Dear Everyone:
This week’s edition of Cereal with Hand Poured Milk comes to you from deep in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
Never heard of it?
Trust me: put it on your bucket list.
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Few things reconnect us with us better or more thoroughly than time spent off-grid in wild places. Feet in dirt, face to sun, pack on back... It is powerful, healing, and restorative.
For our family, the Boundary Waters has a special pull. It calls us back every year, summer and winter, without fail. I've gotten lost in wild places all across this continent: the BWCA is without equal.
The Boundary Waters carried my eldest son, Joseph, through years of leukemia treatment. He found both purpose and passion in that time and, as is so often the case, his time in the wilderness profoundly shaped the man he is becoming.
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I'm sure I'll have all sorts of Face-Eating Bear adventures to share upon my return. Until then, I leave you with this thought from the irreplaceable Ed Abbey:
One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out.
Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast....a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it.
While you can.
While it’s still here.
So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space.
Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators.
I promise you this: You will outlive the bastards.
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Connect, laugh, play.
Actively seek awe and joy.
And yes, #Hydrate (this week I'm drinking straight from the lake...
...oh don't @ me. I know what I'm doing)
More Soon,
Dr. K
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