SUUSI report day 5.
Jul. 21st, 2006 12:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaI made a deal with Michael for Thursday morning: I'd get up with Alex and let him sleep in if he'd watch her so I could go to the Theme Talk - the morning lecture/sermons that I'd missed morning after morning. So she and I got up early and had a lovely relaxed breakfast with a woman from Durham, and then went back and dragged a much-refreshed Michael out of bed.
If I was only going to get to one theme talk all week, I chose pretty well. The subject was sloth, seemingly the most silly and trifling of the seven deadly sins. The minister talked about the superficial interpretation of sloth as laziness, and the way the Protestant work ethic has been set up as both its opposing virtue and as a general index of spiritual worthiness. Then he pointed out that the root concept (Greek acedia) is better translated as "spiritual torpor," and redefined sloth as a refusal to engage with the world or experience it deeply. I felt a strong sense of identification - my episodes of mild depression have been exactly like that, and have really been helped by things like going out into the woods and just focusing on sensory experiences. (He did distinguish between the spiritual state of sloth and the illness of depression, fortunately for my tendencies towards boiling rage.)
After the theme talk, I met up with Michael and Alex and we took a walk across campus to the duck pond. We saw two families of young ducklings, which surprised me so late in the season. Alex almost fell asleep on the way back, but we managed to keep her awake long enough to pour lunch into her. Then Michael went off on an afternoon-long kayaking trip, and I took Alex back to our room for a nap.
The afternoon was pretty lazy. My father came by to visit while Alex was napping, and told me that he'd missed the morning theme talk because he'd sat down next to a libertarian economist at breakfast and they'd gotten to arguing. Then he'd had lunch with a woman from his class on the historical Jesus, who wanted to talk about her religiously abusive upbringing and her hopes for finding something in Christianity worth salvaging. She'd gotten the idea from Dad's comments that he might be a good person to talk to. I don't know how he's doing it, but he's managing to have one fabulous, deep, searching conversation after another. (Maybe it's because he's not trying to toddler-wrangle at meals.)
When Alex woke up, we played outside for a while: ball, sidewalk chalk, dirt, and when the musicians came out, dancing to the drums. She found a set of little plastic maracas and shook them for all she was worth. Michael returned from his trip, considerably banged up from falling out of his kayak in the middle of a rapid, but happy. We had dinner as a family, and then it was time for me to get ready for my water trip.
I had signed up for a night owl canoe trip on the New River, and I'd been looking forward to it since we registered in May. We were to leave in the early evening and come back at full dark. Unfortunately, I was foolish enough to lend my flashlight - a required piece of equipment - to one of the musicians, who had signed up for Wednesday's night owl trip. He didn't return it and didn't return it, and I couldn't find him anywhere. A note left on his door got no response. Just as I was working up a good head of hysteria, Michael found flashlights for sale in the college bookstore, and bought me one in time for me to get to the nature trip tent five minutes before my trip left. I was not happy.
There were ten people and two guides on our trip. After a safety lecture that was much sterner than the previous day's, we took a 40-minute van ride to a boat ramp on the river, where an outfitter met us with canoes. We put in at Castle Rock, a dramatic cliff formation, and the guides explained that we would paddle upstream a ways and then come back down as night fell. We weren't to go below the boat landing under any circumstances, because there were rapids about 100 yards downriver.
From the SUUSI catalog, I had gotten the impression that the evening trip would be a gentle, peaceful paddle, mostly focused on enjoying the sunset and twilight. Even after learning that we'd be paddling upstream, I didn't worry - the river looked pretty gentle. We soon found out that the current was deceptively strong in places. My partner and I fell behind the others a little (partly because, although I was in back and nominally steering, he took it upon himself to try to make course corrections as well, and partly because steering on moving water is so different from flat water that I was struggling a little), and suddenly we found ourselves trapped. Even paddling as hard as we could, we stayed level with the same two trees on the shore... or the trees slipped ahead of us. We were stuck there for long enough that I actually got a little scared, but finally managed to muscle out of it by heading crosswise to what looked like a calmer section of the river. We lost a lot of ground and had to paddle very hard to make it up.
Our guides had pulled up in the lee of a little island, and were waiting for us. They hollered at us to paddle HARD HARD HARD!, and eventually we made it to them. I looked up and saw three more canoes just past where we were, not really moving, and thought, "Man, everyone's having to wait for us." Then the guide said, "Those guys are all stuck. Keep your canoe pointed directly upstream and paddle very hard - don't stop paddling - and you'll get through." I quailed... but we made it! We hit two more areas of fast current, and didn't get stuck either time. Then the whole group grounded ourselves on a sandbar for ten minutes or so to rest, turned around, and floated back downriver.
The downriver portion was more as I had expected it to be. A little leisurely paddling and some ruddering with the rear paddle was all we needed. Night was falling on the river. The sky was tinged with lavender and pink, and the colors were reflected on the still surface of the water. An egret flew by just above the surface. As night fell completely, fireflies began to wink in and out on the banks. We fell silent, listening to a chorus of frogs. All too soon, we were back at the boat ramp and climbing into the van to go home.
Michael and I had sort of planned to go to a wine tasting that the "Medians" (people aged 25-350) were hosting, but when we arrived at their dorm we found that the schedule had been switched around and they were having a relationship workshop instead. We wandered around trying to see if we could scare up a poker game, had a beer with some folks (Purple Haze!), and then came back to our dorm thinking we'd go to bed. Instead, we wound up in a spirited hundred-mile-a-minute conversation with the childcare co-op person on duty and one of her friends, mostly about parenting, how it feels to be parents in a supportive and affirming environment like SUUSI, and the crazy judgmentalism of far too many mothers. We made plans with them to host a parents' poker night on Friday, and went to bed around 1 am.
If I was only going to get to one theme talk all week, I chose pretty well. The subject was sloth, seemingly the most silly and trifling of the seven deadly sins. The minister talked about the superficial interpretation of sloth as laziness, and the way the Protestant work ethic has been set up as both its opposing virtue and as a general index of spiritual worthiness. Then he pointed out that the root concept (Greek acedia) is better translated as "spiritual torpor," and redefined sloth as a refusal to engage with the world or experience it deeply. I felt a strong sense of identification - my episodes of mild depression have been exactly like that, and have really been helped by things like going out into the woods and just focusing on sensory experiences. (He did distinguish between the spiritual state of sloth and the illness of depression, fortunately for my tendencies towards boiling rage.)
After the theme talk, I met up with Michael and Alex and we took a walk across campus to the duck pond. We saw two families of young ducklings, which surprised me so late in the season. Alex almost fell asleep on the way back, but we managed to keep her awake long enough to pour lunch into her. Then Michael went off on an afternoon-long kayaking trip, and I took Alex back to our room for a nap.
The afternoon was pretty lazy. My father came by to visit while Alex was napping, and told me that he'd missed the morning theme talk because he'd sat down next to a libertarian economist at breakfast and they'd gotten to arguing. Then he'd had lunch with a woman from his class on the historical Jesus, who wanted to talk about her religiously abusive upbringing and her hopes for finding something in Christianity worth salvaging. She'd gotten the idea from Dad's comments that he might be a good person to talk to. I don't know how he's doing it, but he's managing to have one fabulous, deep, searching conversation after another. (Maybe it's because he's not trying to toddler-wrangle at meals.)
When Alex woke up, we played outside for a while: ball, sidewalk chalk, dirt, and when the musicians came out, dancing to the drums. She found a set of little plastic maracas and shook them for all she was worth. Michael returned from his trip, considerably banged up from falling out of his kayak in the middle of a rapid, but happy. We had dinner as a family, and then it was time for me to get ready for my water trip.
I had signed up for a night owl canoe trip on the New River, and I'd been looking forward to it since we registered in May. We were to leave in the early evening and come back at full dark. Unfortunately, I was foolish enough to lend my flashlight - a required piece of equipment - to one of the musicians, who had signed up for Wednesday's night owl trip. He didn't return it and didn't return it, and I couldn't find him anywhere. A note left on his door got no response. Just as I was working up a good head of hysteria, Michael found flashlights for sale in the college bookstore, and bought me one in time for me to get to the nature trip tent five minutes before my trip left. I was not happy.
There were ten people and two guides on our trip. After a safety lecture that was much sterner than the previous day's, we took a 40-minute van ride to a boat ramp on the river, where an outfitter met us with canoes. We put in at Castle Rock, a dramatic cliff formation, and the guides explained that we would paddle upstream a ways and then come back down as night fell. We weren't to go below the boat landing under any circumstances, because there were rapids about 100 yards downriver.
From the SUUSI catalog, I had gotten the impression that the evening trip would be a gentle, peaceful paddle, mostly focused on enjoying the sunset and twilight. Even after learning that we'd be paddling upstream, I didn't worry - the river looked pretty gentle. We soon found out that the current was deceptively strong in places. My partner and I fell behind the others a little (partly because, although I was in back and nominally steering, he took it upon himself to try to make course corrections as well, and partly because steering on moving water is so different from flat water that I was struggling a little), and suddenly we found ourselves trapped. Even paddling as hard as we could, we stayed level with the same two trees on the shore... or the trees slipped ahead of us. We were stuck there for long enough that I actually got a little scared, but finally managed to muscle out of it by heading crosswise to what looked like a calmer section of the river. We lost a lot of ground and had to paddle very hard to make it up.
Our guides had pulled up in the lee of a little island, and were waiting for us. They hollered at us to paddle HARD HARD HARD!, and eventually we made it to them. I looked up and saw three more canoes just past where we were, not really moving, and thought, "Man, everyone's having to wait for us." Then the guide said, "Those guys are all stuck. Keep your canoe pointed directly upstream and paddle very hard - don't stop paddling - and you'll get through." I quailed... but we made it! We hit two more areas of fast current, and didn't get stuck either time. Then the whole group grounded ourselves on a sandbar for ten minutes or so to rest, turned around, and floated back downriver.
The downriver portion was more as I had expected it to be. A little leisurely paddling and some ruddering with the rear paddle was all we needed. Night was falling on the river. The sky was tinged with lavender and pink, and the colors were reflected on the still surface of the water. An egret flew by just above the surface. As night fell completely, fireflies began to wink in and out on the banks. We fell silent, listening to a chorus of frogs. All too soon, we were back at the boat ramp and climbing into the van to go home.
Michael and I had sort of planned to go to a wine tasting that the "Medians" (people aged 25-35
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-07-21 05:03 pm (UTC)(Silly non-flame -- I'm giggling at the 350-year-old median hosts. :-)
no subject
Date: 2006-07-21 07:45 pm (UTC);-)
no subject
Date: 2006-07-21 08:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-21 05:44 pm (UTC)Hope today's another lovely day for you.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-21 10:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-21 10:34 pm (UTC)But I'll definitely take the toaster oven, if you're converting. ;-)
no subject
Date: 2006-07-25 05:28 am (UTC)Wow, sounds like a very interesting theme talk.
(thoughts about book Amusing Ourselves to Death I don't have time to explore now)
I felt a strong sense of identification - my episodes of mild depression have been exactly like that, and have really been helped by things like going out into the woods and just focusing on sensory experiences.
and thank you for sharing this as well, could be useful