Greenland water
I took this photo: some days you’re the spider
Life and death. Eeny, meeny, miny, mo, catch a grasshopper by the toe.
There are good days. There are bad days.
Some days you’re a black widow spider on top of your web. The world is at your feet, and it fears you.
Other days, you’re the grasshopper, caught by the most delicate thread and just by the toe. Yet, each time you hop away, you land in exactly the same place.
I took this photo on a day when I was perceived as the spider – though I felt like the grasshopper. Gratefully, those days are past.
Societal Insanity v. A Safer World
In 1997 I moved from western Massachusetts to Maine. Several people asked me, “Are you going to get a gun?” I laughed. I thought this was an odd question.
When I left Maine to work in Alaska, many people told me, “You better get a gun.” I guess Alaska is a scary place relative to Maine.
After that summer in Alaska, I spent the winter in Utah. I went back to Alaska the next summer and then worked in Wyoming the following winter. I moved to Montana. Each step along the way, people said the same thing, “ You better start packin’.”
I left Montana and moved to eastern Washington State. My boyfriend at the time gave me his shotgun. It remained in the back corner of a closet until we broke up and he asked me to return it.
Now, I am leaving Washington. I have bought a camper for the bed of my pick-up and plan to spend a few months, maybe years, cruising around to the many places I haven’t had time to visit during other busy travels. And, once again, people have begun asking me if I have a gun or if I am going to get one.
I have never owned a gun. I have used them for clay pigeon shooting on occasion, I have carried one as a mandatory safety precaution in polar bear country, I shot at woodchucks when I was a teenager.
How many school shootings, mass shootings, random shootings have there been this year? How many people have been killed in the U.S. this year by a gun, self-inflicted, accidental, or intended?
I’m not anti-gun. I don’t think gun control will resolve all of the insanity of our society.
I may lead a charmed life.
I choose to step into the world unarmed. I believe that adding a gun to my travel gear will not make me safer.
Rather, I believe that choosing not to carry a gun will make the world safer.