Freedom in a Can: Adventures with Hamlet

Here is another installment of reflections on our time in Boone, Shari had her take, I had my own.  They essentially say the same thing -- we weren't ready to come home yet.  But it's all in the details, eh?  Viva la difference ! I don’t want to come across as Randian here, but there’s work if you want it.   Not being able to find gainful employment in the High Country of North Carolina really doesn’t match with my experience despite the recent economic downturn.   Of course it helps if you have a good relationship with people in your home town, and people who own businesses which could use your skills.   Nor does it hurt if you have skills, and if you care little that those skills might have you down on your belly in the crawl space of a century-old building removing a bucket load of human feces, urine soaked toilet paper and other such detritus from the wacked out plumbing.    Oh yeah, that’s what I’m talking about – that master’s degree ...

When we left the High Country of NC on September 3, 2012, we weren’t sure if/when we’d return to these ancient mountains we had called home for 13 years.  We knew we’d come back to visit family and friends, but had no plans of returning for any length of time.  By the time we left last year, we were so exhausted from our pace of life in Boone, it took us almost 2 months to feel normal/rested again.  We started sleeping 9-10 hours per night.  Hutch was overly concerned that this was unhealthy behavior, while I celebrated that I was sleeping comfortably for more than 5 hours per night.  We shutter when we think about all that we accomplished in those last few weeks and vowed to never let our lives get so out of hand again.     As our astute, therapist friend Amy so simply put it, everyone has triggers that cause them to fall back into old patterns.  For some, it’s going home for the holidays to spend time with family.  For us, ...

Over the last weekend in September my Kenyon College Swimming and Diving teammates from the past 40 years or so gathered together to celebrate the career of the man who guided the program for most of those years.  Jim Steen amassed a record of national titles that no other coach in any sport in any division has even come close to duplicating.  Along the way there were other accolades, national records, NCAA post-graduate scholarships, titles, All-Americans, the list goes on and on.  I had the chance to give the "big man" a little trash talk at his celebration / roast.  Hope you enjoy.   My name is Dave Hutchison and I’ve had the privilege of swimming for Coachman from 1989 – 1993.    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been trying to capture my feelings and thoughts about the big guy we’re honoring tonight.   Assuming that someone has written it better than I could, I found this from Maya Angelou.   She writes, “I’ve le...

Put this in the crock pot a few months back, kept stewing over it... Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends.   You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things: air, sleep, dreams, sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it. – Cesare Pavese As we rolled into Orchard Pond Organic Farm in Tallahassee, with our kayak heavy truck and bikes hanging off the back of our camper, Thom (one of the farmers) asked, “are y’all trying out for the Survivor show?”   After a brief introduction and tour of the place Thom gave an impromptu talk about the history of the farm and its place in the local ecosystem, a truly interdisciplinary mind he wove together a verbal tapestry of anthropology, ecology, biology, history, and folklore.   Like any good lecturer whose mind moves faster than his mouth and who knows way too much abou...