3 ms·

Twilight of the Winterkeepers

59 points by hownottowrite 9y ago

pnathan 9y ago
When you spend a certain amount of time engaging in .... non-human.... environments - that is, what is conventionally called "nature" (which is a misnomer, as we all exist in nature), your perceptions of the human life start to shift and mutate. Things like time become a little less exact. The romantic view of wildlife evaporates. The difference is stark between someone who has spent that amount of time and someone who is a dilettante or a tenderfoot. It's important to be careful in our thinking about it. Someone who just likes being out of buildings or driving an ATV - neither ipso facto wrong - is different in kind than Fuller, Muir, or the other individuals who know their land.
- solipsism 9y ago
  Fuller walks around looking at the world through artificial lenses. He sleeps in a warm bed at night. There are some for whom that life is far too removed from wilderness. You draw an arbitrary line between someone who drives an ATV into nature ("a dilettante or a tenderfoot")and Steven Fuller. You could put the line anywhere, and on any number of different spectra. You talk about the evaporation of the romantic view, and yet you have an incredibly romantic (and arbitrary) perspective.
Bartweiss 9y ago
There's something truly fascinating about meeting these sorts of people. I've never met Steven Fuller, but I had the joy of speaking with Frank Sanders [1] at Devil's Tower National Monument. His story is a similar one - after decades of traveling the country, he found a park which captured him entirely, and never left. He lives within the monument, climbs the tower almost daily, and gives occasional talks at the park campsite. He's also a resource for the park rangers there - he holds no position, but has longer tenure and more familiarity with the site than any of them. Flowery language seems inescapable in this description. He was the human version of a genius loci - inextricably bound to a single place, and familiar with it to a depth surpassing what one would think possible. I don't think the comparisons to shamans are merely metaphorical. This sort of intimate knowledge of land feels supernatural, to the degree that it helped me understand how people might believe someone was communing with nature spirits. It's something all too close to lost today. I'm grateful to have met Sanders, but it saddens me that people like this are so scarce in our world. [1] https://www.climbing.com/places/under-the-devils-spell/ https://www.climbing.com/places/under-the-devils-spell/
blueyes 9y ago
This reminds me of the seasons Gary Snyder spent in a fire tower in the Pacific Northwest: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47182/mid-august-at-sourdough-mountain-lookout https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47182/mid-august-at-s...

59 points by hownottowrite 9y ago

When you spend a certain amount of time engaging in .... non-human.... environments - that is, what is conventionally called "nature" (which is a misnomer, as we all exist in nature), your perceptions of the human life start to shift and mutate. Things like time become a little less exact. The romantic view of wildlife evaporates. The difference is stark between someone who has spent that amount of time and someone who is a dilettante or a tenderfoot. It's important to be careful in our thinking about it. Someone who just likes being out of buildings or driving an ATV - neither ipso facto wrong - is different in kind than Fuller, Muir, or the other individuals who know their land.

solipsism 9y ago
Fuller walks around looking at the world through artificial lenses. He sleeps in a warm bed at night. There are some for whom that life is far too removed from wilderness. You draw an arbitrary line between someone who drives an ATV into nature ("a dilettante or a tenderfoot")and Steven Fuller. You could put the line anywhere, and on any number of different spectra. You talk about the evaporation of the romantic view, and yet you have an incredibly romantic (and arbitrary) perspective.

Bartweiss 9y ago

There's something truly fascinating about meeting these sorts of people. I've never met Steven Fuller, but I had the joy of speaking with Frank Sanders [1] at Devil's Tower National Monument. His story is a similar one - after decades of traveling the country, he found a park which captured him entirely, and never left. He lives within the monument, climbs the tower almost daily, and gives occasional talks at the park campsite. He's also a resource for the park rangers there - he holds no position, but has longer tenure and more familiarity with the site than any of them. Flowery language seems inescapable in this description. He was the human version of a genius loci - inextricably bound to a single place, and familiar with it to a depth surpassing what one would think possible. I don't think the comparisons to shamans are merely metaphorical. This sort of intimate knowledge of land feels supernatural, to the degree that it helped me understand how people might believe someone was communing with nature spirits. It's something all too close to lost today. I'm grateful to have met Sanders, but it saddens me that people like this are so scarce in our world. [1] https://www.climbing.com/places/under-the-devils-spell/ https://www.climbing.com/places/under-the-devils-spell/

blueyes 9y ago

This reminds me of the seasons Gary Snyder spent in a fire tower in the Pacific Northwest: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47182/mid-august-at-sourdough-mountain-lookout https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47182/mid-august-at-s...