Journal Entries
On a Sunday evening
Posted Oct 5, 2003
Tired. Happy. Satisfied. And just a little blue - or maybe mellow is a better word.
This is what now remains of a weekend spent with the scouts. The annual Family Outing (or whatever the proper term would be), actually. Altogether about 125 people from Saturday to Sunday and - in order to get things organised and, to be reasonably honest, to get some extra time out of it together - about 30 scouts and leaders jump-started and went up there on Friday evening 
While there was lots of space in the big cabin (after all, about 100 people were going to sleep there the next night), on Friday night a few of us had decided to sleep outdoors in one of the shelters on the grounds. When we came down to the shelter around 2am, we found that there were still embers from the scouts' bonfire earlier in the evening - and promptly rekindled them into a blaze before jumping into the sleeping bags. A very nice thing, lying snugly in a sleeping bag looking into a fire - so we did that and talked more or less philosophically about this and that. As a result it was probably near to 3.30 before our eyelids finally gave in and denied us more looking at the fire 
That is just exactly one of the wonderful things about scouting. The late night bonfires. Sleeping, sheltered yet in the open, 2 maybe 3 meters away from the fire. The fresh air with a tang of smoke. Being with friends with whom you share the spirit of scouting, taking it just a little bit beyond "ordinary" friendship (quotes as good friendship certainly is a not a thing to diminish).
For the rest of the weekend I was relatively busy - with the main oversight of getting the Saturday afternoon activities up and running (as well as manning one of the 8 activities), doing a half-hour slide show of the summer camp trip to the Czech Republic for all the parents in the evening, keeping an eye on "my" own group of 12-16 year olds and generally - along with the other leaders in the group - being accessible to the parents amd the kids for talking, answering questions and all that jazz...
That all meant a need for a wee bit more sleep on the second night 
My wife was one of the parents joining on Saturday and as neither of us were particularily keen on sleeping indoors with the 100 or so others, we had raised our tent to establish our own little place for the night
I did spend a few hours at "my" scouts' fire late in the evening - but left them to it and retired gracefully to the tent about 1. On the way from the bonfire to the tent, the nightblack sky was lit with a myriad of stars. Orion, Cassopeia, the Great Dipper - and all those I
never seem to remember...
On the way back in the car today, I reflected a little bit on a sense of how nice it is to be a part giving a relatively large number of people some good experiences and a good laugh or two over a weekend. And, for that matter, to be involved in doing much the same for a bunch of kids on an ongoing basis. A nice little glow of satisfaction to carry around for some of those days when the world sucks. Not the worst thing to have
And while the tiredness is a good kind and the happiness linger still, there is also the little bit of mellowness. I remember having felt that way lots of times before, on coming home from good trips. It's probably just that you're so much a part of it, so much "on" and so much enjoying being in it and a part of it that it leaves a little emptiness inside once you're back.
Nothing to worry about, surely - it does fade to leave the good parts to be pasted on to one more page of good memories in the big scrapbook they call life...
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Latest reply: Oct 5, 2003
It's me birthday
Posted Sep 9, 2003
Just opened Outlook and was greeted by an alarm, complete with a little man waving a flag! Well, not quite - but
It's 4 years since I joined h2g2 
, 
and 
served over at the GOB!
(F95740?thread=200932&latest=1)
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Latest reply: Sep 9, 2003
Somebody's "moments of you"
Posted Sep 2, 2003
I came about finding this in a very randon and backward sort of way - I was 
out on a tangent starting with a favourite copy-writing newsletter of mine (Excess Vioce by Nick Usborne), and discovered that he'd started a weblog.
I've read stuff about blogs, probably seen one or two - but I'd like to see what Nick was doing. Good stuff But I digress...
I decided to go to TypePad's main site to see more - and started looking down the list of recently updated blogs. This one caught my eye:
moments of you
- mostly because the other ones seemed either strange, technical or whatsworse This had a very human touch to it.
Before I ramble on, here's the link: http://vasta.typepad.com/moments/
The layout struck me even before the raw nerve of the text - which certainly is striking enough. It's art, altogether... I can't really describe it anyway else.
I looked at it, read it - and repeated that exercise once or twice.
This really is writing. And the simplicity of the layout just underlines that so perfectly.
And that somehow - though that is not the most important part of the impact this had on me today - closes the circle. One of Nick Usborne's mantras is that to be a good writer you need to read good writing, writing that makes you hear a genuine voice, speaking sincerely.
This one does!
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Latest reply: Sep 2, 2003
Truly in one with Nature
Posted Aug 28, 2003
I just saw a half-hour interview on TV with Natasha Illum Berg - a young Danish woman who lives approximately in the middle of "nowhere" ("" because it really isn't - just seems so to us urbans) in Tanzania and earns her living as a writer and a professional big game hunter.
An incredible person, a very special woman (and I'm sure she'd appreciate it in that order...)
The photography of the interview was special - stunningly beautiful images from around her lodge, surely, but mostly close ups of her face as she talked or merely gazed into the nature around her. The feelings that came across to me from that face most of the time were calmness and balance - as well as sheer joy.
Every evening, she said, she spent a quarter of an hour on her porch, just watching the sun set and being happy about being where and who she was. The view made it all the way through the TV set - 
.
(on a side note: I wasn't quite envious - but I wouldn't mind coming around for 
)
She said quite a few things that made sense to me - but one thing stuck. Something like "I think I understand Nature. I think Nature understand me. Quite obvious, really, we're part of each other".
That resonates very well with the feeling that meets me every morning when I come down to say hello to "My Forest". We understand each other, we're comfortable 'round each other...
Yeah, that's how it is. And that's a good feeling to carry around.
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Latest reply: Aug 28, 2003
Off on holiday - once again
Posted Jul 19, 2003
To the west coast of Jutland, leaving tomorrow morning.
No net, though...
See ya!
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Latest reply: Jul 19, 2003
Santragenius V
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