LiveandListening:

Last night

Was fantastic. I really appreciate the Co-op community in East Lansing. During the wee hours of the night, after causing enough trouble, I sat down with a few friends at avalon and we had a little chat about music. One friend mentioned that he likes to listen to the top 25 most played songs, he said it was a window into another person. Now im not sure about that but it did get me thinking about it.

Mine are:

Animal Collective

Beirut

Band of Horses

Bob Dylan

Duke Ellington

Fleet Foxes

John Coltrane

M. Ward

Miles Davis

and My Morning Jacket.

What are yours?

The shoreline was far cooler

than the roadside we had only just left behind. Lapped by the frigid waters of Superior, the air that moved at a jogger’s pace over the bay brought our packs from our shoulders and our hands to a mad pursuit for the fleeces we packed almost as an afterthought. We had known that it could get cold here but in truth that term is entirely subjective. And so we were, city boys with only light fleeces and even lighter food stuffs, we knew then that this would be a test. Caleb suggested we set up camp further inland, at least the issue of cold could be handled by a short walk through the woods and a small fire to warm our bones.

Our new home was one large bed of pine needles, a grove surrounded by their former owners. The forest was thick and populated by what appeared to be only one species of pine. This surprised me, they must be all close I thought, cousins, brothers, and spouses. I imagined that a well trained ear could pick out their faint songs and whispers of goodnight moving through the canopy just around midnight. With a draw of fallen pine twigs, it was decided that Caleb and Nick would set up our old army surplus tents while I search the forest floor for timber large enough and dry enough to burn.

It was midday now, no later than 3:00pm and the sun was hanging in its most lofty position above. I had never walked through a pine forest such as this before, a canopy so thick that the light, even in its most intense of moments, only ever peppered the floor. Walking a path that likely mirrored that of a young child’s rendition of their home done on an etch-a-sketch, I selected from the downed and decayed the most dry and hefty logs that lay amongst the needles and undergrowth.

more yet..

Caleb was asleep,

his head heavy against the glass, each breathe sending out a patch of fog from his slightly open mouth. Nick sat cramped in the middle seat, busy waging war upon my beat up radio, his face twisted as he focused on the controls for the base and treble and flipping the station from static to static to static until he felt satisfied enough with a classic country station playing an old Honky Tonk tune by Hank Williams that at first felt abrasive but gradually grew upon me, the stripped down and raw sound of the band plucking, stomping, and hollering fit the mood of the trip about as perfect as AM radio could provide.The destination was the Keweenaw point, we decided upon this place solely because it seemed to be the next best thing to the end of the world. We didn’t know if the fishing would be any good, but we made a fools gamble and packed only a scarce amount of dried foods. Perhaps we thought our angling skills could best a few fat trout each day.

The drive was long, I remember because I was the only soul behind the wheel from the evening till early morning. I didn’t mind much, we had spent the night before clanging bottles of cheap lagered beer together until the witching hours in a vain attempt to consume enough to satiate our desire for cold malt and hops for a full week without it. Working the night shift buffing tile floors at the automotive headquarters didn’t afford me much sleep in those days, it is the law of the land that kings must have their chambers sparkling even when their people can hardly fill their own bellies, I figure what is another night? And so I drove on, the windows down, my compatriots a snore. The lack of sleep had a way of sharpening my physical senses yet it left my mind more tangled than a chord of farmer’s barbed wire left errantly at a fields edge. And so, to keep my mind from the stresses of life, I let my eyes drift to the stars. I studied them, at first there were the handful that are only just visible through the smog and the streetlights of my neighborhood but gradually, as the influences of the city began to wane, I witnessed the dark of the sky as it was assailed by pins of light reaching their destination after a journey that had just met its end after a distance and time that was far beyond my human comprehension. It was not yet morning when I pulled the car over for the last time before our return but the crest of the sun on horizon was enough to guide our hands to our packs and sling them loosely upon our shoulders as we walked towards the bay, Caleb and Nick rubbed the sleep from their eyes and I exhaled the city and breathed deeply the gathering wilderness. And so the story goes.

More to come…

We left the city

for no particular reason other than to see the cracks and papery folds of the white birch and perhaps cross paths with a black bear, hell, even a squirrel that didn’t look as fleshy as bacchus after a stint in the relights of Rome seemed appealing. We needed color and we needed thrills that couldn’t be bought from the corner liquor store and all the clubs and late night girls had grown as tired of us as we had of them anyways. So we set off for northern Michigan in a flat bed pickup filled with sleeping bags, packs, tents, fishing poles and tackle, and enough jerky to munch on for the long ride up. We were part-time Joads and the droughts of the city had taken all they could from us until our mouths began to water for the fruit of the northern sky and the waters of Lake Superior.

Im writing a short story for an outdoors philosophy course.

I just spent

A week on Isle Royale, and it blew my most natural mind.

I bathed in the Earth

I bathed in the Water

I ran with the Moose

I coalesced with kindred souls

And now I am home, and Frank Zappa is on the stereo.