The Price of Fishing

Anthropology has always been fascinating to me. The objective study of human interaction and social structure; two things that can't quite be quantified and I don't even pretend to understand. Perhaps it is because I don't understand human interactions all that well that I like to dabble in anthropology.

I heard a news story this morning on NPR about people illegally fishing off the coast of Louisiana during the ongoing oil spill. I was reminded of an anthropological study that I heard about. A community had a fishing based economy. It was not that the fishing was great or the community was positioned in a good place for distribution it was just that was what people in that community had done...fishing is what they had always done. As the population of the community grew the economy started to fail. So some outside analysis came in and said "this place is a great for growing bananas. Why don't you all stop toiling with your fish and start growing and exporting bananas?" So they started farming bananas and the money flowed in. After a few years though the economy started to stagnate again. It turns out that a large percentage of men of this community had started to go back to fishing for a living. When asked which was the more lucrative banana farming or fishing everyone agreed that bananas were the way to go. So, why where these people risking the the livelihood of their families by fishing...why are these Louisiana fishermen putting their health at risk by fishing in oily water?

For me fishing has always seemed a lot like gambling; you go out hoping for dinner but you may come home hungry (in my experience I will come home hungry). The only difference is that there are no odds, there is no way of know how likely you are to win; you can know where the fish tend to be and you can have the best equipment and still come home empty handed. Fishing like gambling resounds of positive reinforcement training. You cast a line, pull a leaver or push a feeder bar and sometimes we get the euphoric rush that comes with miraculous appearance of food or the sudden confirmation that you will have the means to live another day; a rush you would never get from growing bananas. To some degree fishing looks like an addiction and when it puts the health and/or livelihood of you and your family at risk it probably is addiction. However, there is another factor that is reflected in the demographic of people whole fish...men.

I have been reading a paper about the socioeconomic structures of fishermen around the world. The paper outlines the large financial risks and touches on the large health risk that go hand in hand with earning you living working on a fishing boat. Men Especially young men want, and sometime need a little adventure, risk and sense of freedom in their lives if only to work out the kinks before they settle down.

Further, almost 75% of all recreational anglers are male. I think is because of a kind of camaraderie that comes from fishing. Every man who has gone fishing with their father or a friend or a complete stranger can attest to the fact that there is a connection that forms sitting on the bank or dock waiting for a fish to bite. Where women typically bond over conversation men bond over shared experiences.

These men fishing in the oily waters of Louisiana may seem like they are crazy but they are fishermen it is what they do and no small thing like a sheen of oil on the surface of the water is going to stop them from doing fishing.

It has been a while and I know not what to say

I have this really strong want to do trail again this summer but at the same time I can see myself never doing trail again. It is an odd feeling. To be honest I really don't know what I want to do with myself and normally that would bother me quite a bit but for some reason right now I could care less. I will go where the winds of life take me and do what needs to be done when I get there.

On an entirely different note I started anther blog. It is more of a creative project for myself. Another world in which to escape every once and a while. It has a link over on the side "Another Trail". We will see what comes of it.

Just Writing

My mind is stuck like a rock that wedges itself into a narrow canyon never to be moved until the rare desert rains eat away at it and the wall of the canyon. At the same time that I am stuck my mind feel poised. To fall hard and fast from the high point that comes from the long arduous climb of learning. It is not a bad fall, not a crash, more like a launch into flight, the initial fall of a BASE jumper followed by the elegant and peaceful glide back to a soft green meadow. There is a tension in my mind, an anticipation. For what I do not know. Something great or something horrible. If my experience it to be trusted it will be something indifferent and not truly matter in the scheme of things. Is there such thing as a scheme of things?

And now for something completely different.

The great wall of the city rose high from the deserted plain. It was of a tan almost yellow stone that from a distance shown like gold. The wall were high and smooth to block the sand that would blow at it from the south forever trying to take little chunks out of the all. The wall presumable protected the homes of the true and the riotous from the world out side. They were a symbol of what humanity could be and the ideals that everybody should aspires to. The walls that separated one person from another, the rich from the poor, the godly from the unholy. But the wall was only a symbol. The wind and sand pay no heed to symbols. Those who considered themselves within the wall in truth walked side by side with those that knew that they were out in the desert. When the wind would rise up and the sands would fly those within the walls would stand up high and proud knowing in there hearts that the sand could not touch them. They would ignore the hash cuts and burns, caused by the small crystals of quartz, not believing them to by real. And the mud that filled their lungs would prevent them from giving their thanks to the great wall that protected them. The people who lived outside the wall would cower and hide when the wide battered them. They would duck under their cloaks and robes and hide from the pain of the world around them. Before they would duck away they would see those within the walls standing high and proud and wish that they too had protection. But they would duck away and not see those within the walls fall. They would hide for as long as the winds blew and as the drifts of sand built around them they were eventually crushed by its wait. And those with the symbol of the wall were no different from those without. But the wall separated the people it kept them from working together to build a true wall that encompassed everybody and stood up to the winds.

Ok that was way to serious and feels like a very long, drawn out, and cliche way of saying that we are all the same and should work together.

I feel like putting something here that I wrote a while ago for a friend that was bored at work. The mood need to be lightened.

I was walking around the other day and I look over and see this little wood pecker. I watch him for a moment and realize he is trying to talk to me. I pull out my handy dandy code breaker and find that he is mad at me for watching him like I am. So I go up to the tree and knock out a message "I bet you would be less upset if you stopped hitting your head against that tree." He looks at with his angry little bird eyes and tapes out another message. "If you are so dam smart why don't you tell me another way to get these bugs form under the bark." I stand there and think for a moment and then I went to the hard ware story and returned with a small chainsaw.
And that is how I lost my left hand.
Never give a bird a chainsaw, they are not good people.

I think that is good enough for not the night I really don't feel like doing anymore math which is what I was writing to gain inspiration to do. It did not work so I'm going home to read a book, dream of all the beautiful people that I have in my life and wish that I was not alone in my bed.

Sweet (sweat?) dreams to all.

A man goes to rest

He is tired the day has taken it all out of him. there is nothing that can be done. his eyes start to slid closed and the world starts to fade away. He stumbles threw the door to his room his short cut hair brushes the top of the door frame. The sensation is ignored. He shakes off the close that have been covered in the sweet and dirt of the days work. He tumbles into his big bed with his feet hanging off, longing for sleep's sweet embrace. Then it happens as it happens every night. The walls of his heart still contracting the same way that they did when he was standing. The thick muscular walls, made tougher than they should be by the man's size and the need to keep the blood flowing out of the legs, still pushing and pulling while the blood starts to flow on its own out of the lower parts of his body. His brain tastes the rich fullness of life giving fluid that it never gets so readily. The synapses start to fire rapidly. The man has visions and can see clearly what earlier was masked by clouds. the thoughts start to run out of control and the pressure of the blood seems to force open his eye lids. His thoughts drift from the mountains that he misses so much to the problem he is working on for his job. To the women that he has loved and the ones that he wishes to love. He thinks about his friends and his family. He thinks how much his body needs to sleep and he knows from countless nights of the same thing that it will take another hour to slow his mind enough for sleep to truly take hold. He thinks of his heart, knowing that it will beat fewer times than those of his friends. He knows that it will never last him until old age; not because he is unhealthy, or unfit but because he asks so much of that heart and knows that it is tiring. He wills his heart to slow down. he focuses on his breathing. The worries and troubles of the day fade into the back ground of smooth even deep breaths. The world slips into the an realm that is not even attached to the man but he becomes part of everything. He can feel that pulse of the fan above his bed and the clock over the oven switch from 2:13 to 2:14. He can feel the mouse in the living room scamper from the couch to the closet and the eyes of the snake in its habitat watching eagerly the little scampering of the creature safe on the other side of the glass. He can feel the people behind the next door breathing in there own beds. And the faint pressure that the pull moon puts on the cement of the sidewalk out side. He can feel the excitement of the bat as it wheels around the night looking for the last of the insects before it starts to move south to warmer winters. He can feel everything not because he is seeing it or hearing it. The man can feel all of these things because he is part of all of these things and they are all part of him. He is lucidly awake, in the world as if it were a dream but aware that it is all of his creation and he is simple a manifestation of the environment. He tries desperately to cling to this state. He tries to hold onto this peace and this understanding. But he can feel something else now. The sleep that drove him to his bed in such a clumsy state washes over him fully now. He is plunged into his own mind unaware that he is in his own mind.

When he wakes he remembers his thoughts about the women he loved and the women he wants to love, about his friends and family. About the events of the world. But his memory was not connected for the time that he was in the lucid world. A trick of the brain has made him forget his moment of enlightenment. There is only the sweet feeling all over his body that speak of a peace that he has never experienced. Never in his memory at least.

Golden Lightning

You step from the building, you’ve been in for the past eight hours. A just little depressed and not just a little lonely. Those thoughts are quickly put out by the memory that fills your olfaction. Rain. You smile despite yourself and start the long walk home. A thought flashes in you mind, will my books get wet in my bag, but the thought is washed away by the next drop of rain that gently hits you on the forehead. You turn slightly as you walk to get a better look at the storm that is boiling over the mountains. It is coming from north to south riding the ridge line of the mountains. The clouds are thick and dark, lit to look purple in the light of the setting sun. I wander where the lightning is, you think as your head swings back around to look at the mesa to the east. An the next instant your minds explodes in a battle as your eyes catch the bright flash of heavens meeting earth of to the right. Your are not even sure what that battle is about but it is over as quickly as the lightning. You are not sure who won or what was won but you are sure that threw out the maelstrom that was your mind for that instant there was only one constant. The mesa. The idea sticks and you turn your step not really sure what you intend. You move quickly east across town. As your feet move from asphalt and cement to dirt your path begins to rise. Ever few moments the world is cast into bright light and you start counting, out of habit, the time between light and sound. Fifteen.

You keep your eyes on the trail not wanting to make a stupid step. The whole idea of going to the highest point around during a thunderstorm is a stupid step there is no need for another. You push the thought from you mind and hike on.

Flash. Ten.

You keep climbing rounding the next switch back.

Flash. Five.

The next switch back.

Flash. Three.

You come to the second to last switchback before the trail levels out. Just on the edge of your vision you see the bright elegance of a bolt, like a jagged woman, touch down in the bottom of the valley. You head snaps without thought to the base of the bolt. In that instant you see a figure at the base of the bolt. You see yourself. Not all of you just the part of you that wanted to take the quick, easy and safe way home. Would I have been at the base of that bolt? You think in awe at the fact that you chose that dangerous was home. A darker part of your mind speaks, having been awaken but the recklessness. I wonder what it felt like. The magenta afterimage of the bolt fades from you eyes and you keep hiking, oddly at ease.

You reach the high stone formation that sits above the town like an unmoving guardian. You drop your pack and sit watching the storm roll off to the south. The lightning still flashing as heaven and earth continue their battle that was started long before history. You turn your head and see the bright reds and pinks and golds of the sun sinking behind the mountains. Three forks of lightning lash out to our left. A gentle peaceful smile spreads across your lips as the last drop of rain hits you on the nose. It no longer matters what drew you up here or if that bolt would have hit you if you had gone another way.

All that matters is that the peace of the setting sun is balanced by perfectly by the turmoil of the storm. And the rock on which you sit is the fulcrum.

You lay back and become part of the balance.