Stimulants

Holy crap, the iPod nano is quite possibly the coolest thing I have ever seen in my life. Well, the coolest thing ever, perhaps excepting the view from my new cabin at Menogyn. Aaron our program director moved out of Aerie yesterday, so I took the opportunity to move in, make a mess and spread all my crap around.

Aerie cabin is located atop a nice hill, right next to Bearskin Lake. I have a huge screened-in back porch that looks right over the bay leading to the Daniels Lake portage. At night I sit on the porch in a Sky Chair, writing or reading or watching thunderstorms roll across the lake.

You can see the tension I experience in life. On one side we have the glorious beauty of untouched wilderness, saturating my senses at all hours of the day. On the other side we have hot techno-geek stuff like iPod nanos. I can’t make up my mind. I want both. I want neither. I want it all.

As for my lowly iPod Shuffle, I still love it. Something like the nano is far too beautiful to be treated the way I treat my Shuffle. I charge it up and shove it in my linty pocket, aside car keys and spare change. I hang it around my neck when I go running, and soak the poor thing clear-through with sweat.

As I reflect on my lifestyle, I believe I got the Shuffle specifically because it didn’t have an LCD screen. If you talk to my old digital camera, it will tell you that LCD screens and I have a sorrowful history, one that is prone to mountain bikes, high velocity impacts and shattering.

Anyways. I’ve got a few more weeks in the wilds and then it’s back to civilization. Civilization, and remarkable things like hot water, ice cubes and iPods.

Nanotechnology. It’s going to save the world. I mean, really.