winter, and daydreaming

I was reading the Dharma Bums for a while yesterday afternoon...so now, naturally, i'm feeling the urge to simply pack up a rucksack with some clothes, a few books, a journal, and a bottle of wine and get out on the road.  It's pretty much par for the course for me, reading Keourac like that.  Every time I do, there's this feeling that I'm missing so much by being here, passing days in an office thinking about doing rather that actually out being.  It's a frustration at the structure and pace of "modern life", which itself is really just an artificial construct that we use to justify going about life in ways counter to how we'd choose to.

I was just thinking "as though we'd be given that choice anyway", and then got frustrated at myself at thinking that.  It's such a cop-out, the idea that we can't opt out.  Maybe not at any given point; bills, things like that might get in the way.  But it can be done.  It should be done.

Just the other night I was talking about this recurring idea that I've had, something I've been bouncing around in my mind for a long time.  I want to rent a summer cabin for the winter, one of those little places that you have to hike back into in the Sierras that are all boarded up and secured by this time of year.  Take it and spend the winter there, just me, my books, my gear, a bunch of food and firewood and good music.  Watch the fall progress to winter.  Stand outside as the first tentative snowflakes fall in late October, barely making it to the ground before subliminating.  Watch the drifts gather on the lee side of the cabin, shovel the deck, thaw the pipes.  Feel the cabin shake to its foundation as the sodden winter storms come roaring in from the Pacific, over the passes to dump feet upon feet of snow, with their strong, joyous winds that bend and snap even the greatest of pines.  Feel that soft silence of winter night, a lush, full silence after the tempest passes.  Be there again for the sharp, frigid, utterly crisp clear nights, stars brilliant pinpoints in a sky so black that it feels fathomless, making the earth and me seems so insignificant.  All of that, and all that i'll never conceive of until i'm there...that's what I want.  Be it alone, or not.  I need my time alone, cherish and welcome and enjoy it; i don't think i'll ever understand how some people are uncomfortable alone.  That said, there is something to be said by the company of others, to have someone to share an experience like what I'm talking about with.  I think you'd both have to be on the same page with the idea of time together, time apart.  If both could appreciate that, knowing intuitively when to pull together but understand the need for time apart...well, it does seem a nigh impossibility to find that kind of pairing that works like that.  But if it could, what an incomparable added facet to what would be an amazing experience alone.  There's time for experience alone, in it's most raw and unfettered state.  And yet, to share that experience, to see how that experience affects someone other that one's self, can be equally fascinating.  If not, in some cases, more so.

Anyway, enough daydreaming about that for now.  My Stone/Maui Brewing/Ken Schmidt Collaboration beer should be chilling in the cooler at Vendome right now.  Macadamia Nut/Coconut/Kona Coffee Porter.  Seriously, I have no idea how that could be anything short of amazing.  Can't wait to try it, either tonight or tomorrow, and not alone; that's definitely a beer for sharing!