Living Forever: Beyond Dull or Eternal Excitement?

On my field school which I seem to mention a lot I had a really interesting conversation with my professor and a grad student. We were talking about living forever, but not in a religious sense just like living on earth for years upon years but keeping your health (not the Gulliver's Travel version of immortality) and money not being a limiting factor. My professor and I decided that it might get boring after a while. Nothing new to try out, nowhere new to go. Assuming that you would go and try out everything in 500+ years. The grad student argued that he wouldn't get bored there was always something cool or interesting to do. Later my professor and I decided that our friend would be a perfect candidate for living forever because he does get excited about little things. My Mom is the same way. Comparatively I don't think I am like that, but in some cases and in some groups of people I think I am like that a lot.
So now whenever I see someone showing that excitement about eating carrots so only the core is left, or throwing rocks in the river just to hear them splash, or chasing rainbows, or watching the garbage truck take the garbage* and they are excited about it I think "you are a perfect candidate for living forever."
Basically it's like if you are able to see and do things like you are seeing and doing them for the first time it makes for a happier life experience so that you are less likely to get bogged down by the everyday humdrum of life.
Crazy that... I think I've heard that before. Be like a little child...
*all recent examples that I've seen (or done).

Laughing at Nothing

In the Screwtape Letters by C S Lewis in one of the chapters he talks about how laughing is done at various times. His four were:
Joy (like when you meet a friend of family after a long separation).
Fun (when you are just enjoying yourself)
Joke Proper (Jokes and incongruities)
Flippancy (in a sense taking everything serious and otherwise to be funny)
Yesterday I was in a car for something like 8 hours. With one real adult, me and another college graduate and four teenagers. Two whom I knew vaguely, two of whom I knew well last year at this time but haven't really talked to since, and two of whom I didn't know at all.
Between the sleeping and the eating and the minecraft on tablets. And the stopping. We laughed a lot. When we stopped at a restaurant I think the waitress thought we were all crazy. Good thing there wasn't many people there. What kind of laughter was that? Perhaps a little of all four. It was joy to see the people I knew again. Fun to laugh at/with some of the comments of the teenagers, plus quite a few incongruities going on. . . But honestly maybe C S Lewis should have added another category. Doesn't slap happy or this is taking a long time and we are all tired count as a fifth category... Because I'm not sure we were even laughing at incongurity towards the end... it was more like laughing at nothing.

Nature: Respect and Love

My parents taught me not to be afraid of nature.
Spiders: I don't like them crawling on me and I do squish them when they are in the house but it isn't really a big deal.
Wild Foods: It's always fun to find berries to eat and shall I say it is interesting to try rosehips and pinegum.
Wild animals: Cool to watch but keep your distance.
I have known people who scream at spiders, think it might be dangerous to eat elderberries and terrify themselves telling stories about how cougars are going to jump out at them and kill them on a hike. That really isn't me but sometimes you hear about people doing stupid things and getting hurt or killed in the wild.
I've gone camping a lot but the vast majority of the time it hasn't been remote camping, and the same with hiking. When I did go on my fieldschool, which was amazing we were a three hour hike up a mountain. No road access, limited cell phone coverage, no bathrooms or water. We dug our own latrines, and filtered our water. We could have had broken a leg or had bear problems or got  altitude sickness, not to mention the snow storms and the freezing nights. None of the disasters happened but the snow did.

It was the only time in my life that I've actually felt just a little the full scariness of nature. I remember thinking if something bad happened we could really be in some trouble. Death seemed realler.

Sometimes it seems like nature to the modern person is still so limited. I went camping this weekend. It hailed right before we set up our tent. We could have backed out we could have gone to a motel but really what was the worse that could have happened. Hail and wind knock over our tent and we sleep the rest of the night in our car? Not really that big of a deal. 

I guess this is kind of a lot of rambling but what I'm trying to say is that I love nature, and am not scared of it but I also have learned enough to respect it. I'm not going to walk up and pet a wild animal bird, squirrel or deer (not that most would let you). I will eat wild blueberries, and yellow wood sorrel but I will also avoid poison ivy and thorns. I will take precautions. Respect and love together. (Maybe that is the strongest type of love anyway).

Walking

I've been doing a fair amount of walking lately which has been fun, but it got me thinking about walking with people. Over the course of your life most people end up walking with quite a few different people. Sometimes it seems so easy. You are able to stay together without even thinking about it. And other times it seems ridiculously hard, you keep running into each other or veering in the wrong direction or walking too fast. Here are some of my ideas of what makes it easy:
You know each other really well.
You both know where you are going, or at least know the area.
If one person doesn't know where you are going then the leader points it out (verbally or visually).
The naturally dominant person is leading.
And of course you are both trying. . .

Prints

I have been going through my pictures recently and writing on them and I noticed how often I have pictures of footprints. I think I like them for the same reason I like bones. They are something left behind by a living creature that tells something about them. It's like solving a mystery, or seeing the past in front of you. That 's why I like archaeology too. So here are some examples I have. Lots of pictures! 

My handprints along with my niece and nephews (they are obviously getting too big because you can't tell a difference in size) in sand.

Hoof prints. Probably moose, deer or cattle in mud.

Geese and duck prints on ice and snow.

Geese and duck prints on snow. These are the most subtle.

Two deer hoofprints at different times. 

A pheasant taking off in snow.

Bear prints in mud.

Raccoon prints in mud.

Dirty Dishcloths and Pangolins

I went to Girl's Camp when I was fifteen or so. I had great leaders. One of them was a woman in probably her mid-forties. She had short hair, was very capable but a little quieter than some. She told us never to take on-line quizzes because she had once gone on a yarn website looking at colors. there was an online quiz on the website to tell you which color of yarn you were. After taking the quiz the result came through. It declared her "dirty dishcloth off-white." (Or something close to that). She was understandably offended. Who even has that color?
Despite her advice every so often I have taken online quizzes. This week, for Earth-day google had a quiz about which animal you are with 12 options. I got pangolin (as did my brother) -I know when to curl up to protect myself from predators. It's like they had read my post about Curling or something.  My dad got Mammoth because he was so unique he is practically extinct, and my mom got Honey Bee.
When I was sorted into my House on Pottermore (and pretty much haven't used that obnoxious site since) I was sorted into Ravenclaw, which I think is pretty fitting.
I guess I just find online quizzes fascinating at times. Sometimes they are completely off (my leader did Not deserve to be labeled "dirty dishcloth off-white.") But other times they really do seem to hold a fragment of truth. Or maybe they are just like astrology things or which zodiac animal you are (Dragon, by the way) where they are so broad or easy to interpret as you wish that you can choose to see the truth in them. Anyway. I find them mildly entertaining. I will now curl up and roll off.

New Englander

Happy 19th of April. Yes it is a holiday but you probably only know about it if you are a New Englander.
Here are a list of other things that I picked up from my New England childhood.

• I know New England is a group of states like "The South" or "The Midwest."
• I love fluffernutters. Delicious.
• I can pronounce Billerica, Gloucester, Concord, and Peterborough correctly.
• If someone says "That movie was wicked," I know it's a compliment.
• I can recognize a Boston accent, and even had a bit of one.
• I know what "I pahked the cah in Hahvad Yahd and gave the man a quahter," really means, and I can say it pretty well.
• I've walked with the "Make Way for Ducklings" ducks.
• Even when I was little I knew about the Revolutionary War. 
• Feel free to call me a Yankee.
• Wide roads are disconcerting and so are strangers that wave at you.
• Dunkin' Donuts is a classic.
• I know Elwood City from Arthur (like the Aardvark) is based on a Massachusetts town.
• I hide inside when there is a nor'easter.
• Hotdog buns are supposed to be cut on the top.
• I have the tendency to think that anywhere I can see must be close (because otherwise the trees would block the view)

I also know that most people who read my blog are New Englanders.... so I don't think I need to bother to explain any of these things.... so I guess you can call this my New England inside joke post.
But again, Happy 19th of April aka Patriots Day. The Day of the 'Shot heard around the world.' No reenactments for me this year.