ma nature: September 2004 Archives
It seems my home state is getting pounded by hurricane after hurricane this year. Having experienced my first real "natural disaster" last year, I have all sorts of sympathy for them. Hurricanes are a little less forboding than tornados in that you know they're coming for quite a while, but they're also potentially more damaging, on a much much larger scale.
Part of me is happy I'm here. With the tornado season behind us, Kansas feels nice and safe right now. But part of me wishes I was down south, experiencing the thrill that is a storm of this magnitude. I realize that thats highly naive of me and that my readers in the Sunshine State are cursing me at the moment, but what can I say? I lust for excitement and drama and it doesn't get much better than being pounded by 100+ mile an hour winds and torrential rain and tidal waves.
Take care Florida folks. Stay safe, stay dry, and more than anything use your friggin brains. We're thinking about you!
This has been my favorite quote since I read it in Outside mag several years ago. In honor of the beautiful weather and my pending afternoon mountain bike excursion, I will post it now. Enjoy.
"One final paragraph of advice: Do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am- a reluctant enthusiast... a part time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While its still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, that lovely mysterious and awesome place. Enjoy yourselves. Keep your brain in your head and your head attached to your body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much: I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound people with their hearts in a safe-deposit box and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculatlrs. I promise you this: You will outlive the bastards."
~Ed Abbey
