Before They're Gone Inspirations

Some good quotes from the Prologue to Michael Lanza's book:

In everyday life, with its distractions and obligations, there exists no corollary for this time with them.  In civilization, we race from one task to the next and fill our "leisure" time with programmed entertainment or the electronics and toys we've amassed.  But in the backcountry, there's no daily planner.  Beyond the needs of setting up camp and preparing food, there's nothing to demand our time except one another and the calmingly unscheduled live theater of nature.  Only out here do I spend hours a day just talking to my wife and kids.

In civilization, it's easy to ignore the changes because we've created insular living environments.  We simply run the air conditioning or lawn sprinklers a little more. But nature is responding in myriad, complex ways that scientists say include bigger storms and wildfires, growing infestations of exotic plants and insects, rising sea levels--and the sixth and fastest mass extinction of life on Earth. We're in the midst of a holocaust that is expected to claim up to 40 percent of plant and animal species worldwide by 2100, including 21 percent of mammals, 37 percent of freshwater fish, and 70 percent of plants.

But life doesn't extend opportunities indefinitely, waiting for us to grab them. In a few years, Alex and Nate will be teenagers, consumed with their own interests. They may be harder to persuade to take long, arduous wilderness journeys with their annoying parents. Many people make a vow to accomplish a goal eventually, only to realize years later that their promise has eluded fulfillment, sacrificed to career, family, inertia. I didn't want to someday have to gnaw on that indigestible kernel of regret.

I've now reached an age, statistically beyond life's midway point, when time seems to be something I'm no longer adding up so much as counting down. Although, with luck, there's plenty of it left, I no longer have the luxury of running down the clock. That realization can inspire a compelling urge to do something right. For most of us, the best possible contribution we can make to the world is raising people who, at the least, don't mess things up more.

Life is a quest for joy...

"Responsibility!  Our first responsibility must surely be to enjoy ourselves.  To have our children see us enjoying ourselves, so they might grow up thinking that, yes, life is a quest for joy, not a set pattern of inhibitions and denials."

Boff Whalley
Run Wild

Welcome

This is a series of open letters to my children.  Anyone that wants insight into my ideas or reflections (which will almost certainly be unoriginal and only marginally inspiring) is welcome to it, but I will not post links or otherwise solicit readers.  You are here at your own invitation.

I have long sought my 'purpose', my unique contribution to the world.  Over the years I have settled upon a variety of different conclusions on how my time be best invested for mankind, the world, science, or the universe (my aspirations have never lacked ambition!): create, create beauty, pursue beauty, savor indulgences, understand as much about the world as possible, chart an unknown realm for science....

My aims are more modest now.  This is due in part to declining hubris, or perhaps to a realization of the wider expanse of everything beyond my sphere of existence.  In any event, I have come to appreciate that the most important contribution I can really make is to teach my children.  Teaching my children is the one endeavour for which the sum of my life experiences and limited wisdom makes me uniquely qualified.  I am probably more interested in the outcome of this endeavour than anyone else in the world, with the possible exception of Jodee.

I cannot make my children learn.  There are many things that I do not and will likely never know, and thus cannot teach.  But there are many things that I have learned, insights that I've had, beauty that I've glimpsed, that are worth offering to my children.

So I begin these chautauquas for my children in they hope that they somehow profit from them.  If nothing else, I hope they see that the best we can ever do is to teach those who crave of understanding.