The Frontier of Knowledge

From the summit of Mt. Ida our little town lies below us like a child’s play village. Main and Court streets intersect at the bank and courthouse. Clay points out the ball field behind our Junior High School. I see myself among a gaggle of friends walking down the steep, concrete steps of the old school, then parading toward Main where we turn right at the bank and invade Roses Five and Dime. It is a coke float afternoon.

Main Street of Marion and Mt. Ida

The soda fountain is a civilized place of clean counters and bright lights. Clay and I have abandoned civilization and summited the wilderness at the south end of Main.  We look down on what we left behind.  Across the low hills, the steeples and smokestacks of our town, Hawksbill, Table Rock and Short-off Mountain form the eastern escarpment the wild Blue Ridge. To the northwest loom the deep purple peaks of the Black Mountains. As twelve-year-old boys of five-foot stature, we stand on high ground and survey the wilderness of our imagination. We are pioneers born two centuries too late.

Black Mountains

Hawksbill

 In the third grade I read a child’s biography of Meriwether Lewis of the famed Lewis and Clark expedition. He was an American hero who broke open the frontier of the national imagination. I wanted to be him, to lead men across an unknown continent.

In the dwindling light Clay and I leave the summit and turn down the southwest slope away from town. We come to an opening in the forest with a view of the landscape on the backside of the mountain – no play village, more forest and a few open fields. “Hey, this is like the frontier,” I say. “I’ll bet no one has been here before.”

“Huh?” Clay looks puzzled.

“We’re the first to walk on this side of the mountain.”

Clay points off to our right.  “I think I see a house down there, and a road.”

My eyes cannot avoid the rooftop and a ribbon of asphalt curving over a hill. Disappointment. “Well, that’s way over there.  We’re probably the first to walk this side of the mountain.”

We walk a few minutes further and come to a large mound of sawdust and a pile of scrap timber – the remnants of a sawmill. Clay looks at me and grins.

“Well, WE’ve never been HERE before,” I say. This is our personal frontier.

We walk back toward the top of Mt. Ida and find a level piece of ground, pitch our pup tent and rake a fire circle. Before darkness settles over the mountain we build a campfire. We unfold the tinfoil our Mom’s had wrapped around frozen patties of ground beef. We slice potatoes, carrots and onion and lay them on the ground beef, refold the foil and place them in the embers at the edge of the fire. The foil packages sizzle in the fire until we guess the meat and veggies are ready to eat. It is an imperfect process, but adequate for 12-year-old pioneers who like their food greasy and accept its burnt and raw variations. We are adventurers capable of cooking our own food on our own fire. We were unafraid of the darkness, until the firewood is gone.

It is a mostly sleepless night. Trees creak and moan in a moonless breeze.  Critters scurry through the dark leaves. We whisper about foxes, bears and snakes. Periodically, we search the forest with our flashlights, but shadows hide the sounds. Late in the night the moon rises. Leaves rustle again only a few feet from my ears. A breeze, or something, moves through the tops of the pines.  Then stillness and silence . . . and then, from the tree canopy above our tent: “Whoo-whoo-a-whooooo”. Nothing moves, not the wind, not the trees, not the shadows or the leaves. Clay and I lie quietly on the hard ground and finally . . . sleep.

The next afternoon we return to our little town, weary and hungry and full of tales to tell of our expedition into the wilderness.

I remember this as if it were yesterday: two boys pushing out the boundaries of the known.

Even in Meriwether Lewis’ time the continent was only unknown to some. The history that children read tells a portion of the continental story. In this case, our history acknowledges the help of Sacagawea but we miss the irony of a young woman carrying her infant and guiding the frontiersmen through the supposed unknown – she so young and tender, they so strong and durable. Trailblazers are born of partial knowledge and help from those who know. Trailblazers fill the informational gap in what the ignorant do not know. Their courage ushers in new knowledge. 

Within each mind there is a frontier. Curiosity, skepticism and courage precede learning.

Moral or Moron Mondays

The term “discourse” is a rather scholarly term, but one worth understanding. At the basic level, it simply means a connected piece of speech or writing; but at a more substantial level, discourse is the orderly, interchange of ideas. The quality of our lives is determined to a great extent by the quality of

Discourse into the Night, William Blades (1891)

our discourse – our exposure to coherent and inspiring instruction, lively conversation with friends and family, useful ideas exchanged in the work place, coherent verbal entertainment and information through the media. Learning and living should include becoming more adept at both delivering and appreciating discourse. As we grow, we should learn how to talk to each other.

In politics, discourse is on a downward slide. There is no better evidence than the Monday protests in North Carolina’s capitol – Moral Mondays as the protesters prefer, Moron Mondays as one of the protested has proclaimed.

If you live in North Carolina and haven’t noticed the protests in Raleigh, then you live in a world of limited, but perhaps more pleasant, discourse. Various citizens (including ministers, professors, teachers and NAACP members) are voicing their displeasure with proposed reductions in income taxes, increases in sales taxes, reduction in unemployment compensation, reduction in spending on education and the rejection of expanded Medicaid eligibility.  The media is making a show of protest leaders being proudly handcuffed and escorted way by the gentle hands of police. The protesters claim that politicians controlling state government are failing their moral obligation to our most vulnerable and needy citizens.  While the protesters claim the moral high ground, the governing powers disagrees. Anger and revulsion are strong on both sides.

In an editorial to a local newspaper, Thom Goolsby, a Republican legislative leader, suggested the title Moron Mondays. Unfortunately, Goolsby’s discourse includes slurring people who disagree with him as clowns, carnival barkers and angry, former hippies. He only vaguely identified the moral counter-argument to the protesters that could be based on self-reliance, self-discipline and fiscal responsibility. He made little effort to engage in discourse.  I simply returned the insult.

In this blog on learning and living, I tread into this discourse tenderly.  But, again, learning and living is about talking to each other.

I generally agree with the positions of the protesters, but I strongly disagree with their titling strategy. Settling our economic and political beliefs should engage our moral sense of how to structure society; but in political discourse, “moral” is a loaded term that causes opponents to dig in their heels and makes potential supporters disengage. Arguing morality in a political forum is nasty business.  If you are a supporter of Moral Mondays, I suggest remembering how you were enraged for decades by the Moral Majority. Whose morality were they claiming? Certainly not mine. There is no greater way to disparage your political opponents than to claim their immorality. And once the claim is offered in a political forum, rationale discourse fades away.

The government in power always pursues its agenda. It gets elected to do that. In this case, the Republicans in North Carolina have been powerless in state government for a long time and they are not going to miss this opportunity to push their political agenda. To argue the morality of their agenda is, indeed, to forget the cronyism and corruption of Democratic administrations.  The best approach available to Democrats, for the time being, is to avoid the morality argument and disagree on more rationale terms. The rejection of the Medicaid component of the Affordable Care is going to cost North Carolina jobs at a time we can ill afford them. It will drive up the medical cost to the state for the 500,000 people who would have been covered by the expanded Medicaid, with less revenue to offset the costs. With a weak and underfunded educational system, the state cannot be competitive in a national and global economy. This more rationale approach to political discourse can be more dispassionately examined, and the morality of it can be inferred without having to proclaim the opposition as immoral.

The Republican approach to state government will undo itself if the loyal opposition does its job of organizing at the city and county level and finding intelligent, articulate and trustworthy people to run for office. Arguing morality on the streets of Raleigh only promotes the people being arrested and detracts from the task of organizing an effective opposition.

Political protests have been an American tradition and, in some cases, have eventually changed the direction of politics.  Done correctly, it can empower the protesters and their ideas. Done incorrectly, it weakens the discourse. Protest if you feel inclined. But if you continue to argue morality rather than economics, too many people will hear you, but will fail to understand the consequences of the current direction of government.

John's Freedom Passage

Once.  

           Then.  

                      Now.  

On a cool November night in 1964, older Boy Scouts orchestrated the drama in the darkness.  I sat on the ground with a group of initiates in a small amphitheater in the edge of the woods above the lake. In the chilled silence, the darkness seemed absolute until a small flame appeared on the other shore of the lake. It drifted slowly across the lake. As the flame approached the shore below the amphitheater it became a torch casting a dim light and revealing a war canoe paddled by eight Indians. Thus began our induction into the Order of the Arrow (an honor society for Boy Scouts, to recognize experienced Scouts and to develop camping craft and instill values like service to others and personal self-discipline).

As the Scouts attired in buckskin and feathers walked into the amphitheater a flaming arrow zipped from above us and into a fire pit, alighting a bonfire and casting form and color into the woodland arena. The Chief among the Indians spoke briefly, borrowing words from the Scout oath: . . . honor . . . duty . . . God . . . country . . . service . . . physically strong . . . mentally awake . . . morally strait.  He instructed us: no talking until tomorrow evening, walk in single file behind the torch and follow instructions.

We followed meekly as the torchbearer led us into the woods. The line of boys shuffled slowly through the darkness and across wooded hills. Deeper into the night, an Indian not much bigger than me grabbed my shoulders from behind, forced me to the ground and said, “Stay here. I’ll be back in the morning.” Then he was gone and I was alone in the cold night with only a blanket. I slept little but learned a few things about myself and about the night.  In the woods, there is no absolute darkness. Starlight filters through a treetop canopy. Movement is discernable as small breezes pass through the forest. Silence is naught. Tree limbs creak. Dry leaves rustle. Train whistles carry through the void between earth and stars. And time creeps like a worm through soft, damp earth.

The next day, I worked alongside my peers on the waterfront and the trails of the Scout Camp.  We dug, cut, raked, lifted and cleaned in silence. Food was meager – a cup of juice, crackers and cheese, an apple and some water. At dusk we were led back to the amphitheater and given our white sash embroidered with a long, red arrow.  We were certain, at least for a while, that we had become someone different.

Much later in life I have wondered about this event. The Indian rituals and the aloneness of the forest are vivid. But the impact on my teenage self seems relatively transient. Within a day or so continued to think of myself far more than I thought of others. I still valued play over work. Like the rituals of church and the admonitions of family and teachers, the rituals of the Order of the Arrow seemed much less significant from only a few days’ distance.

How forceful must a rite of passage be to change us significantly?  How profound?  Are transformations planned or accidental?  Might rituals be more transformative if they match the rigor and purpose of the vision quest, an ancient rite of passage for Native American teenagers? When ready for the quest, an Indian teenager treks alone into the wilderness without food or water. He wanders for several days seeking spiritual energy and self-identity. Deprived of human contact and sustenance, the teenager slowly attunes to the spirit world and comes in contact with a guardian animal or force of nature, possibly through a vision or dream.  At least that is the intent. I wonder how many Native American teenagers actually participate and how often they are transformed into more self-aware and thoughtful people. Can transformation occur so quickly?

Perhaps I should not be so skeptical of either my Order of the Arrow experience or the vision quest. If nothing else, on my quest I learned not to fear the forest at night.  I learned to survive a day without talking and with less food than I thought I needed. Ten years after that experience something motivated me to hike and camp alone for three days in a wilderness area where I slept without a tent on a highland bald and was nearly rutted out my sleeping bag by a big buck whose eyes and antlers glowed in the dark. Now, decades later, though I enjoy the company of friends in the backcountry, I sometimes camp and fish alone. There is something strangely communal about silence that is not silent and darkness that is not dark.

I ponder the influence on my life of these experiences. I recognize several effects of aloneness: very intense and focused solving of basic problems; alteration of time and space; time travel, backward and forward; dreams and visions. Though the wilderness accommodates this kind of experience, it might not be essential. But we must dismiss and ignore what surrounds us to gain freedom.