Strive Seek Find

The Zen of Camping

January 17, 2022 Chance Whitmore Season 2 Episode 29
Strive Seek Find
The Zen of Camping
Show Notes Transcript

Grab your sleeping bag and head to the mountains to find yourself some peace.  

With a shout out to Betty White
Worth mentioning (regarding Kungas)



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In life, we have two choices, to experience or to exist. Every week, each of us makes that choice to either seek a better way to live or to get by. walk alongside me each week on the strife seek find podcast as we continue to seek our own brilliant future. I go to nature to be soothed and healed and have my senses put in order. John Burroughs Welcome to strive, seek find podcast. I'm your host chance Whitmore. It's cold outside, I'm insanely busy. And I have 100 other excuses not to be working towards my goals and trying to pull myself back on track, rather than being a lump on the couch. I'm staring at the TV guiltily right now saying, I'm looking at you football games, though, admittedly. And I'm spending a lot of time thinking about warmer climes and freer times. I'm finding myself thinking of summer, and more importantly, the camping trips to come. Now let's get started. I'm a relative Johnny Come Lately, camper of sorts. Didn't do it all my life. And there's lots of reasons for it. I grew up way out in the country. And I couldn't did sleep outside all the time. Growing up when the weather was good. I wasn't going to snow cave at at any point in time. Escaping a house without air conditioning is much much more appealing than leaving a heated house to go sleep in the snow and cold. Additionally, we had an old wagon road outside of the house that we would take there are vehicles down to the creek that ran beneath us. And cook out two or three times more a week during the summer, until the area became too dry to handle it. When the fire danger went up, we stayed at the house. Those two things kind of gave a camping impact without actually experiencing camping in any way, shape or form. My folks worked on sort of opposite schedules from their busy times. Dad's work schedule, Sam centered very much on being extremely busy in the summer in the fall between the farm and his other job. He didn't have a heck of a lot of time. And finally, and probably the biggest reason I never went camping as a young kid was I can remember asking my father to take us camping. Which to me at that point after hearing other people talk about with some sort of mystical, wonderful thing, because I've never done it. He informed me that he had slept quite enough outside during his time in Southeast Asia. And he wasn't going to do it again as long as he lived. So my first experiences with camping didn't come until I was old enough to take myself in some for middle school in high school. The first time my brother and I went camping, we took a couple of military mummy bags of my dad's loaded our school bags with canned goods and in sundries, and hiked about a half mile down the creek and slept right next to it. No tent. No tarp, nothing. We use the bushes as some form of shelter. And it was kind of dry. So it wasn't a big deal. The experience didn't exactly increase my love of the idea of sleeping outside. I enjoyed it when I was up by the house because there was nothing to haul. And I didn't see your experience anything I couldn't see or experience on any other given time. Just because I was calling it camping didn't make it special. In other words, so it's probably two years before I started again with a couple of buddies. And even in that experience. I wasn't salt. We were out on a pond and we fished a little bit, did a little shooting. It was fun. But it wasn't anything I couldn't do outside my back door. In other words, it wasn't new. It was something that I could do frequently without all of the trappings and I was still living in one of the most gorgeous places on earth. A place where I could step over the canyon wall and be alone. A place where I could go, to be silent, to think, to be at peace. Fast forward a couple of years, and I was definitely no longer living in the country. I was actually living in a small farm shack at the end of a runway at a local airport, I definitely didn't have the ability to step out my door and into a place where I could be silent and introspective. So camping started to fit that bill, both before Munchkins. And even more afterwards, camping becomes a way to fill that need to get to that happy place. To regain something I lost by moving away from it. A place with trees, a place without crowds or noise. In other words, a place with the opportunity for introspection, and in other ways a place of companionship. Some of my best adult memories have been the hikes I have not taken before that day. Through woods I really didn't know with family and friends. The path I hadn't taken yet so to speak, only to end up warm and well fed by the campfire in the evening. far enough away from the light pollution of town that you can see the Milky Way, sparkle above you. And while you're staring, solve the world's problems with good buddies, or with family, or tell the stories of your own youth to your kids, and feel the hustle bustle and stress of everyday life, just drain away from you. Oftentimes over a single malt scotch, or a cold beer. Or you're kayaking through a high mountain lake. And you're freezing when you dive in. Or when you take a ride on the random rope swing you found alongside the lake, different activities, same results, lowered stress upped activity levels, peace. And I think most of us could use a little more of that right now. So come on spring, my tent is calling. And for the rest of you, I strongly urge you do the same. Find yourself that quiet space, that place to be at peace. Because continuing to grind is not going to make you feel more alive. But breathing mountain air that will help if you weren't paying attention if you missed it a couple of weeks ago, and who could have Betty White left us in December. Now let's keep in mind, she'd lived through so much. But if Betty White, who by the time of her death, I was fairly sure was the high lender. And bonus points to anybody you can tell me where that reference comes from. took a look at forward into 2022 and said, Nah, I'm good. I'm going to skip my 100th birthday because it's just not going to be worth it. The rest of us should be afraid. Very, very afraid. Shout outs. Shout out today to Brad for the amazing new review this week on Apple podcasts. I'm not sure that fatherly advice always comes from great fathers. But in this case, I'll take it. Thank you for the kind words worth mentioning. At the best of times, it's easy to simplify the past and forget about the creativity that went into building the foundation of what we had today. Today are worth mentioning jumps into the Wayback Machine to Mesopotamia. By way of the article, first hybrid animals were discovered in Mesopotamia by Tom Metcalf. I don't want to get too deep into this. I want to encourage you to read the article and take a look at the actual academic paper and watch this as based 500 years before horses were bred for war. There were Congress. And I hope I'm saying that right. There were creatures that pulled Mesopotamian more wagons. They're repeatedly mentioned in ancient texts, but no one knew exactly what they were. Other than that they resembled something like a horse or a donkey. Well, recently, they discovered three skeletons in Syria. And now they have the answer. Kungas were the sterile offspring of donkeys and the Syrian wild ass, which, according to the article is also extinct. So there's no replicating these. At this point, these Kungas are the earliest known at this point. These Congas are the earliest known example of humans bioengineering animals for any purpose. You should check this out. There's so much to this and it's so fascinating. And it's more than worth mentioning. And that concludes this edition of stripe seek find. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, or would just like to support the podcast, here are a few ways you can do it. You can leave a review on Apple podcasts or pod chaser. They will help bring more listeners to the podcast. If that isn't your style, you can buy me a coffee or purchase some merch. Links are in the podcast description. Finally, if you have ideas for feedback, please reach out to the Strive Seek Find page on Facebook or to @chancewhitmore5 on Twitter. Until next time, keep seeking your own brilliant future. Have a great day.