4 ms·

I think you are misreading the "simply" as "simple". Rather, the connotation is one of an experience distilled down to its essence, not interrupted or besmirche

I think you are misreading the "simply" as "simple". Rather, the connotation is one of an experience distilled down to its essence, not interrupted or besmirched by other, unimportant vulgarities like "the need to get from point A to point B". In fact, I would go so far as to say you are reading it exactly opposite of its intended meaning and are arguing that it should say what it actually does say. On the Field and Stream, see my other comment nearby that has the full definition from the dictionary used. If you've ever seen Field and Stream magazine, you know the fields it talks about are not football fields, which is an incredibly narrow definition of the word 'field'.

gjm11 12y ago
I never intended to suggest that "fields" or "field" has to refer to football fields (or to any sort of sports field) and I have no idea how what I wrote gave you the impression that I meant something so absurdly specific. But canoeing doesn't, and couldn't, take place on any sort of field, and that (rather than anything to do with football fields specifically) is why I think "diversion of the field" an excessively inexact way to describe it, nice though it sounds. Looking at the other comment you mention, I suppose perhaps you infer from Webster's inclusion of fishing as a "diversion of the field" that "of the field" for him means something very, very broad like "outdoors". I suppose it's possible that it does; but if so I can only say that whatever it may have meant for Webster, it certainly doesn't mean that for me, and I doubt it could mean it for any reader of McPhee who was actually paying attention to the meaning of his words rather than their sound. You may well be right about what McPhee is getting at with the word "simply". I don't find myself able to read it that way. Especially if I assume for the sake of argument that Somers's interpretation of what McPhee says about "sport" is right -- i.e., that McPhee wanted something that means more or less the same as "sport" but sounds better. For me, though perhaps not for everyone, sport goes in an entirely different category from quasi-religious experience-distilled-down-to-its-essence.
- SoftwareMaven 12y ago
  (This has been an interesting conversation, so please don't think I'm arguing just for argument's sake.) "Football, cricket, baseball, sprinting, javelin throwing: these are all diversions of the field, for sure." There's where I got it from. One of the Webster's definitions for field is An open space; an extent; an expanse, and that, for whatever reason, was the connotation I read into the passage (probably because I was thinking of the expanses of the Boundary Waters as I read it). I wonder if the introduction to the passage is what soured the passage for you. If, instead of hearing about how the author built the passage, with a set of connotation applicable to that, you had started with the passage as written, if that would changed things. It shows the power that a turn of phrase can have, that's for sure.

gjm11 12y ago

I never intended to suggest that "fields" or "field" has to refer to football fields (or to any sort of sports field) and I have no idea how what I wrote gave you the impression that I meant something so absurdly specific. But canoeing doesn't, and couldn't, take place on any sort of field, and that (rather than anything to do with football fields specifically) is why I think "diversion of the field" an excessively inexact way to describe it, nice though it sounds. Looking at the other comment you mention, I suppose perhaps you infer from Webster's inclusion of fishing as a "diversion of the field" that "of the field" for him means something very, very broad like "outdoors". I suppose it's possible that it does; but if so I can only say that whatever it may have meant for Webster, it certainly doesn't mean that for me, and I doubt it could mean it for any reader of McPhee who was actually paying attention to the meaning of his words rather than their sound. You may well be right about what McPhee is getting at with the word "simply". I don't find myself able to read it that way. Especially if I assume for the sake of argument that Somers's interpretation of what McPhee says about "sport" is right -- i.e., that McPhee wanted something that means more or less the same as "sport" but sounds better. For me, though perhaps not for everyone, sport goes in an entirely different category from quasi-religious experience-distilled-down-to-its-essence.

SoftwareMaven 12y ago
(This has been an interesting conversation, so please don't think I'm arguing just for argument's sake.) "Football, cricket, baseball, sprinting, javelin throwing: these are all diversions of the field, for sure." There's where I got it from. One of the Webster's definitions for field is An open space; an extent; an expanse, and that, for whatever reason, was the connotation I read into the passage (probably because I was thinking of the expanses of the Boundary Waters as I read it). I wonder if the introduction to the passage is what soured the passage for you. If, instead of hearing about how the author built the passage, with a set of connotation applicable to that, you had started with the passage as written, if that would changed things. It shows the power that a turn of phrase can have, that's for sure.