Thursday, November 14, 2013

Towns... One of those Necessary evils...

Towns are good... I guess.

Finding a hardware store would be a lot harder... if they were just scattered across the landscape. "Oh yeah... it's right over yonderways a bit. Go out till you see a tree. Turn left till you pass a big rock and then look to the right over around the back side of the hill in front of a lil' lake..."

... addresses for hunting 'em down would be a true pain.

But damn... collect a passel of people inside a square mile and the noise they generate just never quits. Walk outside at two in the A.M. and there's a constant hummmm...

It's almost as if they generate the same sort of interference like radios do when you get two of 'em too close together. You know... take one and swipe it real close by the first and it starts squealin' with some sort of feedback?

Stack up a bunch of those square miles side by side and the cacophony of all that feedback becomes brain jangling. 

I wonder is that what makes people so rough on each other in towns?

Planes and helicopters fly over in a constant aerial parade. Trash trucks bang and roar, hot rods rumble by, speakers thump shaking the very ground from cars hundreds of feet away, barking dogs, thousands of tires humming on asphalt, people hollering, hammers thumping, sport bikes screaming... Hundreds of noises all mixed up together until one single note is indecipherable. Just an unending burden of noise.

A moments silence is a creature that don't exist within the confines of a town. The din simply never, ever, quits. It's a pressure that makes it increasingly difficult to breathe.

When I get back out into far country after having been in town for... a while... The contrast is clear and present.

It's much akin to laying on the ground with a car parked on your chest... and then backing it off... it feels soooooo good! The silence releases that sensation much like taking too tight heavy boots off after a long day and slipping your aching feet into soft camp mocs.

The silence and space is sooooo sweet.

Counting the Sidney job... I've been "In Town" for comin' up on two months... two months too long for this child.

I still have a few maintenance chores to do here before I take out. Figure it'll be easier sitting here with the hardware outfits just down the street rather than in a camp twenty miles outside of some lil' place... I assume I'll be needful of other forgotten bits and parts to deal with a faucet replacement and a few other odds and ends...

The difficulty is... I'm rapidly getting to that place where... "ah... That don't really need to work... I never use it anyway... and if they can't see a big white wall... ten feet high and thirty feet long rolling down the road... that lil' light ain't gonna change anything." ;)

Better to just keep the Raider running well and let the rest wait on ambition.

Just a few more days in town
Brian

5 comments:

klbexplores said...

With my feet nailed to the ground, noise pollution is one of the things I find nearly unbearable..... that and the rules, rules, rules. If you breathe you break one. You hit the nail on the head with this one!

Shadowmoss said...

Hey, give a hollar while you are in town. I'm off work for the weekend after tonight.

Shadowmoss said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

I meet less and less people who actually get away from the buzz of the city.
Nothing better than the clean air of the high country,the smell of the desert after a summer rain, and the only sound...is a gentle breeze.
Damn..I gotta get out the house!

kaBLOOnie Boonster said...

Good honest post. I wonder how many RV wannabees realize that you hear everything around you in an RV. An inch of styrofoam insulation is not like the fiberglass-stuffed 2X4s of a stick and brick house. On the other hand, RVs are quieter than a nylon tent.

There is nothing discouraging about this. It just means that you take it into account and avoid RV parks along the highway or in cities.

But I wish the BS'ers who glamorize urban boondocking would lay off, so that people don't get excessive expectations about the "good life" of free (Free, FREE!) "camping" on noisy streets and parking lots.