Deep contentment. This is the third week that I’ve gone to walk on the trail along the bay . I was able to claim a space down at the very end of the dock, in one of the corners. There was a fairly good breeze coming from the south. When I closed my eyes I could imagine being out on the boat during the summer…childhood memories.
Reading chapters in Wild Comfort brought back other memories. The chapter about burning garbage on the beach in Alaska made me think of my own family history. About the garbage that would come up in the trawl when we were dragging for shrimp in the San Juan Islands, once a refrigerator. And yes, dragging isn’t the best environmental choice. Sometimes we do the best we can with the information we have, with the opportunities that are available.
Another one of my memories is of going into an abandoned small village that had been built around a cannery in SE Alaska. It was as if the people who were living there just walked away and left. A ghost town. I wonder what happened to those things? Are they still there? Has it been buried or burned? Was it loaded up and taken away? Or did someone dump it out in deep water?
I am guilty of having more than needed (don’t ask about how many coffee cups I have!). I think a lot about consumption, sustainability, resiliency. About what I would want or need if I lived in a tiny house.
In the midst of a long term goal of organizing belongings, I am still trying to let go of things or transform things into more useful things. To take responsibility for what I have.
I found a project from several years back, sitting in a pile waiting.
It knows what it wants to be now.
It wants to be smaller and useful.