The Joys of Squirrel for Breakfast

I stand by the right to publish incomplete snippets. The point of this blog is to build a unity. Basically, if there is a unity in my life, it will become apparent what that unity is. No post is a complete thought, theology, worldview, or poem within itself, it must be taken within the context of the entirety of this blog, considerations of who I am in public as well as who I am in extreme situations like when I am forced to wake up at 4:30 in the morning to help my wife jump start her car in 20 degree weather. I recognize my right as a flawed human being to do the following: 1) be wrong, 2) change my mind, 3) be inconsistent, 4) have improper grammar and spelling conventions. You are just as flawed, wrong, capricious, and prone to theological alteration as I am... so get over it.

Silence is a valuable commodity. Thoreau wanted it badly enough that he moved into the woods and built himself a little cabin. There is a small wood near my school that I walk by between classes. I often mentally dig through my backpack to see if I have enough supplies to survive for a week or two. The small cup of unheated gourmet soup made for me by my wife is probably too meagre a serving for that long. I don't have a knife with me, or matches for that matter. Even if I did have ample supplies I'm sure that someone would suspect a vagrant when they saw smoke rising from the trees, carrying with it the smell of sizzling squirrel bacon.

Some day I hope to have a very small cabin in an old growth forest, with a pot belly stove and lots of books and paper and pens and a guitar. I think there is something beautiful about a bit of isolation and silence, it makes you realize that a life without computers, cell phones, amplified instruments, cars, to the minute deadlines, and higher education, isn't as terrible as we've made it out to be. I'm not trying to be earthy or nostalgic. I just think I would love living isolated in the woods for a couple of weeks, maybe even a month out of each year, even if just to remind myself that the world doesn't end if I'm not a part of it. I think everyone should be forced to realize that at least once a year.