Springtime Flood

Most of you do not know where I live or more specifically, where my main mailing address is. Software applications allow you to find me and even look at my house on a certain day. But I do not reside there.

I am a wanderer, roaming Earth in search of new adventures. I have another house that sits on stilts in the middle of an island surrounded by moving water called a river. You will not find the house with Google or any other search routine. I do not own the island and the house has no legal rights. I built the house from rocks and nonliving plant tissue - it is not a weatherproof structure in the suburban safety sense. Instead, it offers me shelter from the storms formed by my species.

When I sit in my home away from Rome, I think about the ways I can reach this paradise rich with blood-sucking insects. I can use a floating transport device like a canoe, a kayak or the inner tube of a tire. I can tie a rope upstream of the island and guide myself across the river. I can drop from an airplane and steer a parachute into the trees on the island. I can swim. I can build a bamboo bridge. I can sit on a log and hope it lodges itself on the overhanging roots and branches of the island.

There are many ways to get here, but not all of them work well during the rainy season.

I know many fellow wanderers who would like to find my rustic retreat. I see wanderers, homeless people, if you will, treating highway structures like bridges and overpasses the way I treat the island - temporary lodging that belongs to everyone, free for the use and worth every penny.

Only one aspect of civilization bothers me: if we belong to this planet then we should not have to pay other humans for the right to live here. Many dissertations, treatises and arguments over a beer in a pub have centered on this issue so I will not cover all the pros and cons related to property ownership. I know it will not go away - we have too long enjoyed the advantages of housing that the agricultural lifestyle afforded us and will not return to the nomadic, communal land ownership lifestyle until our current civilization collapses hundreds or thousands of years from now.

This isle of idleness, or self-idolatry, serves more as a meditation platform than a place to live. Recent floods have flushed out landlubbers like snakes, turtles and rabbits. The smell of dead fish and light mudlines on vegetation many feet above the river's surface tell me that I missed the height of the flood and thank my previous self for building a suspended seasonal residence.

A heron, perhaps Ardea herodius, flies overhead. I have seen otters but do not know where they live. Birds of all types come and go throughout the day, making me wonder if birds have daily routes they take in search of food and fun, or do they wander aimlessly like my thoughts?

Today, I finished the last class of my third course of my first term as an instructor. I admit I'm a little sad seeing my first "crop" of students go on to their next courses at ITT Tech - it's like watching little birds test their wings and leave the nest - I sure hope my teaching methods gave them the strength and knowledge they need to succeed.

I received a preliminary set of student survey results from this quarter and reviewed them with the department chairs this week. The students gave me the equivalent of an A rating. The feedback embedded in comments was very helpful. Although high scores are good news, I'd rather see comments that give me the specific feedback I need to address shortcomings in the classroom. Like the mosquitos and ticks around here who feast on my blood, I can never get enough comments from surveys, positive or negative!

The sun, the moon and this planet do not know the definition of a week or a weekend. Even a day is not something the sun or moon clearly understand. However, I do. Thus, today and the next two days constitute an extended weekend here in my local culture, giving me the time to enjoy a little getaway. The sky grows dark so either I throw a pole into the river to quickly catch a bite to eat or I continue to meditate on an empty stomach. In either case, I am saying good night to you, twilight letting me read for a short while before laying down and disappearing into the landscape.

I will teach a class on Linux during the summer term so it's time to pull out my Linux Bible and brush up on the all the little tips, tricks and techniques I learned in my days as a test lab manager at different companies that I have pushed into the background of my thoughts during my midlife retirement years as a writer. Zhhhh...smack! Dang skeeter!

Won't be long before I take a full dive back into the river of work life again. Whitewater rafting, here I come! Yee-haw!