Trip to the Great North Woods -- Second College Land Grant

The point of this trip was to go to the Dartmouth College Second Land Grant in extreme northwestern new hamphire in Coos County on the maine border and stay in merrill brook cabin for two nights. an amazing experience

first of a couple recaps below, sent in a gmail to the general public.

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just sent this to a friend and realized that i could send it around to capture some of the magnificence of the past three days.

trip was incredible. we saw moose! on the drive up actually. there was one along the road (rt 16 up in the great north woods i think), that we pulled up alongside. i've got the photo on my phone, i just gotta upload it. then we saw one moose up ahead literally run in front of a minivan. it was actually kind of scary.

other than that we didnt see a ton of wildlife. some turkey, some grouse, a woodchuck, and maybe a beaver. still, the trip was unbelievably epic.

saturday Kane and i paddled upstream on the dead diamond, which was challenging, but at that point we only had one car. it was so peaceful and beautiful and untouched. the mosquitos really got to me, and i actually got a bunch of bites on my head of all places because i was wearing a visor.

Alex showed up that night and then the next day we left a car downriver and kayaked the entirety of the dead diamond river. took about five and a half hours with a stop for pb&js. so incredible. my favorite part was 'slewgundy', this series of deep pools. i'll never forget it.

the cabin was awesome as well, and it was tough leaving, but i was ready to get away from the mosquitoes by that time. i wrote in the logbook too, some funny entries. yesterday we paddled the magalloway out to lake umbagog which was giant and gorgeous. we paddled across the entire thing (if you look at a map you'll see that it actually stretches across to the maine border). went for a swim and made it home, exhausted and sore.

stopped for dinner at tilt'n diner in tilton, nh. made it back late last night. took a shower and a benadryl so that bug bites would ease down cause i'm so allegic.

i wanna go back there. it's a special place.

OK -- back to business

Yikes. Back to business? I was gonna say back to life, as in I feel like I am finally recovering from the kayak trip, but then I just randomly said back to business. Is my life business? Is my life, forbid, transactional (I manually inserted the HTML tags in microsoft word to get that word to be italicizied)?

Ugh, what a horrible word. Transactional. If money is the root of all evil, is a transactional existence all we have? What a horrible thought. We must detach ourselves from transactional thinking. Transactional thinking is inherently separating and demarcating. A different kind of thinking approaches the union of two entities as a symbiosis and power generating force rather than a one way connection.

Existing in a transactional state of mind and acting daily as a consumer reiterates common behavior associated with modern capitalism. By seeking to unify, unite, and join separate beings and associated actions, we can better connect with each other. We must recognize the second currency other than money/material goods: time, a new form of highly valuable currency in today’s rapid fire maelstom of electronically-mediated living.

I prefer unitive thinking. Unitive thinking draws each of closer to one another, recognizing that a lonely existence is bereft of greater human accomplishments such as compromise, teamwork, and love.

Only connect, only connect, only connect. Only unify, only unify, only unify.

Back from kayaking trip

So tired. Need to blog more. I will.