Using the Force on Uranus

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Most of the planets in our universe were discovered by some guy looking up saying, “Hey, lookee there.” And another guy saying, “That right there, that ain’t no star, Jed, that’s a damned planet.” That’s how most planets were first discovered, as far back as 1,000 BC. Neptune was different. Neptune is too faint to be seen by the naked eye. Neptune had to be theorized and mathematically predicted.

This probably reads like a perfunctory narrative at this point in history, because we have the technology and all of the tools and gadgets necessary to uncover numerous mysteries of the universe. They didn’t in 1845. It’s almost a “Who cares now?” story that is so over it’s over, but some of the my favorite stories from history aren’t necessarily about the event in question, but the mind over matter quest to achieve the unachievable. They’re about human ingenuity and/or the power of the human mind. Two men used the science and all of the data available at the time, a pencil and paper, some mathematical theory, and little more than their brains to declare that there should be a planet should be … right there! And they were wrong, initially, and then they were wrong by one degree! This is the story about the discovery of a planet we now call Neptune, a story that illustrates the beautiful idea that every problem we face is one genius away from resolution.

When it comes to the discovery of planets, there’s basically two stories. The unofficial record involved some guy spotting a Saturn, but he was an ancient who didn’t know anything about “the record”. Once the record was established, another guy beat everyone else to get his name on the record for being the “first to spot Saturn.”

“Crock of stuff is what it is,” the naysayers say whenever we talk about the first to discover celestial bodies. “There was always someone who discovered it first, before the record existed, AND, and someone would’ve discovered all of these planets eventually. Most of these names we applaud and memorialize were just right time, right place opportunists. We’re not talking dots of light in the sky when we talk about planets. We’re talking about massive complex bodies that have their own geology, weather, and sometimes even their own atmosphere or moons. They’re huge honking worlds in their own right that would’ve eventually been discovered by someone. The whole idea behind celebrating the humans who first discovered a planet is so ridiculous that it’s hardly even worth talking about.

“It’s like talking about the guy who, according to the record, discovered the moon. You discovered the moon? That right there? You discovered that?”

On July 26, 1609, Thomas Harriot discovered the moon. There is no record of the laughter, derision, or humiliation that followed Harriot’s discovery, but Harriot became the first known person in history to look at the moon through a telescope and draw what he saw. He made multiple maps, including recognizable features. Mr. Harriot either forgot to put his name on the record for his discovery, or his friends started mocking him so ruthlessly for trying to be the first guy to spot the moon that he decided not to submit his name for the discovery. 

The father of modern observational astronomy, Galileo Galilei didn’t give a crud about all that. He knew how to bite that apple. Galileo was an ambitious fella who knew how to get history to celebrate his name, so months later he published findings that mirrored Harriot’s. 

How many of you have heard the name Thomas Harriot? How many of you have heard of the name Galileo? Exactly. Thomas Harriot fell prey to the “publish or perish” dictum that haunts history’s otherwise anonymous names, by failing to publish his detailed maps of the moon, and he died anonymously. In fact, Harriot’s July 26, 1609 findings stayed hidden in notebooks for centuries, until he received proper accreditation in the 19th–20th centuries. The Thomas Harriot story might sound like a miscarriage of justice, unless you’re one of those “I’m pretty sure someone would’ve eventually discovered the moon” naysayers. 

The Perturbing Force 

On March 13, 1781, a man named Sir William Herschel used his trusty telescope to discover a planet we now call Uranus. His observations found that it wasn’t a comet, but a planet, and after his findings became “official” the society of astronomists pretty much thought “Ok, that’s it, Woo Hoo and all that, we’ve discovered the end of the universe.” There was one problem; the astronomists who used Herschel’s findings could not correctly plot point Uranus’ orbital positions based on mathematical projections. Uranus was so all over the place that it made no sense. 

Alexis Bouvard

Using all of the data available to him at the time, Astronomer Alexis Bouvard made seventy-seven projections on where Uranus should be at any given time, but his fellow astronomers called him out. They told him all of his projections proved incorrect. We can guess that Bouvard called them ordures, French for trash, but he went through the projections versus the reality, and he found that they were right. Much to Bouvard’s humiliation, this occurred after he published his seventy-seven projections. He probably could’ve simply corrected the record and published again, but that would’ve meant finding his initial errors and correcting them.

We can only imagine how much time, sweat, and passion Bouvard put into creating those tables, and we can guess that he tried to save face by saying,

“Hey, I didn’t just throw that out there. These were precise projections based on all the data I had at my disposal, coupled with Newtonian laws. I wouldn’t just guess and then publish those guesses to subject myself to this level of humiliation. There’s something more going on.” He initially blamed the data, but when that didn’t satisfy anyone, including himself, he came up with a “Perturbing Force” theory.

Bouvard’s Perturbing Force theory suggested that there was something beyond Uranus pulling and pushing on Uranus in a way that caused irregularities in its orbital path. He suggested that it might even be another planet.He submitted the idea that Uranus might not be the end of the universe to the Paris Observatory, but unfortunate for the legacy of Alexis Bouvard, the member of the astronomical society who received that request for a follow up left his position soon after Bouvard submitted that request for further findings. Furthering the unfortunate nature of Bouvard’s legacy, he died before anyone would substantiate his idea of a perturbing force gravitationally pulling and pushing Uranus off what should have been the precise data points dictating its orbit. Thus, we can only guess that Alexis Bouvard probably died believing himself a failure, or at the very least that everything he accomplished in life ended with a huge stain, in the form of an exclamation point, at the end. 

Skeptics argued that since Bouvard’s projections relied on Isaac Newton’s theories, Newton’s theories must be flawed. Mathematicians, like John Couch Adams, insisted that Newton’s theories were sound and after studying Bouvard’s projections, Adams insisted that he could use Bouvard’s projections, and all of the data the man compiled, coupled with Newton’s laws to deduce the mass, position, and orbit to discover Bouvard’s perturbing force. 

Couch Adams devoted four years of his life to studying, calculating, and projecting where a possible perturbing force could be, and he submitted that work to British Astronomer Royal George Biddell Airy. The esteemed Airy was understandably skeptical, as the mathematician submitting these findings was a twenty-four-year-old, and we can also guess that Airy was unwilling to put his reputation on the line without detailed computations. He did respond to Couch Adams, however, asking for greater precision, as Couch Adams’ findings turned out to be twelve degrees off, and unfortunate to the legacy of John Couch Adams he did not respond.Some suggest that the failure to respond may have been due to Adams’s unprofessional demeanor, his nerves, procrastination, or that Adams did not have the numbers required for greater precision. Whatever the case was, Couch Adams’s failure to respond in a timely manner cost him sole credit for the discovery of the planet Neptune.   

Some suggest that Frenchman, Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier, was unaware of John Couch Adams work, his subsequent submission, and his failure to complete the work, but Le Verrier was very aware of Alexis Bouvard’s work. He paid particular attention to Bouvard’s idea of a “perturbing force”, and it fascinated him. He thought he could find the missing link, and he thought he did. He thought he made the discovery of a lifetime, one that could make him famous. 

He first sent those findings to the French Academy of Sciences in Paris, but due to bureaucratic inertia and a lack of proactive observation, the Academy did not follow up. They did not reject Le Verrier’s math, as they found it rigorous, but his findings did not translate into instant acceptance as a confirmed discovery because it remained theoretical until it could be observed. The Academy also had “other concerns”, and they may have lacked the capacity to immediately follow up. Whatever the case was, Le Verrier took some of the complaints The Academy had about the absolute precision of his findings, and he refined his coordinates and submitted them to Johann Gottfried Galle at the Berlin Observatory on September 18, 1846. Berlin had a powerful new refractor telescope, and they provided a more agile response, partly because Galle and his assistant Heinrich d’Arrest were eager to test the hypothesis. 

On September 23, 1846 Galle confirmed, through Verrier’s detailed calculations, that the perturbing force affecting the orbit of Uranus was possibly and probably a planet that we now call Neptune. Galle’s confirmation did note, however, that Le Verrier’s detailed calculations were one degree off. Here we reach another “think about it, before we move on” moment. The Frenchman took Alexis Bouvard’s precise projections, based on pre-discovery data, and he joined Bouvard’s mathematical calculations on his errors, coupled with some theoretical notion of a perturbing force, pushing and pulling Uranus off what should be its orbit, and it should be right there! And those calculating his math,using nothing more than their own math(!), found that he was one degree off! [Note: The international astronomy community eventually decided to settle the international dispute by giving credit to both the British Adams and the French Urbain for Neptune’s discovery, even though Adams unofficially discovered it first.] Astronomy.com also states that “Adams [eventually] completed his calculations first, but Le Verrier published first. Le Verrier’s calculations were also more accurate.” The lesson here for you kids looking to submit astronomical findings to a governing body, when they approach you for detailed calculations to support your astronomical findings make sure you either respond immediately, or maybe you should have your detailed calculations ready before declaring your findings. 

The naysayers have a point when they say someone would’ve eventually discovered something as massive as a planet, but Neptune is different. Someone would’ve eventually discovered it, as the technology advanced, but a couple of guys, we’llsay three in total with Bouvard paving the way with his perturbing force theory, located Neptune by mathematically predicting where it would be based on the irregularities in Uranus’s orbit. Is that phenomenal? No? How about we put ourselves in their era and learn that when they went to the office to complete their theories, they road a horse on a dirt road to get there, if they were lucky enough and rich enough to own a horse. Also, their definition of the heart of the city was often just a bunch of wooden store fronts, like the recreations we see on the old HBO show Deadwood. Most of what these 19th century astronomers and mathematicians saw in the nighttime sky is what we can see by stepping outside and looking up into the sky. They had some technological assistance back then, in the form of relatively weak telescopes, and some theorize that astronomers, like Galileo Galilei in 1613, Jerome Lalande in 1795, and John Herschel in 1830 may have used this technology to spot Neptune first, but they didn’t know they were seeing a planet, because their telescopes were not powerful enough for them to know that. Those of us who write articles about such topics and the geniuses who made ingenious discoveries or theories that proved slightly incorrect or somewhat flawed should asterisk our modern critiques by saying, “I am smart. No, really I am, really, really smart, but as ingenious as I am, I don’t know if I could’ve done what they did with the primitive technology they had, primitive when compared to ours. So, before I go about correcting and critiquing their findings with the technology I have at my disposal, thanks to those who developed it for me, I’d like to say how impressive it is that they came so close that it’s impressive that they did what they did with what they had.” 

Silly Super Sports Fans Saying Stupid Stuff 

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“Sorry fellas, I’m just sooo competitive,” Mark said after yelling as loud as he could in a public bar. He yelled because the other team just made a basket to clinch a victory over our team in game we were watching on the television set. His yell temporarily silenced the bar, so I assume his apology was partly genuine and partly based on embarrassment.

Men are biologically predisposed to respect other extremely competitive men, so when he said he yelled because he was “sooo competitive” we felt biologically required to understand. The sticking point for me is that Mark is old. He is a couple generations removed from being so loaded with testosterone that it occasionally boils over the top into the public. He’s so old that employees at Arby’s give him the senior citizen discount without even asking, yet he’s still “sooo competitive” that he can’t control his impulsive need to scream indecipherables at images on a television set.

‘Is that odd, or is it just me?’ I asked myself after Mark screamed. I didn’t care that everyone else acted like Mark just asked for extra cheese on his mashed potatoes, it was odd. I couldn’t accept this as a natural reaction to our favorite team losing. I couldn’t accept it as something we’ve all seen fans do, things I’ve done, so often that it’s become socially acceptable. I’m sure those who dismissed as an extra cheese considered it part of the package we all buy into when we decide to watch a game in public at a bar: We chose your bar to watch our game, we paid your cover charge, and we spent all this money on your alcohol, so if our team loses we reserve the right to scream like a lunatic in your establishment if we lose, because we’re “sooo competitive”. 

Not only is Mark old, he’s so well put together. The women I know report that he is a good looking man who knows how to wear a shirt. He’s also well-spoken, successful, and he displays an otherwise healthy, happy demeanor. If we asked long time bar employees to bullet point the typical indecipherable screamer, there would probably be a lengthy, inconclusive list, but we can guess that Mark wouldn’t fit of any of them. Watching Mark do that, opened my mind’s eye to how foolish I must’ve appeared after screaming like an idiot the minute the fellas wearing my favorite laundry, fail to make as many baskets as the fellas in the other laundry.  

At this point in my description, Gary, the line cook, would cut me off in a way he often cut me off to suggest I’m taking too long to get to the point: “It’s funny when someone makes an ass out of themselves in public.” It is still funny, and I don’t care how much societal and cultural pressure they apply, we’re still going to laugh when someone acts like that. It’s the ‘it’s funny, get over yourself’ level of comedy that will probably never be entirely vanquished. When Mark screamed like that, he silenced the entire bar of patrons momentarily, as they probably assumed it was a cry for help from someone having a heart attack. If Mark laughed after doing that, comedically implying that he was imitating a twenty-something reacting to a loss on TV, it probably would’ve been humorous. The fact that Mark genuinely had such trouble controlling his impulses that he felt the need to apologize for it, felt like another level of comedy. It felt like a level that unintentionally commented on itself with a sprinkling of irony and cleverness on top. 

It is funny when people do foolish things, but when someone does something that informs us what we look like when we do foolish things, it’s a level of comedy that is so funny we don’t laugh or even smile in the moment. It’s a level of comedy that if a professional standup comedian properly deconstructed it and simplified into a three-beat punchline, it could change the manner in which all super sports fans react to soul-crushing losses by their team. The rest of us are better off trying to pretend it never happened, or ignoring it.

So, I wondered if I accidentally silenced a bar with a loud, obnoxious scream, and they thought I was so old that I might be having a heart attack, would I say something like, “I’m sorry I’m just sooo competitive” as an apology for my over-the-top reaction.

The reaction I did not give voice to was, “Who cares if you’re sooo competitive? You’re not playing, and you don’t have kids playing in this game. No one cares if you’re watching this game with a sense of competitiveness attached to it, or if you’re just watching it passively.” What would I do if someone said that to me following a similar outburst? I would probably consider the idea that I need to seriously reevaluate how I react to watching my teams on TV.

The funny thing is when Mark and I watch our sons play baseball, Mark cautions me about going overboard when I react to my son’s errors. “They’re just kids,” he says. And he’s right, but the young men playing on our favorite basketball team are young enough to be his grandsons.

Any criticism I direct at mark should be asterisked with the notion that he and I are far too similar for my tastes. As I wrote, seeing someone act foolish is funny, but seeing someone mirror the manner in which we’ve acted foolish silences us because we don’t know if our laughter is self-referential, ironic, or a meta moment that circumvents our definition of humorous in a manner that makes fun of us. 

I, like Mark, considered it a testament to my character that I refuse to accept mediocrity from the players on my favorite teams. “It says a lot about you that you’re willing to accept just being in a championship game. You should refuse to accept anything less than that ring.” Those are the type of things we super sports fans say to one another, and when I say we, I’m talking about everyone from my inner circle to talking heads on sports shows, to commentators on message boards. We all preach such platitudes so often that they became gospel to those of us watching sports on TV. 

“You do understand that I was not playing in that game, right?” is a reply I learned too late in life to use against those who badger me about my team’s failures. I don’t know where I heard that, but I wish I learned it earlier. It would’ve saved me from the emotional turmoil I experience when someone calls me out. Anytime I watch a game, I want my team to win, but I also don’t want to face those who love to badger me when my team loses. I use this line now when some idiot confronts me with the fact that my team “WE” just lost a crucial game, and I’ve just recently added, “And I realized, with about two minutes left in the game, there was nothing I could do.”

Of course I want my team to win that championship game, I want my team to win every single game, but what are we supposed to do when they don’t? What do I do if they do? It turns out, I’m not playing in that game, so it really doesn’t matter what I do, it doesn’t matter what I think, and it doesn’t matter what I punch, who I insult, or what I scream in the aftermath. That score will not change. If you need this therapy as much as I did, repeat after me, “If my team is in a championship game, it’s the team I chose to support that is in there. It’s not me.” Some of us need to create some distance from the “WE” mind meld we’ve created with our favorite teams that nearly exceeds beyond the vicarious enjoyment and misery we experience watching sports. We need to mentally rewrite what we super sports fans say to one another when we’re watching sports on TV. “It says a lot about you that you’re willing to accept that your favorite team is in the championship game. You should want your favorite team to win that championship game.” If you’re on the outside looking in, and you see this article as so obvious that it’s kind of funny that it took us so long to see it, we applaud you for your happy, healthy outlook on watching sports. Some of us take far too long to get there.

I was already about 70% of the way there when Mark screamed indecipherables at the bar, but that episode absolutely clinched in for me that when we’re on the cusp of the senior citizen demographic, we should start to distance ourselves from the “WE” mind meld we have with our team. When the players on our favorite team are all young enough to be our grandchildren, it’s probably time to cut the frayed tendrils of the leash we have on the idea that we’re still a part of the team. “WE” can’t help it, because we’re “sooo competitive.” “WE” love our team so much that when we watch them on the screen “WE” know when we need to run the ball more often, “WE” know when we need to put the ball in the paint more, and “WE” know what everyone else knows … we really need a hit here.” As hard as it is to accept the realities of age, it’s probably time we stop wanting our team to win so badly that we scream gibberish, hundreds of miles away from the players, in a bar of unsuspecting customers after “WE” make a horrible mistake. It’s probably time we accept the fact that it doesn’t really matter how competitive we are while watching sports on TV? We don’t have to accept the idea that second place is good enough, or that our team had a “good” season, a “good” game, but if we have good kids and grandkids, and we’ve lived a great life, the idea that that some kid dropped a ball is no longer going to cause me to scream something in a bar. I honestly don’t remember doing that, but if I did that part of my life should probably be over now. 

I did get that “NUTSO!” when one of my fellas “WE” dropped the ball, but I did it in the privacy of my home, and I now see that I did it in conjunction with how satisfied I was with the direction of my life. When things weren’t going as I planned, I was a rager. I never harmed myself or my appliances when watching the methodical destruction of my team, or when playing video games, but I was probably pretty miserable to be around. I scared my dog, and my wife no longer enjoyed watching sports with me. Now that I’m more satisfied with the general direction of my life, I’m finally starting to see how foolish it was that I got SO UPSET!!! over a group of guys young enough to be my grandchildren wearing my favorite laundry, losing a game on a television program. I love sports, always have, always will, but I don’t know if I ever really enjoyed watching sports.

“Ok, but if we’re going that deep into underlying psychology, we could say that screaming about a team losing a game is actually quite healthy,” this sports fan once said when called out for my unreasonable displays of frustration and anger. “As you said, we could probably draw hysterical reactions to matters we cannot control with the dissatisfaction he have with the life we lead that we ostensibly have more control over, but those reactions usually manifest in one way or another. Couldn’t we say that yelling at anonymous figures on a screen, be they characters in a video game or in an athletic contest, is actually a no harm no foul way to vent frustrations in life? It’s better than yelling at the wife, the kids, or the dog. If you think the universe is against you, and your favorite teams, beating the furniture, throwing the remote control across the room, or screaming out in public bars are examples of healthier ways to deal with our frustrations in life, at least when we compare them to the alternatives. If we do it right, it can be quite cathartic to be a silly, stupid sports fan.”

“If you do it alone,” I concede. The cathartic effect is all internal, so you might want to create a man cave, tell your family you don’t want to be bothered for three hours, pour your favorite drink, eat your favorite snack, and surround yourself with inexpensive fixtures to undergo your therapy. Or, you might want to consider a more nontraditional, modern method of watching sports: tape it. I know this violates a number of the commandments of the super sports fans bible, but if you have some issues dealing with your team losing that your wife characterizes as unhealthy at times, tape the game, wait until it’s over, find the final score before watching, and just enjoy watching the victories. This might defeat the whole purpose of pursuing therapy through hysterical tirades, but seeing final scores on a phone amounts to seeing numbers as opposed to the vicarious condemnations of character we experience when witnessing our team’s slow progression to failure. Mistakes and miscues during a game are also a lot easier to deal with when we know our fellas will eventually overcome them and prove victorious.  

Needless to say, the reason Mark’s over-the-top reaction affected me so deeply is that if we dismiss the time and place argument, Mark and I are lot more like-minded than I’d care to admit, I admit. We are silly super sports fans who say and do some incredibly stupid things watching sports on TV. The man did give me perspective though, as I now see how foolish I used to be. I thought about some of my bizarre reactions, my hysterical tirades, and about the nonclinical periods of depression I’d go through in the aftermath of a disastrous defeat of my teams on television. The old talk show host Phil Donahue once asked how sports fans do it, “Isn’t it enough to have women break your heart? Why would you welcome more pain into your life?” That probably sounds hyperbolic to non sports fans, but I’ve had sports teams cause me far more pain than women have. Then, after one of my teams finally FINALLY won a championship, I remained purposefully and stubbornly unsatisfied, because I immediately began to focus on next year. If you know a true super sports fan, you know that “Next year” is their refrain. Win or lose, it’s all about next year. We might raise our fist high, scream indecipherables, and maybe cry a little when “WE” win a championship, but if you’ve ever been at a championship-winning table at a bar of screamers, you’ve seen those screams stop and talk about the natural attrition of losing talent, and how “WE” were going to replace them, if “WE” hope to have a chance at a repeat. Then, when “WE” repeated, “WE” wanted a three-peat, and “WE” were miserable when it didn’t happen. Being a super sports fan should be fun and enjoyable, but it’s not if you’re purposefully and steadfastly never satisfied, and you take it as seriously as I did, it can actually make you a little miserable. The only antidote is to understand that you’re not playing in the game, and in sports, no one can hear you scream…if you’re in a public bar that is 897 miles away. 

Camping or Vamping?

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“There are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness, that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy, and its charm.” –Theodore Roosevelt African Game Trails, 1910  

I came up with a word: boring.

When we say something like that, adventure-seekers and wildlife enthusiasts have two words to describe us: city slickers. That’s not good-natured ribbing either. It’s a harsh condemnation as far as they’re concerned, and we can feel their intent soon after they say it. We could try to defend ourselves, but what’s the point? It’s true. We are city slickers who prefer the creature comforts of city-life and technology, and we know it has probably made us all soft and gooey from the inside and out, but we can’t admit that. We have to pretend we’re strong, rugged individualists who could survive in the wild with nothing but a blade and a canteen, because we feel guilty for living the easy life, and we’re a little jealous of the experiences that hardened these outdoorsmen. Are they true survivalists though? Do they know enough to know what they’re supposed to know, or are they just making it up as they go along? Could they compete with a Theodore Roosevelt in the wild, in the harsh conditions he probably experienced, or are they a hybrid between those who are accustomed to modern conveniences and technology combined with our modern definition of the rustic, rugged life? Are they experienced campers or vampers? 

We all heed the call of the wild, and the need to step away from convenience and comfort to escape civilization and embrace our untamed/wild instincts to let our primal nature hang out for all to see. We know it’s just good for the soul to have experiences that teach us more about ourselves. “You’ll never know who you are, who you truly are, until you’re backed into a corner.” And that sounds so romantic that if we brought it up in front of a group, almost all hands would go flying up from those who want to join us on our planned expedition. Some hands will even turn into fists, as they shout, “Yeah, gimme some a that!” But the minute we start darkening spots on a calendar, those hands, smiles, and eyebrows all go down. “Something tells me I’m going to be busy.” 

The concepts behind achieving a true Theodore Roosevelt spirit, seeking adventure and meaning in nature is such a romantic notion that city-slickers can’t but help but want some of that for themselves for at least one weekend, but we always fail. “It doesn’t matter that you fail, because everyone fails at something or another in life. It’s what you do after failure that defines you.” We love that, all of it, but if we’re going to be honest with ourselves, our failure to become this generation’s Theodore Roosevelt will never bother us so much that we’re going to do whatever it takes to make it happen. 

Da Mudder Humper

We know mudder nature offers great solitude and beauty to the unsuspecting and suspecting, but how long how long we’re supposed to stand at the bottom of a mountain before it happens? How long does one quietly stand at the bottom of a mountain before we make a connection to its height and vastness—not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually? I’ve tried to experience it, but someone always interrupts me with, “Ok, are you ready?”  

“No, I’m not ready.” I say with indignation. “Hold on for a second.” This interrupter wanted to checkout prematurely, or what we considered a premature checkout, and we weren’t even halfway done, because we thought were close. “We drove all this way to see this mudder humper. Why don’t you go ahead and give me a second to appreciate her.” And we said that with solid conviction, but we didn’t really know how long we needed to convince them, or ourselves, that the very large mound of dirt and rocks inspired feelings of grandeur and timelessness within us to the point that we made that connection.

We don’t want to be a modern who looks at a mountain of breath-taking glory for twenty-two seconds and checks out and moved on. We want to feel, just for a moment, what our forebears must have experienced when they looked upon this mountain. We all think that the man of yesteryear was more in touch with nature than we are, because we’ve been too modernized. There is truth to that, of course, but did they appreciate the wonder of natural landmarks as much or more than we did? My guess is they didn’t view a mountain range as a breathtaking wonder in the manner we do, but as a pain in the ass that they were either going to cross or navigate around on foot or by horse-drawn carriage. 

***

Spotting nature’s finest critters in their environment, doing what they do, can also be awe-inspiring, but how often do we actually see them in the wild? “The one thing we know about nature with absolute certainty is that it’s unpredictable and unreliable,” a tour guide informed us when we didn’t see a single creature on our tour. If we’re lucky enough to actually see a wild animal in their environs, doing what they do, how many of those moments are inspiring or exciting. Most creatures of wild seem to spend about 75% of their time sleeping, 10% hiding from predators, and the rest of their time actively searching for food, eating that food, and sitting on their can doing nothing. If you’re lucky enough to see them during the percentage of the 15% of their time actively searching then you’re one of the lucky few. I’ve never been that lucky. 

When we see these incredible beasts in a zoo, we immediately think about how awful it is that they have to spend their existence in a caged environment, but if you’ve ever actually seen one of them in the wild, you know caged animals really aren’t missing that much. The wild ones live lives a lot more boring than most of us know. Their whole lives are about eating whatever they can find, sleeping about 15-20 hours a day, and occasionally finding someone to procreate with to extend the species. The caged animal not only sleeps the same amount of time, but they get free, non-taxing delivery of food, and they also have procreation partners delivered to them. The two things zoo patrons might characterize as the primary deprivations of the wild animal is mental engagement and physical exercise, which I think most wild animals would characterize as overrated. Our tour guide basically bolstered my characterizations when she informed us that one of the only ways they can get the wild animals out of their homes is by providing them salt licks, and they conveniently put them in areas where tourists can spot them. Yet, this only increases the chance that an animal will leave their home. It guarantees nothing. 

As a person who is more accustomed to seeing wild animals in action, it’s disappointing to see them do nothing but pant in bask of a sunrise. It’s a pretty decent picture, don’t get me wrong, but at some point you wouldn’t mind seeing what happens after a park ranger sets a mechanical rabbit loose, like they do at the dog tracks to set them in motion. If we got lucky enough to see them hunt or a fight LIVE! and IN ACTION!, and we see them ripping each other apart, we probably wouldn’t want to stick around long enough to see the unsanitary ways they rip entrails out of the loser’s anatomy. We prefer the packages our nature shows put together with their motion-sensitive cameras in the wild, and most of us can’t even last a full show, so we go to YouTube to watch the highlight reels. “It’s not the same,” the nature enthusiast will counter.

“It’s not,” we admit, “but I’ve spent some time in the wild, and I’ve seen these creatures in their habitat, doing what they do, and they’re so boring for such long stretches of time that my embarrassing reflex is to reach for the remote.”  

*** 

I don’t know if I loved camping in the outdoors (on a protected reserve) when I was a kid, or if I just remember my own highlight package, but I had a love/hate relationship with the wild. Back then, I feared, hated, and loved her dark, wooded regions. The creatures I imagined therein were not all earthly either. I had a vivid imagination, and I imagined that everything outside the campfire light was mysterious, had hidden spirits, and its own relative charm. Now that my imagination has lost some of its vividness, I know I likely would’ve found nothing if I dared venture beyond the campfire light into those dark, foreboding regions. And if I ever had the misfortune of running into one of the most fearsome beasts imaginable in that darkness, my guess is that they’d probably be more scared of me than I am of them, or asleep. I would never tell younger me any of that though, because I know those fears added to the charm of those camping trips, and I still feel that every time I smell burning wood.

When we get older, but not so old that we lose our imagination, we try to recapture the magical charm camping once held for us. The problem is that our parents handled most of the particulars of camping when we were very young, so we needed to find a friend who was a more experienced camper. We searched for that fella or female who knew how to help us, and when we finally found him, we found that the biggest difference between an experienced camper and an inexperienced one is mostly about the tent. Our experienced camper put up quite a few tents in his day, but he wouldn’t put our tent up for us. He didn’t want to deprive us of the sacred rite of passage involved in putting up a first tent, which was the whole reason we invited him to our camping expedition. When we were done, he laughed at us, and he pulled the stakes out another half-inch. “That’s it,” we asked ourselves. “That’s the difference between an experienced camper and an inexperienced one?”

No, that’s not it, he brought a flashlight. “You forgot a flashlight?” he asked with disgust. “You, my friends, are inexperienced campers,” he said. We felt insecure about our lack of knowledge, and we felt some shame for being so unprepared. Feelings of shame are usually followed by some form of rebellion, and we felt that bubbling to the surface, but our experienced camper was not very attractive, he was out of shape, and he was a subpar employee in our company who didn’t have many friends, so we let him wallow in his camping superiorities.

Once we managed to get past the tent and supplies portion of the camping routine, we all decided to go fish. Our experienced camper was also an experienced fisherman, and he did not appreciate us doing the only thing inexperienced fisherman love about fishing: casting. We were casting for distance, and we were casting to break up the boredom of fishing. We also reasoned that because the lake was full of moss and weedy, frequent casting kept it more debris-free. Plus, we didn’t want the fish nibbling our nightcrawler off the line. “What are you doing?” he whispered at us in disgust. “You should be recasting 5-7 minutes apart at the very least.” When we asked him why, our question was a respectful one that ceded to his authority. He explained his rationale, and it was a rather generic answer that involved the frequency of the recast depending on the bait type, water conditions, and target species. When we attempted to explore with more specifics, he tried to answer, but his answers didn’t satisfy us, so we kept asking. “Stop talking,” he spat in whisper, “you’re scaring the fish away.” We respectfully waited beyond reason to speak again, and when we did, he repeated: “Stop talking, you’re scaring the fish away.” We tried to display respect, through more silence, but when we got too bored and tried whispering things to him, he moved to the other side of the lake. Our takeaway was that while camping is boring, but fishing is mind-numbing.

When we extinguished our campfire at the end of the night, our experienced camper brought out an inflatable mattress, which we considered a cardinal sin of the camping world, until he followed that with a Flextailgear Max Pump Three that promised to “inflate the standard inflatable mattress in under two minutes with a 5,000 Pascal pressure rating and a built-in camping light.” We read that off the box to our experienced camper and asked him what his patron saint of outdoorsiness, Theodore Roosevelt, would think of an inflatable mattress with a Flextailgear Max Pump Three. 

“I don’t care,” he said. “There’s no way I’m sleeping on that cold hard ground.”

It’s not for me, but I respect anyone and everyone who tries to “ruff it” in the wild, but what does “ruffing it” mean? It’s relative to the person of course, but we all know that minor level of sensory deprivation nature provides can yield a certain sense of peacefulness, as we attempt to connect with nature and ourselves. It’s a momentary escape from the distractions we so enjoy. Once we’re done with that relatively quiet walk through a trail in a wooded region, we ask ourselves what’s the difference between a true outdoorsman, an adventure seeker, an experienced camper, and someone who never travels outside the city? Our guide, teacher, experienced camper or vamper, knew his stuff, but how much stuff is there to know when we go out camping? He improved the taughtness of our tent by moving it about a half-inch, he remembered a flashlight, and he knew enough not to talk while fishing, but he also brought modern conveniences that would’ve made the experienced outdoorsman of yesteryear groan. He didn’t help us renew our appreciation of anything, unless we’re talking about our renewed appreciation for the controlled climate an HVAC can provide, the appliances that provide convenience and comfort, and our devices. When we’re nestled back in our comfortable homes, we appreciate not being smashed into by bugs, as when they see a campfire light, they think it’s a moon, they fly kamikaze-style into it. The june bugs, in particular, don’t seem to care that something as big as a human face stands between them and the light. When we’re in the comfy confines of our home, we also know that nothing is going to stick its disgusting, grimy little proboscis in us to suck blood out of our system. More than anything else, our camping trip gave us a renewed appreciation of our sense of home. Theodore Roosevelt would not have approved of any of this, but the only word we could find to describe “hidden spirit of the wilderness, that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy, and its charm” was boring, and hot and sticky, oh! and the two words ‘never again,’ sorry, Teddy.