amaruq
Trail Wise!
Call me Little Spoon
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Post by amaruq on Mar 14, 2016 7:34:25 GMT -8
weird sense of emptiness when I experience something so amazing, and have to come back home to this dumb place where nobody really understands. To echo skchrip and toejam, when I come back from a long trip, home and work just don't seem real. When I got off the ice sheet last year and flew home, Normal life felt completely foreign for several months. I felt like a stranger in my own community. The above speaks to what I experienced after returning from Antarctica and had to get back into the real world. As mentioned, it took a few months before the old day's rituals regained some sense of normality. But beyond that, it's hard to describe to someone -- who's only looking at a photo -- the incredible environment or the feelings it evoked when you actually stood there (which the occasional glance at the photos continues to incite). What ten thousand penguins actually looks, sounds, and smells, like. How inescapable wakefulness is when you're trying to bivvy on the ice beneath eternal sunlight. Or just how darn translucent-blue that iceberg actually was.
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foxalo
Trail Wise!
Life is infinitely stranger than anything the mind could invent.---Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
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Post by foxalo on Mar 14, 2016 7:58:07 GMT -8
One of the comments was how it would be nice to share the excitement of experiencing something cool with someone but realizing there isn't anyone. Sometimes there is someone, but they don't want to hear about the experience. Again, being alone doesn't equal loneliness. It comes down to knowing the right people to either share the experience or tell about it. I have very few people who I'd even think of sharing things with. I also had one, whom I miss a lot, that I wish I could still share with. Life goes on. I've got to say, this has been one of the most interesting threads. Lots of like-minded people.
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reuben
Trail Wise!
Gonna need more Camels at the next refugio...
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Post by reuben on Mar 14, 2016 8:01:03 GMT -8
Oh, don't even start me about how pure the blue is when walking on the glacier, or all the strange shapes and cracking sounds. Or how good the cold hard rain/lake spray felt as it stung my face after the wind tore it off Lago Grey at 50mph and spit it at me (with Los Cuernos in the background). After that, central air conditioning, drive thru fast food, and telephones seem... unnecessary.
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foxalo
Trail Wise!
Life is infinitely stranger than anything the mind could invent.---Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Posts: 2,359
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Post by foxalo on Mar 14, 2016 8:02:23 GMT -8
Oh, don't even start me about how pure the blue is when walking on the glacier, or all the strange shapes and cracking sounds. Or how good the cold hard rain/lake spray felt on my face. After that, central air conditioning, drive thru fast food, and telephones seem... unnecessary. Had to be there!
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rebeccad
Trail Wise!
Writing like a maniac
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Post by rebeccad on Mar 14, 2016 8:33:59 GMT -8
I think you're the exception, Ben. Though I have always been amazed how quickly we fall back into our routines and normal is normal. Five weeks in Peru, and once the digestion was back to normal, it was back to work and routine and the tip fades away...so maybe I do know what you mean.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Mar 14, 2016 8:46:51 GMT -8
This is one reason the furnishings in my house are sparse and basic. Most of it can be summed up by: books, computers, backpacking gear, and basic clothing. I sleep on a decades-old mattress on a wooden platform with no springs. There is no heat in my bedroom.
Almost everything I eat on is single: one plate, one bowl, one spoon, and one fork. I reuse an empty jar for a drinking glass. The real luxury is being able to "camp" under a roof with a bathroom a few feet away. The sparser my home life, the less befuddlement in readjusting to it.
But on those few occasions when I have a meal with extended family, I still feel like an alien in their world. When I find myself in a small group of people all consulting their smartphones, I wonder if they are seeking their own spirits in them — captured and unable to escape despite long hours of struggle.
Walking into Walmart and seeing every imaginable convenience for every imaginable need is like walking into a junkyard where everything is new and stacked on shelves along colored aisles. Into the store I carry my recent time in the wilderness like an oxygen tank with an hour of air supply. Soon I feel like I'm suffocating and have to escape to the mountains for fresh air.
But adjustment to civilization isn't just at the end of a long trip. It seems to last forever, and I never quite belong there.
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tomas
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Post by tomas on Mar 14, 2016 13:59:34 GMT -8
Again, being alone doesn't equal loneliness. It comes down to knowing the right people to either share the experience or tell about it. I have very few people who I'd even think of sharing things with I'm in complete agreement.
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Post by skschrip on Mar 14, 2016 19:41:20 GMT -8
But beyond that, it's hard to describe to someone -- who's only looking at a photo -- the incredible environment or the feelings it evoked when you actually stood there (which the occasional glance at the photos continues to incite). What ten thousand penguins actually looks, sounds, and smells, like. How inescapable wakefulness is when you're trying to bivvy on the ice beneath eternal sunlight. Or just how darn translucent-blue that iceberg actually was. Oh, don't even start me about how pure the blue is when walking on the glacier, or all the strange shapes and cracking sounds. Stuff like this! I'm sure we could all spend hours listing all these scenes that have affected us in ways that we feel nobody *gets*. I love hearing these things, because in a way I *do* get them- or, at least, I get that I don't even get them.
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amaruq
Trail Wise!
Call me Little Spoon
Posts: 1,264
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Post by amaruq on Mar 15, 2016 4:49:52 GMT -8
Oh, don't even start me about how pure the blue is when walking on the glacier, or all the strange shapes and cracking sounds. Or how good the cold hard rain/lake spray felt as it stung my face after the wind tore it off Lago Grey at 50mph and spit it at me (with Los Cuernos in the background). After that, central air conditioning, drive thru fast food, and telephones seem... unnecessary. We were working our way around the hundreds of typical white icebergs. Some of the most interesting had one side that would be hard and angular, whereas the other side would be flowing and irregular, almost organic. These of course are bergs that had tipped over onto their sides, now showing half of their bottom. The cracking and creaking when we'd get near them was haunting (and not only because if they broke, we could be sunk). We then came around one white berg and spotted this bright blue beauty. Compare the white snow behind to the bright blue ice of the berg in the berg's gap about 1/3 from the photo's left edge. Prior to this, I did not know ice could be this colour. Antarctic Peninsula
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reuben
Trail Wise!
Gonna need more Camels at the next refugio...
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Post by reuben on Mar 15, 2016 6:38:52 GMT -8
I'm planning on Yendegaia in 2 or 3 years (Madagascar this year). No big icebergs, but maybe a few small ones in the lakes. No trails. Not sure if there are any good maps, but I know who to contact to find out. I love that part of the world.
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Post by skschrip on Mar 15, 2016 18:40:53 GMT -8
Whoaaaaa.
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