Good evening Beach
🙂
I’m really pleased you mailed back, Rebecca. I’m ‘Beach’s alter ego …
Chris!
Yes, I worked my way through the big challenges I hinted at in my
profile … all thanks to being able to talk about ‘stuff’ online
through ‘Beach’ on a favourite social site of mine where ‘he’ was able
to explore his psyche, his emotions, etc with others in a way that the
real flesh and blood Chris just couldn’t face talking or thinking about
with his friends, family and other folk in real life at the time!
No. I’m not someone with a split personality. Beach is just a ‘deeper’
part of me but the detached nature of net communication that persona
allowed me to express was a lifeline for me at the time and that process
did indeed eventually free me to ‘get on with life’.
I loved the way you summed me up, (smile), and yeah, I’m proud and
joyful in being able to have “found myself again”, as you accurately
stated. 🙂
Enough about all that though. I’ve evolved into this happy, content
version of me these days – possibly the best version I have ever known.
Funny. I think you are the second or third online contact that has
suggested I read The Prophet. I haven’t yet but I’m guessing, (hoping),
that you suggest that book because you see that I have a passion for …
well … just about everything really. (I mean the list of interests and
hobbies I enjoy exploring – along with pondering all aspects of the
human condition).
I’ll pursue your other recommendations too.
I admire Lovelock’s philosophy and share the view that the Earth and
everything else, (this universe and possibly others), are probably all
linked together and one singular life force … though, as mere human
beings, it is near impossible to comprehend that fact … save for the
experience of being given a hint of it while taking in the beauty of a
sunrise or a sunset.
Primeval, awesome, unbound … such simple visions are sublime – beyond
perfection, aren’t they?
I WILL locate The Prophet online now and I promise you I shall read it
over the next week or so. Thank you for the prompt. It will be an
opportuniuty to go on yet another cerebral adventure. 🙂
I LOVED the way you wrote that camping is a means to an end. That one
sentence suggests to me that the great outdoors and the experiencing and
living of nature and life is a passion equal or greater to my own
appreciation of my own idyllic outdoor pursuits. Wonderful!
Listening to Rush now. Fantastic lyrics!
Yes. You’d love West Dorset. It isn’t as wild or as raw as your own
mountains but it has a prehistoric gravitas and pedigree I have rarelt
experienced elsewhere.
Ancient bronze and iron age tumuli burial mounds, Iron Age hill forts,
Anglo-Romano settlement ruins, a castle or two and, of course, a
coastline where we still occasionally uncover the giant fossilised sea
monsters that swam here hundreds of millions of years ago.
… and the view of Chisel bank gracefully hugging the tide line in a
gentle curve for 20 miles, (as I photographed from Thorncombe Beacon),
is utterly breathtaking to behold.
You are an interesting and intriguing soul … and I am sure you have
decanted your spirit into the teaching of your children.
No. I was not frightened by your revelations. Rather I was warmed and
encouraged by them in as much as it was a breath of fresh air to
communicate with such a like mind.
By return I ask you not to be intimidated or freaked by my words and
thoughts. As I said, the online ‘me’ is probably the deeper side to my
character whereas ‘in real life’, I am a far simpler, laissez faire (sp)
sort of character who shares the same simple joy of life and nature as
yourself.
Thanks for writing back. It was … it is a joy to be earthing with you.
Chris x
Thank you for such a lovely note.
Camping is a means to an end – allows me to be close to the hills when
the warmer summer weekends are here. Normally head to Brecon or
Snowdonia as soon as I escape work on a Friday if I have nothing else
planned.
I wild camp sometimes, so unless I have a shower bag with me I do mean
no showers. If I am lucky and the weather is warm then there is the
possibility of a nice warm stream.
OK I need to come to the Dorset coast – your pictures are beautiful. I
love clouds and sunsets / sunrises. So many pictures of them. I climbed
Pen y Fan in the dark just to sit alone at the top and watch the world
wake up around me – amazing sunrise.
Interesting profile. A polymath…..your success spoiled your
world….you found yourself again….a nature lover.
Well read which is good. Have you read Kahil Gibran’s The Prophet –
amazing – and most of it is freely available on the web. Particularly
like the section about children and how we are only here to caretake
them, not live our lives through them. That tells you a lot about me as
that was my parenting style when the children were younger.
Rush’s song ‘Freewill’ also resonates.
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Lovelock’s Gaia.
I’m a free spirit, I don’t blindly follow like most of the sheep out
there.
So if I’ve not frightened you off, feel free to message back.
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