The Perfect Evening
Many of you might do well to skip the first 5 paragraphs. Earlier paragraphs may bore you.
There is no month I more detest than August. Between the heat and mosquitoes my long walks in the forest preserves become uncomfortable. A couple of years ago I suffered heat exhaustion—no surprise since to protect myself from the mosquitoes I have on long pants, long sleeved shirt, thin garden gloves, and a wide brimmed hat (to protect from sun and provide a rim for the mosquito netting to hang down from). About two miles from my parked car I realized there was a problem and resorted to removing my shirt, hat, gloves, mosquito netting so that I could attempt to get rid of the excessive heat. I then attempted to move along in some kind of effortless smooth motion. To some degree it worked and I made it back to my car, but that night I suffered severe temperature fluctuations and intense night sweating. It took me days to feel normal again. The illusion associated with youth that I could survive anything has given way to the reality that I already can’t do many things I once could, let alone master new skills and achievements.
As a consequence, I now will not venture out for a walk if the outside temperature is above 88 degrees. This means a good deal of my walks in August are done to varying degrees in the dark. The problem here is that my favorite and nearest place to walk in the woods is the Morton Arboretum, one of the finest arboretums in the country. But they close the trails an hour before sunset and raise hell with me when I am out there after hours. The Arboretum Police wait by the trail head, start up their revolving spotlight, turn on their loudspeaker and demand that I return to my car, “The park is closed. You must return to your car.” When the strange looking creature called me finally drags my ass to the car they pretend they are angry as hell. I don’t think they really are, it is a boring job, and it is more like a treasure hunt game to them. “What is the matter with you?” they bellow, “we worry about you. You could get lost and injured out there in the dark”. “Well, I sometimes walk further then I expect, and I am not young anymore, so I can’t run back to the car.” “You should not be out on these distant trails with a cane.” “I don’t need a cane, it serves as a walking stick, something to push things aside or to stabilize myself when going down or up a steep incline.” But fearing they could eventually revoke my yearly pass, I now park down by the visitor center where there are evening activities or researchers working late. After all, since I walk between 5 and 7 miles it is just as easy to always start at the visitor’s center. There are 1700 acres at the arboretum and I am proud to say I have been to all parts of the arboretum, even the areas off limit to the public. It is among other things, a research facility so there are lone strange looking characters out and about all times of day, any day of the week, doing their research. The arboretum police don’t really police these off limit areas and to other employees I look a lot like one of them, maybe some plant/tree geek from another department. We just all do the cursory ‘Hi’ thing, they do their research and I do my wanderlusting thing.
They have wood chip piles as tall as a three story building, and much of their equipment is huge, not to mention the wide variety of really modern devices that can do all sorts of work that before would take huge gangs of workers to do. Several times a year I like to wander about the maintenance area and just view all the equipment stored in block-long monstrous buildings. If curiosity could kill this 'cat', then I would have been dead long ago.
But back to the Perfect Night. So far this August it has been cool, in the 70’s during the day, there has been plenty of rain all summer so everything is very green looking, and only the mosquitoes have been any problem. Two days ago there were plenty of mosquitoes when I walked in the Arboretum. Last night I went and apparently the cool nights have gotten rid of the mosquitoes or made them act dormant, not sure which. At the time of day I walk I seldom see more than 1 or 2 trail walkers out on the distant trails. Most trail walkers are on the trails from early morning up until late afternoon. And when the mosquitoes are out hardly anyone walks on these trails. I am the only one with mosquito netting.
I am out there so long that I would need to be spraying Deet on me constantly. In the absence of mosquitoes and the temperature in the 60’s, it was a perfect evening for a walk. A walk as long as I go on will take me through distinctly different habitats. Some of the trees are grouped into areas like the Trees of Europe or Trees of Japan, etc. Of course one is not going to find a palm tree growing in the Chicago Area. But there will be wetlands to cross, prairies to cross, some of the areas are neatly mowed, other areas are simply woodland. There are numerous lakes and streams throughout the Arboretum. Above all, there is no human noise, although in certain areas one can still hear the drone of cars and trucks on a passing interstate, or a small plane overhead.
It is hard to explain, but my walks almost always put me into a mellow, relaxed frame of mind. More so some times than others, but I have heard others remark that if you want to bother Reid about anything, do it after he comes back from his walk, he is less likely to react poorly. Last night in the forest the silence was pleasantly deafening. Everything was so green and healthy. No mosquitoes. It projected the feeling that Mother Nature and her evolutionary laws were working just fine. If the human era is all messed up right now, with potentially disastrous events to happen in the near future—well, being out in nature reminds us that we are talking here only about a minuscule period of evolutionary history. A timely message to all humans comes to mind: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change: courage to change those things I can and wisdom to know the difference.”
We probably know ourselves better than others, but even then in a shallow sort of way. Perfect understanding is clearly past human reach. Depending on our diverse personalities and talents, we all make trade-offs to survive, and everyone seeks a degree of contentment. The different phases of life are all different so we are obligated to change with each phase. Relationships, in the midst of constantly changing events and personal nuances, create stresses which may or may not get resolved. It is easy to get frustrated with our own limitations, even easier to get frustrated with the limitations of others. Stress is inherent and comes with the gift of life. Stress is necessary to accomplish goals, to win battles, to tolerate diversity, to achieve varied kinds of endeavors. Once I retired, a major goal was to get rid of stresses as best I could. It is not always possible to do that. Sitting on a bench in the middle of nature it seemed to me that, despite my plentiful personal weaknesses, it has been easier for me to achieve in retirement a pleasant contented daily routine. I have no immediate family. No offspring in financial trouble or with major medical problems, no financial insecurity myself, no pressures of a job on my back. But luckily I have the ability to amuse myself without bothering others all the time, have hobbies which are important to me and not expensive, good health care, a personalized home environment which maximizes my comfort and contentment in the many hours I spend at home, and in short I have little to be angry about, have my FANAFI Fund which helps meet my obligations to the less fortunate without any longer helping the less fortunate face to face with all the consequent frustration that comes with such face to face efforts to help, and so all in all, luck has been as valuable to me as any personal innate talent. When luck goes your way enough times, gratitude is a natural consequence. When doctors ask me, “Do you feel tired a lot?” I always beg the question. Age itself creates some natural tiredness. How the hell do I know how tired I should feel at this age? Repetition can make us tired of something. I used to tell my mother that all the time. “I am tired of you always…..” Smile.
What I don’t seek, which perhaps is peculiar to me, is excitement. I don’t think excitement and age mix all that well. When people say ‘get a life’ I like to respond, “I think I have already had a life”. Perhaps now the only challenge is to be the dullest living thing on the face of the planet. I love my solitary walks in nature and some urban neighborhoods. I love to write musings and store them in such a way no one is obligated to read them, I still love to listen to the music I listened to when a teenager, I love to read non fiction, especially biographies. I love each day to listen to a 30 minute lecture from some of the Great Course Lecture series by the best Professor lecturers, to watch a netflix movie late at night, to cook sumptuous meals and eat whatever and whenever I like, I like having a pet, I like the kindness to me of others living in my 140 unit high rise building, I like how my condo is decorated, I like going to bed at night, especially those times when I doubt I can make it from my recliner to the bedroom, I like the doctors who make every effort to address my medical problems, I like thinking about those people in my past who were so crucial to my modest successes in life. I like forgetting about some people who made life difficult for me at certain times. If we want to live on gratitude we need to forget a lot of things easily. I like napping as needed, since most of my self amusing activities require an alert mind. I like having a somewhat childish sense of humor. Things were never so funny as when a teenager or early adult. There are still moments when I laugh about something with almost the same gusto, but laughter in youth can’t be exceeded either in frequency or intensity.
What cannot be shaken with age is the ever increasing awareness of just how much sadness exists for so many people in our country and the planet. Our chance gift of birth came with opportunity for a decent life, but never a promise for a bed of roses. The evolutionary process is amazing, is important, but I have concluded it is never about any individuals of any species. The human species was given the Golden Rule as an innate sense of justice, and to the extent humans collectively use the Golden Rule, the maximum number of people will achieve the maximum degree of contentment in their lives. Our species has evolved into a more civilized society, but far too many people depend on their inherited religions, family values, and self serving addictions/compulsive behaviors for contentment. We still mostly use prayers to an inherited God to make things better for us or for others rather than accept our collective responsibility to help each other. God has given us, through the evolutionary process, the ability to spread contentment around, but we still insist this is God’s job and pray to him instead. It seems odd to think of God as dependent on us for support, that it is important we, as individuals, properly worship him via our inherited religion rather than collectively use the Golden Rule to decrease the amount of sadness in the lives of the less fortunate. Wealth, power, titles, materialism, are not related at all to contentment past a certain minimal level in these categories. Lincoln was right when he said, “God must like the common people, he made so many of them.”
At any rate, a perfect evening walk helps clear the mind, put so many things in perspective, and enables gratitude to dominate the mood of our terminational years. Still, I have not managed to understand what I should feel about all the sadness inherent in the lives of so many. The best I can personally manage to is understand that the evolutionary process is not over, and in general life on this planet will continue to progress in an upward fashion with or without the human species. Maybe God picks a couple of members of each species to live in a Heavenly Zoo forever, so he/she/it can sit back and gaze with wonder at all the different species HIS/Her/IT’S process created. I think I would decline. I don’t like crowds or to be amongst a lot of strangers. After all, I have never even met 99% of all the species who have existed. I do remember being impressed when first seeing a live amoeba under the microscope. I have only really loved one person in my life. Now if this person can go to this Heavenly Open Air Zoo with me, that deal might seal my interest as being representatives of the human species. I know, some of the more argute amongst you will say, “Don’t be stupid, God is not an Idiot why would He/She/It pick a clown like you?”
