Trout Camp=The State of Nature (& Overnight in the State of Ohio)

An idea that often appears in colonial american literature is that those who settle farthest from civilization and commerce devolve to kind of brute, bestial existence, focused on day-to-day subsistence with little concern for culture, conversation, or the social graces. It echoes Hobbes's notion about life in the state of nature being "solitary, nasty, brutish, and short." Something like this seems to happen to me when I go fishing, or at least the solitary and brutish part. On my trips, life becomes a matter of eating, sleeping, fishing, and wondering where I ought to fish next. I often bring along books to read around the campfire, but I don't always open them. I didn't on my last one. At the end of the day, just watching the campfire and making a few notes in my fishing journal seemed like culture enough. If fishing does help to clear the mind, it does so partly by forcing the mind into an extremely narrow focus for a while. That focus seems satisfying enough while it lasts, but also a bit crude when viewed from the distance of one's ordinary routine. What satisfaction it brings may well depend on having a more varied life away from the river.

Going to be quiet here for a couple days. Tonight I'm leaving for a conference in Akron, OH devoted to service learning in first-year college courses. This is related to a grant I recently won to develop...yes, you guessed it, a service learning course for a first-year writing class! Getting that course together is going to be one of my main summer projects, and I'll probably talk about it occasionally. The course will have my students studying Toledo-area waterways, their present and historic place in the community, and developing a presentation on the current ecological health of some of them. They'll present their work at a conference with local high school students doing similar projects, and take some field trips to visit streams and to interact with area conservation groups. It's an opportunity to merge my vocation and avocation. I've got high hopes for it, as well as some fears that it will crash and burn. All the same, I'd rather take the chance on something new and promising than just keep doing the same thing semester after semester.