Endurance Philosophy

 It's January 24th, 2021. We are in Portland, Maine. There is no snow on the ground.*  I am a lover of winter, a "winter person". I love bitterly cold mornings, looking out a window at a frozen landscape. I love going outside in the cold, bundled up, experiencing the crunch of snow underfoot. I love to ski, cross-country, where the whoosh of the ski sliding over the snow is an undertone for rhythmic pinch of the poles biting the surface.  There is quite like going out the day after a snow storm. The world has changed into something alien. Somehow, it's comforting, like being under a blanket. The trees and mountains are transformed.  The Mother changes. From green to white. Then to brown, and green again.  Picture this: It's 7:30 in the morning. You're sipping steaming coffee looking at the gold-kissed snow covered trees glistening in the morning sun. This takes 15 minutes. You pour yourself another cup of coffee and then lose track of it seven times while rumm...

 What are we doing here anyways? The school year so far has been the most interesting professional experience of my life. There are so many analogies to choose from to describe it here, it's overwhelming to think about. Let's go with this one: it's as if you're a truck driver, and you show up to work one day, and everything is exactly the same, except you're going to be sailing a ship instead of driving a truck. Same cargo, same destination, same timeframe. Except drive a boat not a truck. Ready? Go.  All of that, on top of the very real fear of catching a disease that is potentially deadly, while dealing with students and parents who think it's a hoax.  My prediction was that by October, we would be teaching students virtually. I ended up being right about the timeframe, but completely wrong about the reason. A series of fights among members of the student population escalated and was finally caught on video and reported to the police. The subsequent investigat...

The transpiring of Father's and Mother's Day leaves me contemplating none other than my father and my mother. I am incredibly lucky that I have two amazing parents. I grew up in a house where I felt loved and appreciated, and I was taught things; I would say that thanks to my parents I came out to be an entirely decent human being.  As is, I believe, typical, my parents instilled in me a love for certain things. The things they appreciate, I also learned to appreciate. This isn't to say that I haven't become my own person with my own passions; I certainly have. However, there are things that I love which are direct descendants of the loves of my parents.  From my father, lighthouses; from my mother, loons.  Let's begin with lighthouses.  Portland Head Light, Cape Elizabeth, ME At first glance, lighthouses seem to be virtually extinct. GPS and satellite navigation have provided the mariner with a much richer base of sensory input while navigating in adverse condition...

This is the first in a series of posts about Maine Public Lands that is featured on the Adventures with Matt and Lindsay  blog. Head over there for more posts about our adventures.  It was Friday night. The last Friday night of the school year. We had made it through; there would be no more standing in front of a classroom trying to get 20 teenagers to figure out a math problem. Actually, there hadn't been any of that for a while, because of the global pandemic that we are living through. So, no more sitting in front of our laptops hoping that our students were figuring out the problems that we had assigned for them on their own.  We decided to celebrate by loading up our canoe, driving north, and generally being very far away from other people for a weekend. It seemed like a good plan at the time. We arrived at the Bigelow Preserve near Eustis, Maine, just before 7:00 Friday night, and realized that we were far from the only people that had this idea. The place was packe...

Preface: This post is a bit of a mess. There are several ideas and thoughts that are in my head, and this is the best way I know to get them out. This blog was created for selfish reasons; so I can put my thoughts into soft-reality (bits) and post them. It's a way for me to create a record of what I experience through my days. It is not meant to be from the perspective of anyone else. It's not meant to be correct, or incorrect. It's just meant to be. You may pass judgement on it; that is your prerogative. Although, my purpose here is not to create something for you to judge. It is simply to offer my perspective, for whatever it may be worth. (In my view, not much.) In kind, I am interested in learning more of your perspective. I am not interested in your judgements of mine.  I am at a loss. Frozen. Trapped by an open door. Like a deer caught in the headlights; paralyzed by predicament. It seems there are an abundance of awful things happening. And while I know that reading ...

We're going through phases. Every time I hear someone with a fancy job title who is "important" enough to be on national television speak of Phase 1, or what's going to happen in Phase 2, I almost laugh. Not quite, but almost. If there were ever an example of bullshit artists being employed to calm the masses, this is it. If we lived in a less autonomous society, like Germany or Japan, I probably wouldn't be skeptical. If Obama were president, I probably wouldn't be so skeptical. There are many situations in many parallel universes where I'm not skeptical. But in this one, I am. We love titles here in America. We love official things. The official truck of NASCAR. The official beer of the NFL. The official nail clipper of the Hoboken All-City Under-45 Pickle ball Team. We yearn for gimmicks on television to retain viewers that create an illusion that they are watching something special and novel, something that they shouldn't miss. Part of this is a ...

As the snow melts, and the cold winter turns to cold spring, and then warm spring, there's one thing on my mind. Camping. As the weather gets "nicer" (read: it's no longer possible to go nordic skiing) I yearn to pack a bag, toss it in a canoe, or simply on my back, and walk off into the sunset with my adventure (and life) partner, Lindsay Bear. This year, the dreams have been coming. They're coming on hot and heavy. Some days it's all I think about. That's a lie. Some days it's the only other thing I think about besides coffee. There, that's better. The problem is, I don't know if you've heard, but there is a global pandemic. Which means all the plans are thrown out the window. The good news for the intrepid explorers out there is this: adventure travel is likely going to be one of the first types of travel to resume  when we emerge on the other side of this pandemic. The bad news is, the same adventurous spirit that drives us to answe...