Why You Can’t Keep a Good Hippie Down

By Tim Clark — HEAD ABOVE WATER

Last weekend was pregnant with importance. We took one of our brief, restful escapes. I read somewhere that Jerry Garcia once said, “Sometimes you find yourself in the middle of nowhere, and sometimes in the middle of nowhere you find yourself.” Maybe he did, maybe not. It sounds like something he might have said. In that one sentence is the simplest truth, a perfect circle, the zenith and the nadir. It is the history of man, at least modern man, at least me. In nineteen words you start and you finish. It says it all.

We rented a small, simple cabin at a state park, loaded our kayaks, and packed a bottle of wine, some food and an indifference to the mores of adulthood imposed by society. These cabins have no WiFi, no cell signal, and no land line telephones. In some cases the television is just a flat screen modern art sculpture stuck to the wall. This was one of those instances. It was just us, the cabins surrounding us, and a trash receptacle that smelled as if it had a corpse inside. I got plenty of steps walking to the dumpster by cabins 1 through 7. I’ve seen enough movies with corpses and wilderness, thank you.

I would like to take a minute to introduce you to my wife. Her name is Nancy. In blog posts and pieces from around the internet I’ve always just referred to her as “my wife.” It isn’t…