On Top of the Hill

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. Vacation continues apace. We actually got out and looked over the valley from the top of a very steep and very tall hill. It was more than worth it. I finally got two bars on my Verizon network. “Can you hear me now?” It was beautiful. The bugs paid

a healthy respect for the gallons of Deet that I had sprayed all over me. I was able to show the view to the two dimensional eye on my camera. Even in 2d it was impressive.

In the traditions of all great vacations, I also finished my vacation book early. It is a John Green book called Looking for Alaska. It was John Green’s first tragic high school girl dying book; long before The Fault in Our Stars. It is good to read tragic high school girl dying books on vacation just to remember what it was like to read them all of the time. High school girl dying books, and dog dying books always make me cry. I have to admit that John Green gets it. Near the end of the book, two of the surviving friends are remembering a poignant moment and the following conversation occurred.

The silence broke: “Sometimes I liked it.” I said. “Sometimes I liked it that she was dead.”

“You mean it felt good?”

“No. I don’t know. It felt . . . pure.”

“Yeah. I know. Me, too. It’s natural. I mean, it must be natural.”

That’s why we read high school girl and dog dying books. They are pure. A dose of purity is a good thing in a cabin in the woods by a lake where you can’t see the weather coming at you.

I would like to thank Amy Baker for the topic of the day. Amy responded to my post. “I would welcome your thoughts on the new-ish craze rehabbing shipping containers into tiny, cost effective, and highly designed homes. http://aplus.com/a/shipping-container-homes

It is a challenging, off the beaten path, kind of a topic; much like our path up the hill today. We were with a local guide. Thank you Lydia Wilson. She said there are two ways to go. One is the wide path that is a little bit longer. The other is this narrow path that is more direct but a little bit steeper. Always one to make decisions based on biblical metaphors I said lead us the narrow way and she did; straight up the side of granite strewn hillside; me carrying my 52 year old butt up the hill, at one point leaning forward on all fours to scratch and claw my way up the hill. For a while, I thought that I had misunderstood the metaphor and taken the road to hell. I made it though; with lungs and calves burning, we came up on top. We were out on top of a hill in the Adirondacks; a mountain in Indiana, and I finally had three bars on my phone; Heaven.

It took me a while to understand what a shipping container was. After looking at the website, I figured it out. They are those stackable trimodal containers that start out in China stacked 10 high on the deck of a trans-Pacific cargo boat. They are then shifted to two high stakes on the trains that go through Ingalls, Indiana before they are unloaded one high on semi trucks to go to their final destination along the East coast where they are disgorged of their TV’s, lawn care equipment or semi-precious whatnots and taken home by under employed ex-manufacturing workers. If you have never noticed the containers in your life but are an avid reader of mystery and suspense novels, you will recognize cargo containers as those boxes that sex slaves are smuggled in so effectively past customs agents in to the United States before the lone hero uncovers the plot and rescues the victims.

What do I think about turning basically railcars into highly designed homes? Boxcar Willy would have been proud. No matter how much siding and holes you cut into the side or how high you stack them, you are still living in a rectangular cube. I believe that is what we used to call a mobile home; which used to be tornado targets on edge of town but because of their unsightly nature, we have banished them to God knows where and replaced them with wood framed houses that blow away just as readily in a tornado.

And what’s with all of the “my house is better than your house?” There are double wides; triple wides, triple wides with a second story on top. There are offset two story single wides, single wides with the sides cut out to open up into the great out doors, and one single wide with wheels . . . which makes it a mobile home. And they all remind me of the architectural equivalent of building with really big legos; not the current version of legos with curves and angles different sizes but the old timey legos; each with six pegs on top.

Well the first day of the rest of my summer vacation is nearly over. Keep sending in topics. It keeps that brain working. For now, I am going to have another adult beverage and contemplate if this raccoon took the narrow-steep or the wide-not-so-steep path to poop on top of the hill and if he

thought that the relief was heavenly.

Take care,

Roger