My Brother Chuck’s life experience is one of those lives a bit different
than most. He is seven years younger than me, so I had a front row seat as to
how he developed from childhood. From the time he started walking, my brother
was interested in nature. Back in those days, we had a milk man that delivered
our milk to an insulated box on our front porch. To the milk man’s surprise, he
would sometimes find frogs and lizards in the milk box when he opened it to
place our milk bottles. These creatures were gifts from my brother Chuck. He put
them there for safe keeping.
As Chuck continued to grow, he selected other ways to connect with
nature. He had a wonderful butterfly collection as well as a leaf collection.
He had an interest in sports and hiking and after high school he went to our
local junior college. He happened to have a professor that had a retreat cabin
in Wisconsin, some 900 miles north of the college. He gave Chuck the keys to
the place and told him to go visit and check out the condition of the cabin for
him.
Chuck asked a neighbor friend and classmate to go on the excursion with
him. After a cold and snowy winter, the guys decided to check out other parts
of the U.S. That led them to Colorado and what would be home for both of them
the rest of their lives. They each married and raised families there. Brother
Chuck ended up in the Log Home construction business to support him and his
family, but had lots of time for recreation. His list of activities included: kayaking,
mountain climbing, vertical rock and ice climbing, bicycling, and fishing to
name a few. He continues all of these today at age 63 and has expanded his
explorations to many parts of America, Canada, Costa Rica & Mexico.
While being a good citizen during his life, Chuck has lived a bit
differently than most of us. Other than his many recreational likes, he has
approached life in a way apart from the worldly interferences that distract
many of us. He has avoided the pressures of society and work as much as
possible. He rarely listens to or watches the news. He refers to them as the
talking heads and sees the media and politics as a distraction to his life
enjoying nature.
I stumbled upon an excerpt from Henry David Thoreau’s book, Walden -or-
Life in the Woods, the other day
and it made me think of my brother Chuck. This book was required reading for
many of us in our schooling years. Thoreau lived for two years in a self-built
cabin in the forest near Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts. His reason for
doing this is well explained by him in the quote below. While most of us have
not been led to choose the lifestyle of Chuck or the direction suggested by
Thoreau, they both reflect our need for more balance and enjoyment of life.
Thoreau writes
in his Walden book: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately,
to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it
had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did
not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to
practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and
suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan- like as to
put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to
drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved
to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish
its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and
be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it
appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the
devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end
of man here to "glorify God and enjoy him forever."
Let’s
enjoy God’s created gift of the Earth more and more. After all, He put us in
charge! Genesis 1:28.
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