Eventually, man moved into a more tightly clustered group of farm. They had become agriculturists with crops and livestock, primitive structures, they had something to protect.
Settlements got larger, more elaborate, packed in tighter, often behind walls. Cities provided benefits, but the call of the wild never abated. Look at the irresistible opportunity provided by “the new world.” People risked an ocean voyage and wilderness, loaded up in sturdy, wooden wagons pulled by oxen and sat off across an unchartered, unknown expanses, hoping to find a small patch of land they could call their own.
Hunter/gatherers, as a group, lasted approximately 199,000 years, and did pretty well for themselves, they made slow, but consistent progress evolving along the inconsistent scale of evolution. While, by comparison, in our, by short run of about 100,000 years we’ve managed to get to the glorious choice of freezing under the dusty clouds of nuclear winter or baking under the depleted ozone of climate change, fire or ice. How’s that for progress?
The advantages of living in a city are myriad and undeniable, occasionally, though people need to get away. City walls close in, compacting and crushing, the streets constrict, traffic snarls and twists, the urban symptom of pathological indecision. Everybody wants to be somewhere else, and nobody is going anywhere.
Being off the grid is important, but it means a lot of things. Most widely it’s used to mean being electronically disconnected, putting away cell phones, tablets, laptops, leaving newsfeeds and streaming videos behind. I prefer to think of it more holistically, leaving behind the freeways, controlled access service roads, strip malls and quick oil change shops that pop up everywhere.
We’re going “off the grid” this week, a small cabin in a small state park, on a lake that exists in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Nestled into the coniferous forests of the area.
Native Americans of the northeastern United States, particularly around the Great Lakes region, had tales of the Pukwudgie. A race of small people who lived in the forests and played tricks on unsuspecting humans. Legends varied by tribe and region, from harmless pranksters who would, on occasion, offering assistance or in some cases stealing children or committing acts of deadly sabotage.
Early settlers from Europe crossed through these places, dark forests, carrying all the demons that had followed them across the Atlantic Ocean. All the puritan anguish and guilt, all the fears of being unworthy and repressive ethos plodded along with them, through forests across mountains. What did they see when they looked out at the forests in the middle of the night? What did they think when someone went for more firewood, or water, or to answer the call of nature and didn’t come back? How long would they look before they wrote them off to something unspeakable, and decided to move along? Destiny was waiting, after all.
We like to set out around the firepit after dark, surrounded by the forest, watching, listening, nature never sleeps, the noise is raucous and demanding.
I like to get up early, set out on the patio, and watch the world change from night to day, watch the shadows crawl back into woods, the sun chasing away the darkness.
Lights in the other cabins start to blink on, a thinly veiled threat to nature, Man is here, and he brought electricity and internal combustion engines, air conditioning and forced air furnaces. There are roads, and shops that sell camping supplies, charcoal and bags of ice, soft drinks and bundles of firewood. We’ve managed to tame the wilds, at least incorporate them into our neatly ordered world.
I can’t help thinking, in the night, there are still things that move through the primordial forests, things ancient, and infinitely patient, and when we’re gone, when we finally push things too far, they will still be there. At least I hope so.
“The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.”
H. P. Lovecraft.
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