Welcome to the Wilderness an Hour from DC

 "Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints." - unknown.

Looks like a scene from My Neighbor Totoro

This quote has been attributed to a number of environmentalists and founders of conservation movements. A quick Google search claims it to be from John Muir, but a quick scroll down the search page shows that there are others who might have coined this phrase. 

But who said the quote doesn't make it any less important when you go to wilderness for an adventure. 

This weekend I went to the Shenandoah National Park and stayed in one of the three Lodges off Skyline Drive. It was so much fun (worth the scolding I got from my cat when I got home). I found the accommodations perfect, though they're more like motels or cabins rather than 5-star resorts. I had little to no cell service and the only area with wi-fi was the main lobby. The main lobby was incredibly inviting - excellent for bird watching or curling up in a rocking chair next to a roaring fire in the fireplace. 

I stayed in Skyland which had several trails within walking distance of my room. Some were very popular like Stony Man and White Oak Falls. Others had almost no one on them like Miller's Head (which led to a beautiful view on an old fire watch). There's also a stable for horses on Skyland with the option for horseback riding starting in late May.

I walked so much that by Saturday afternoon - when the weather took a turn to grey skies and rain - I found myself passed out for several hours before crawling out of bed for dinner. 

I've never hidden my love of hiking and getting lost in the wilderness. It's dangerous to go off by yourself, especially if you don't know what you're doing, but I've made it a habit to always let people know where I'll be going, knowing how to handle an emergency, and picking trails that will have some people around.

Thankfully, the Shenandoah National Park has an app with maps and resources for hikers. If you can't use the app, most trails have a map at the beginning of the trails that you can take a picture of. They'll also let you know the estimated amount of time to complete a hike, how much water you should have, and any other gear you will want to have on hand. 

One of my favorite investments has been my headlight flashlight that sits snuggly on my head and provides white and red light. It makes climbing up rocks easier in the dark without precariously balancing a flashlight in my hands.

As I don't have much service up in the Shenandoah, I don't have my headphones in. I can take in all the sounds of the woods. There are plenty of bird calls and songs, the sway of the trees, and the occasional howl of wind. Its in this atmosphere that I have nearly ran into deer, had a close call with a depth-perception challenged hawk, and a startling encounter with a bald eagle. There were a lot of deer this trip...and possibly a majestic peregrine (its a type of falcon). 

Surprisingly, the closest I have ever gotten to a bear was less than 10 miles from my house in New Jersey. It was while I was at my favorite hiking spot with two guys on our way to a place aptly named Bear Swamp. 

I didn't seen any bears this trip, but I'm sure they were around. 

Though spring is in full swing in and around Washington D.C., the Shenandoah mountains appear to be about a month behind. Certainly there were plenty of flowers (some of my favorites on this trip were little purple buds clinging to the eastern side of rocks). Friday and Saturday had hardly any trees budding, but this morning there were little dots of green everywhere. What a difference waking up in a cloud makes. 

Yep, that's right, last night I went to sleep on a mountain and today I woke up in a cloud. I could go five minutes of the road and see clear blue skies, but the next moment the wisps of water vapor were flying up the western ridges. It was eerie. It was beautiful. 

All of this is why Shenandoah National Park continues to be one of my favorite places in the world. I highly recommend it. There's plenty of hiking, amazing views, camping, and horseback riding (seasonal). There are great places to eat and park rangers to ask questions to. 

The wilderness is about an hour and a half from D.C. The next time you want to visit the capitol, might I suggest I short detour to the wilderness in Virginia...the Appalachian Trail is there.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope y'all like hearing from me.

Until next week.

Welcome to About Three Decades

 I'm tired and don't have much to say tonight, but here are some thoughts as I process that I've lived on this Earth about three decades...

I love this photo I took in Iceland.

Nothing really changes, but nothing stays the same. I'm a 90s kid who remembers a time before the Internet, yet now I can't imagine a world without my smart phone. My first computer was a Windows 98, though I know I played games on an even older laptop - that first game had Mickey Mouse - in the apartment we lived in before the house.

All of my first cousins have graduated from high school. It seems like it was last summer I was babysitting them for 20 bucks an hour. That was over 5 years ago. I hope babysitters are getting paid better. 

My childhood didn't end in one traumatic or a summer in transition like in "Stand By Me" or "Now and Then". . It was a slow death spiral that started in April 1999. The final knell of the requiem bell was in December 2012, but by 2003 the pessimism had fully set in.

Those last two lines I might use later in a poem.  

Speaking of which, I had a professor tell me I didn't have the heart of a poet. Little did that guy know that this year I'd publish my first chapbook. I'm not stopping at that. Hopefully I'll get a book deal sometime soon. 

I've moved three states, but haven't lived overseas. Unless I count those weeks I spent in Japan as a kid - which I sometimes do. It was six amazing weeks spent with my aunt and uncle. It took me nearly 18 years to visit again. 

I miss the days I spent in school. Then I remember the stress of tests, the anxiety to "fit in", and the unpleasant changes my body went through. I appreciate that those years are long over. 

Three decades seems like a long time, but so did five years when I turned six. Some days I feel too young for the problems that I face and should be ordering kids meals at Fridays. Other days I'm so ancient, I haven't a clue who's the guest host at The Kid's Choice Awards.

Were the 70s really 50 years ago?

My sibling's been married, my friends are having kids and I'm at home binge watching "Naruto" for the nth time. Somehow I ended up with a cat.

Three decades is a weird spot to sit. I'm an adult, but I still am learning like I did as a kid. I pass, I fail, I play in the dirt - it's now called gardening. I'm thinking about buying a home, but I don't want the responsibility. Then again, I somehow ended up responsible for a cat.

When I think about the present, I usually hate it. But the past is always a fairy tale. The harsh edges and rough patches glossed over like one of the photos in my albums. Do people still keep photo albums or is that just me?

So here's to the 2020s, the 2010s were a ride. And here's to the 30s, 40s, and 50s - may the 90s kids excel. Three decades are gone and three more are to come.

Until next week.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off), please like, share and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope y'all like hearing from me.

Now how to update my blog summary...?

Welcome to National Poetry Month 2021

 April is National Poetry Month. I might have written about this last year (or the year before...things are all starting to blend together) or you might have seen me on social media (if you follow me on one of those) post a poem a day. 

I'll admit that the poems I'm currently posting everyday aren't necessarily my best. So, why do I post them?

April 11th 2021

The honest answer is as a challenge to myself. Writing and posting a poem a day forces me to actually write something everyday. Some of these poems might turn into something else entirely. I've already started taking a couple of the poems I've posted and started to expand them. 

If you're interested in reading some of my better poems, I do have a poetry chapbook available for purchase (*cough shameless plug *cough *cough) by clicking this link. It's a Gothic collection - because if I'm going to write and publish poetry, it will have a horror theme. 

But enough about me and my non-existent writing career.

Let's celebrate poetry. 

Poetry is as fluid and adaptable as water melting off a mountain. Or maybe I should say that good poets can make a poem flow and form from a tiny spring into a mighty rivers. Bad poets just create a landslide with their words. 

Like the many different paths water can take, poetry can be so many things. I've made arguments that song lyrics are a type of poetry and worth being studied in the same way that Shakespeare is. The best example of this might be Queen's famous "Bohemian Rhapsody". There are so many layers to the lyrics of that song. Then there are the poetry collections that make me question my place in the universe. I get that T.S. Eliot's book about Practical Cats inspired a trippy Broadway production, but dear universe did it take me a long time to get through this very short book. It needs to be placed on the shelf "things that exist, but are no longer relevant."

Currently, there's a big movement on Instagram, Tumblr, and other social media sites for people to post inspirational words and call it poetry... oh and there are some awesome and legit poets posting awesome poems there as well. I am one of them (I'll leave it up to you if I'm the former or the latter). I personally like the blackout poetry writers and have had a ton of fun turning my public domain books into blackout poems. My attempts at it and showing them to my friends inspired one of those friends to tell their daughter, who then had her class of students write blackout poems of their own. I wish I could share some of those poems, but they really aren't mine to share.

This is an older one of mine.

However, there are a lot of other types of poetry to follow on social media. Some of them have their collections published on an annual or bi-annual basis like Amanda Lovelace (who's work speaks to some people, but doesn't do much for me) and Rupi Kaur (who I enjoy reading). Most recently I read light filters in poems by Caroline Kaufman who was a teenager when she published this collection. I thought it was fine, very pretty.

Now, Nikita Gill is a master poet as far as I'm concerned and recently wrote an entire novel in the form of a collection of poems called The Girl and the Goddess: Stories and Poems of Divine Wisdom. I loved it. I love pretty much all of her work. And she's also a social media poet.

So, if you want to try reading more modern poetry, but don't feel like shelling out a ton of cash up front I recommend checking out the social media poets and supporting them with likes and shares.

But poetry isn't always about inspiring phrases and bad breakups. Sometimes poetry is in response to the troubled times we are living through. Since the start of the pandemic, a lot of my poems were about the feelings of isolation, fear of COVID, and my other anxieties. As politics began to heat up and a lot of terrible things continued to happen, my writing reflected those moments in time.

Poetry can be used to help people process trauma, either by writing or reading. It can give people an insight into experiences they will (likely) never experience for themselves. Some collections I read and felt a connection to included Don't Call Us Dead by Danez Smith (which focuses a lot on being a black man in America), War Torn by Hasan Namir (which is a reflection on being a gay man growing up in Iraq - consequently the Namir liked my review of his collection and I am very flattered by this), American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassins by Terrance Hayes (which is a collection of poems written in the first year of Mr. Trump's presidency), and For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf by Ntozake Shange (which is actually a poetry collection that is meant to be seen performed on stage and one day I will see it).

Currently, I'm reading i am the rage by Dr. Martina McGowan (who is a gynecologist - that's really cool) and focuses on social and racial justice. Many of her poems are based on the events (such as George Floyd and Breonna Taylor's murders) of 2020. 

These poets aren't your Emily Dickens or Walt Whitman writers. They're not traditional, rarely rhyme, but are incredibly lyrical, soulful, and tell stories. 

Poetry is what you take out of it. Not all of it is going to connect with you personally. Some of your favorite poems might be song lyrics or an inspirational phrase broken up and sprinkled across a page. A few poems might give you flashbacks to High School English class and having to analyze each word into an inch of it's existence - it wasn't fun then and reading these poems now only make me want to cry more. There will be poetry that speaks to you even if you have no context for the subject other than what you see on the news. 

You might not think that you can write a poem to save your life. I'm not going to tell you you're wrong. I'm going to tell you to try writing poetry anyway. You never know what flow of water turns into a mountain stream, then grows to a raging river, only to flow out to an endless sea for everyone to read.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope y'all like hearing from me.

Until next week. 

Welcome to More Muppet Movies

Happy Easter everyone!

And to avoid controversy, I'm going to talk about fan casting the Muppets into stories. This should go well.

Every once in a while, I'll see people put together their perfect Muppet cast for one of their favorite stories. They'll usually have one of their favorite actors be the only non-Muppet in the cast (though there can be more) and then fill in the rest of the characters with Muppets. Fights will ensue as commenters clash and their dream Muppet team is torn to shreds.

A lot of this is for Lord of the Rings Muppets.

I wasn't a huge Muppet kid, though I did grow up with some of the later movies like Muppet Treasure Island (that one is the perfect Muppet movie and can never be remade) and the occasional episode of Sesame Street. I was more familiar with the Muppet's 3D show at Disney World...and to some extent Muppet Babies.

But it wasn't until I was much older that I started watching the old Muppet TV show and the movies. Other than my love of Muppet Treasure Island, I have a special fondness for Muppets From Space - aka, the one where we learn where Gonzo comes from - and Muppet Christmas Carol. I also remember seeing the Muppets Wizard of Oz when it premiered on TV.

Additionally, if they count, I've seen The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth many times. I'm more confused by The Dark Crystal than entertained by it and find that I've watched it a few times to simply understand what is going on. Labyrinth is another masterpiece that I love to pieces and see something new every time I watch it. David Bowie cannot be replaced as Jareth, but I have a short list of actors who I will accept in a remake, reboot, or sequel. 

Wait....

Where was I?

Oh, right, Muppet movies that I'd like to see made.

I recently watched The Great Muppet Caper and think this would be a fun one to have a sequel to (see what I did there - wacka wacka wacka). All the cameos are perfect and Diana Riggs is the real treasure. Plus, I love it when human actors fall in love with Miss. Piggy and would love for that to happen again. 

I understand that Muppets Most Wanted might be a bit of a spiritual successor (though it's really a sequel to the 2011 The Muppets movie), but I think there are ways we could add the Caper story.

For example, let's make it with the Night at the Museum team. Basically, the Muppets would have to stop the cursed Hope Diamond from being stolen. Ben Stiller as Larry Daley would be our main human "good guy character". Our bad guy could be one of several human actors as well. My short list includes Tom Hiddleston, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Daniel Craig. The bad guys must again flirt with Miss. Piggy (now married to Kermit). Or maybe have all three of them as a bad guy team up - yes, this is a better idea.

I also wouldn't mind a Muppet Austen interpretation. Like Kermit as Mr. Darcy and Miss. Piggy as Elizabeth. Robin would be Georgiana (with a wig). For the rest of the sisters, Janice as Jane (ergo Mr. Teeth will be Bingly...or maybe Rowlf?). Skeeter dressed as Scooter for Mary. The other two could be new Muppets. 

I have no idea who would be Wickham...let's have them be the human actor. 

But Gonzo should be Mr. Collins with Camilla the Chicken as Charlotte. That is clearly the match we are all rooting for.

For a Halloween special, I'd love to see the Muppets take on a classic Hollywood horror story. Like having Miss. Piggy as Mina, Kermit as Johnathan Harker, Janice as Lucy, Gonzo, Rizzo, and Fozzie as Lucy's boyfriend squad, and the human (maybe get Gary Oldman to reprise the role) as Dracula. 

(Edit: Animal is Renfield by order of my friend Jeff...can’t believe I left this out originally).

I'd also take an interstation of Phantom of the Opera with the ghost haunting their new show location, setting their sites on Miss. Piggy as the lovely, but still sassy Christine. 

I know! We need the Muppets Three Musketeers! 

Kermit is Athos. Gonzo is Aramis. Fozzie is Porthos. Rizzo is D'artagnan. The king can be Sam the Eagle (I knew I'd find a role for him yet). M'Lady is Miss. Piggy (she'll get a redemption arc). Bad guy again is human - someone who can really ham it up and chew the scenery... Nathan Lane! 

When we get right down to it, the Muppets could do any number of versions of stories and make them amazingly entertaining. Yeah the Lord of the Rings lists will pop up every now and then (come on guys Kermit has to be Aragorn because Miss. Piggy was born to play Arwen), but I have so many other stories that I want to see get the Muppets treatment. 

Do you guys have a story that you'd like to see the Muppets turn into a classic movie? Do you disagree with any of my ideas (you can disagree, but know that since this is my blog, I am - of course - right)? Are you a Disney executive here to steal my ideas?

Let me know in the comments section. I expect royalties Disney!

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope y'all like hearing from me.

Until next week.