Saturday, November 17, 2007
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I'm writing this from the Ikea parking lot outside Pittsburg PA.
I'd hoped to find some cabinets at Ikea that would serve as desk storage under the top I built. No good. Nothing here suits me. Ikea's stuff is a bare cut above Wal-Mart. The display is interesting and it was worth the stop to see how Ikea merchandises their goods. I guess I'll build my own cabinets.
From here I think I'll head down along the Ohio River toward the Mississippi. Tomorrow. I'm all driven out for today. It snowed off and on most all day yesterday. I had hoped to get under way a bit earlier in November so I could duck south of this colder weather but there was just too much to do first.
My wool curtains are working out great - I'm glad I took the time to sew them up. I'll have to see if I can get some pictures to post here one of these days.
Night camp: Wal-Mart parking lot in Washington PA
A Voyage and a Harbor
The native American was forced westward by the young escaping the limits of east coast villages that had been established only a generation or two earlier by parents escaping the limits of European villages. From then on, whether seeking a whale, rafting with Huck Finn, easy riding with Peter Fonda, or next week in Cancun, there has been a strong belief in America that happiness lies somewhere else. And yet as we find freedom we also rediscover loneliness. As geographer Yi-Fu Tuan says, we require both shelter and venture. We need freedom and support, silence and cacophony, the vast and distant but also the warm and near, a voyage and a harbor, the great adventure and the hobbit hole. Much of the iconography of our times gives little sense of this. Instead, the individual is treated as a self-sufficient, self-propelled vehicle moving across a background of other things, other places, and other people.