve served on only two boards my whole life—the local and state medical society ones—and have never once been asked or considered to be put on the board of anything else.  Maybe it is because I’m not a high-powered loud opinionated person.  Or maybe because my knowledge, wisdom, ability to listen, and to stay quiet long enough to put things together at the end of a meeting is not welcome.  I’m an introvert and a slow processor; the loudmouth idea generators, who don’t have time to allow those of us who are system builders to make ideas reality, sit on the boards in the world I live in.  Maybe it is a reason why the world is such a mess.  I often wonder how much potential is lost; that is definitely one reason why the world is such a mess.

Boorishness is in these days.  Donald Trump brought it back and has been very successful with it, at least with a disturbingly large segment of the American electorate.  Worse, apparently it is stressing out teachers and children, too.  Some teachers are not discussing the upcoming election.  Others have abandoned neutrality for the first time.  Anti-bullying work in schools is being stressed to the limit—and failing.  “I want to kill Muslims,” was said by a fifth grader.  “You are going to be sent back to Mexico,” was said to another.  Currently, I’m being flooded by requests for money from organizations to help stop Trump, when frankly, I think that is the Republican Party’s problem now, not mine.  Stopping Trump in favor of Cruz and avoiding a convention floor fight does not do my side any good.  I’m less worried about Trump than I am that Sanders’ supporters won’t support Clinton, should she get the nomination.  I would have thought what happened in 2000 would have been remembered, but our collective memory is short in this country.

I have been called out on my talking too loudly, the last time being when I came out of the woods after a winter camping trip and was having breakfast at The Front Porch, in Ely, Minnesota.  Fresh from camping in snow at 14F (-10 C), I was now warm and eating, and I called home from my corner table to tell my wife how interesting it was to be in the Minnesota woods in winter with nobody else around.  When one comes out of the woods after a solo trip, there is a natural tendency to speak loudly.   After a few minutes, a man sitting near me, who was in a conversation with three to four other people, came over and asked if I could be quieter.  Not a little quieter.  Quieter.

I was deeply embarrassed.  I apologized to him and went outside to continue the conversation.  When I returned, I didn’t say anything to him—or to anybody.  I remained silent.

Look, people make inadvertent errors or do things that they shouldn’t.  Speaking loudly in a quiet room is not unheard of.  We shouldn’t do it, but a lot of us forget.  I did.  The appropriate way to handle it was the way the man did to me and they way I responded.  Blaming the other person is narcissistic.  That’s the narcissistic way, the “I am too important to be bothered with such stuff” way, the “I can’t possibly be wrong” way.  I apologized and left the room to talk.

After we left the foursome, the other couple also left, with what my wife described as “relief” on their faces, as they exited a conversation that had gone on too long for them.  We ran into the guy holding court and his wife as they were walking the opposite direction, away from the library.  I looked through him, treating him as a non-existent being.

We were in the Java Sea, not Columbus.