Off On Our Own. Ted Carns

Чтение книги онлайн.

       Lone Cabin Jr, our upper main guest house

      I felt a tinge of the same when visiting the remote regions of foreign countries where life appeared full and simple. It was especially powerful in Medjugorje, in the former Yugoslavia – and in the countryside on Mt. Athos, the peninsula jutting out in the North Aegean Sea, where 20 ancient Eastern Orthodox monasteries have been built into the living rock.

      I’m not a mystic by nature. I look for the rational explanations for mysteries, miracles and the supernatural. I’m only wide-eyed, wordless and stunned when I’m forced to be. But in my life the search for the rational often proves futile. When I try to find a rational explanation for the experience that people have when they come here I think of Ben Franklin saying, “Any person having witnessed and tasted the life of the savage would not dream of returning to white society.” It was also recorded that certain barricades were constructed not to keep Indians out but to keep whites from running away to join the tribe.

       Delightful Necessity

      Having grown up camping a lot, I remember the route of invention we traveled to make our campsite comfortable, convenient and downright delightful. It’s a very certain path or way of thinking that pursues utility in sight of transiency, a semi-permanence in what is passing. The main compass of that route guided us on an expansion and elaboration of necessity. We dressed what’s necessary with frills and filigree.

      Transiency and necessity are like kissing cousins. When you know your mortality to the very core of your being, desires lose their power to grab your mind by the throat. Forget your mortality and you begin seeking the unnecessary. In truth, there is a point to necessity but there is no point in raw desires for excess. Necessity is like a deep water sailboat with a great rudder to guide it straight through random blustery winds. Cut off the rudder and you have a life of desire guided by random impulses.

      I think The Stone Camp is like the ultimate delightful camp. It is a very high elaboration of necessity. I think in essence it’s the same “Ben Franklin” phenomenon, only magnified to stunning. It is the “life of the savage” synthesized with modern convenience but with little compromise.

      People instinctively yearn to live in harmony with the land whether they’re aware of it or not, and whether they admit it or not. So how people react here may have a rational basis. There may be no spiritual or supernatural attraction whatever. But . . . when you see people begin to weep, begin to shiver – and I hear a recent visitor who’d just spent 12 years in the slammer say over and over, “This is one degree shy of heaven” – the rational brain starts to stutter. About a month ago a man claimed, “This place is the very center of the universe.” And another walked in and said, “Wow – this reminds me of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory!” Go figure.

      I don’t experience any of that cool stuff. I’m just repeating what I’ve heard with my own ears and seen with my own eyes. I’m making no claims. I mean, how could I or why should I? That’s a sure path to insanity.

       The Library

      People who come here eventually discover the library. It didn’t start out to be a library, it just kind of evolved. I built a room onto the side of my woodshed. It had no windows. I called it “my dark room.” In one corner I had a soft couch-like little place with some pillows and blankets. That’s where I’d go when I’d hit a low point and needed to recalibrate. I’d wrap up in blankets like a caterpillar in a cocoon and let myself work through the anguish. After that was over I’d walk back out glowing and at peace because I just came out of a reality check. It’s that kind of place.

      Once, a group of very troubled kids was brought up by their counselors. There was a severely autistic boy named Joey. He got drawn to my dark corner like tin to a magnet. No words, bribes or coaxing could get him to leave that place. They had to drag him out of there kicking and screaming and he kept on kicking and screaming to get back in for quite a time.

      I’ve since installed a big skylight in that room and now it’s the library – four walls filled to overflowing, desk heaped, and little extraneous stacks all over the place. I’ve told people it’s my Internet connection. The big north wall has the most shelves and they’re filled with spiritual texts of all religions and the works of their saints. The east and the south walls are the how-to, cooking, gardening and nature section. The west wall is everything else. There are a few classics, a big bunch of philosophy, a few college texts, a couple of novels and a nice section of children’s books.

      The religion section covers all bases, as does the nature section. Hell, I even have a book on identifying all the birds in Great Britain. But the how-to is the most impressive. I’d be surprised if the technical info on any subject relevant to living an essential lifestyle isn’t there somewhere. The only trouble is you can’t Google it. You gotta get your hands dirty and explore the shelves to get what you’re looking for.

      Later in the book I talk about our garden and how important my topsoil is to me. I hauled it in, and if I leave I’ll haul it out. I think I can say the same about the library. As vividly as I remember the first little tiny garden Kathy and I planted – just a few square feet – I also remember the day I heard a story about the building of a personal library. I can remember the first few books I collected and where they sat, to the left of the fireplace on top of an old cabinet. That was about 34 years ago.

      Between three and four thousand people have come up here to visit, alone or with a tour, from maybe 30 countries, but I’m not keeping count. I lent a doctor my hardback “Writings of Hippocrates,” and later tried to figure out who I lent it to. I looked through the guest book and found almost forty doctors.

      The amazing thing is that all of this has evolved by word of mouth. Friends bring friends who in turn become friends and bring more people and they become friends. It’s like a Facebook page that both is and is not. Kathy and I have such an open door policy that our doors don’t even lock. It got a bit much one hot Sunday afternoon when we had 18 unannounced visitors and all I wanted to do was skinny dip in our little pool. Not that it wasn’t nice to see everyone, but that sweltering heat . . .

       Time

      Now that we have email, a cell СКАЧАТЬ