A quote: “Prepare for the unknown by studying how others in the past have coped with the unforeseeable and the unpredictable.” ~~ George S. Patton
I’ll start with a story …
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Back in the social media day, she used to sigh over friends’ family vacation pictures. Hawaiian beaches, Paris’ cafes, while her parents dragged the family out camping every year.
She and her brothers built a cabin, root cellar and a garden to fill it. Hunting and fishing filled her summers while friends took in Broadway plays. She resented it, right up to the day all the rest was gone.
Her parents are buried not far from the cabin and the cabins of her brothers and their families. It’s a hard, quiet life. But it is life. And there’s always books.
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Now, it’s your turn.
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. featured image, cropped, Adobe Stock standard license.
GWB says: The lily pads on the right of the pic look like giant wireless frog chargers. 🙂
SD says: Matt Walsh’s documentary “What is a woman”? is superlative!
https://commoncts.blogspot.com/
Navig8r says: Midnight we arrived at the shore.
“Where are we going, Daddy?”
“Second star on the right and straight on til morning.”
That was enough explanation for a 5 year old and my sister, 4 as we drifted off to sleep in our life jackets. It was morning now and this definitely looked better than being cooped up in the house forbidden to see our friends. We spent the next several months missing our friends and learning woodsy stuff. When we returned to the city and not many friends were left, our parents were forced to explain what a pandemic is.
Cameron says: I knew something was wrong when we got to the boat. Dad never loaded up that much stuff and he didn’t even make his usual jokes.
When he paddled towards the trees that he told me to never go near, I fell silent. What was happening?
Once inside the trees, several people unloaded our things and covered the boat. Then dad began to relax. “Sorry, sweetheart,” he said. “Things got bad back home so we’re going to live here for a while.”
I learned later about the terror attacks. It would be a year before it was safe to return.
When I was in my teens, I used to be so annoyed about my dad insisting that I go with the rest of the family on their camping trips. While my friends were hanging out at the mall or going to Six Flags, I was having to paddle a canoe through waters that might just have gators in it, or figure out how to fix the old hand pump that gave us water.
Now that I’m up here on the High Frontier, I’m glad of all that experience. Sure, I’m not going to be worrying about gators cruising up and taking a bite out of my paddle, but it seems like we’re always having to fix this or that piece of equipment on the fly — and there’s no just hopping into the car and running into town to buy a new one. Things look a lot different when you’re one and a half light-seconds from advice and three days’ travel by spacecraft from material aid.
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