Now is the Sweet Spot
Its Wild yet Familiar
I’ve resisted writing because I wonder what’s left to write. And if that something I write could be written by an LLM?
If so, then what’s the point? I heard a commentator on public radio declare they refuse to use AI for anything. Yikes. Whether they know it or not, they’re using it. I turned off my truck and pondered how this naive take on the world persists. She was correct in that, cognitively, to a point, these advancements will decrease human intellect for some. That’s no different than the calculator, computer, or internet. I believe it simply shifts our baseline higher, which probably scares some people because it means upping their game or reskilling. In my case, if Claude writes an essay indistinguishable from my own, then my motivation to write it goes down.
So I find myself going back to familiar things AI can’t do; slaying trees for firewood, project wood, and habitat management.
There’s an urgency right now.
To cut the trees before the leaves come out, before the bugs come out, before I cut down a tree or a branch that has a wasp nest on it, or I stumble through a hornet’s nest on the ground. Now is the sweet spot, but it’s brief.
A stream of trees flows downhill as they are cut. With each, years of memory and carbon lay on the ground to rot.
It smelled like gasoline, the chainsaw, the wood, the wood chips, and they mixed with leather of my gloves.
There are times when I’m sore from working in the woods, then there are other times when I’m broken. I ignore the soreness and go beyond that point to where it doesn’t feel good the next day; body is broke, muscles ache, Advil doesn’t help, and why not do that? Sure, it’s sore. But if we don’t feel that, then we never know how to fully appreciate that time of rest. That time of feeling good. Knowing what else there could be. My mind and body become spoiled.
I feel the impulse to throw those house plants out instead of keeping them, maintaining them, watering them. They are a chore. But they bring a forced presence. It’s inefficient.
When I re-read Into the Wild again recently, I still empathized with McCandless in many ways, the most poignant being an undeniable drive to be in the wild. I feel silly, actually, since my mindset in this regard has changed little since I first read this book. In high school, I remember telling people that all I really needed was a bag of rice, and there I’d go, who knows where?
Quotes scrawled in McCandless’ botany text and the interior of the school bus on the Stampede Trail are quotes that inspire me too, resonate within me too. The quest to create our own version of wilderness creates an immense distraction.
What separated McCandless and me, beyond age, was privilege. McCandless’ well-to-do upbringing gave him opportunities that the majority of humans who have ever existed would be envious of. In addition to his overpacked backpack he hiked to Alaska with, he also carried an invisible bag that embodied the privilege of a wealthy and educated person, which in turn granted him the confidence and gumption with which he approached the world. He was skilled with many knacks, and over time, I imagine, this lead to a type of entitlement only those born into wealth experience. This is the crux his and and my difference. McCandless had a parachute, allowing him to engage in the playacting of a blue-collar worker, delivering pizzas and driving a crappy car.
But I do share the impulsivity, stubbornness, and radical belief of McCandless, yet I lack that embodied privilege to fall back on, and that probably kept me from making as careless a decision as McCandless at that age.
At times, I’m bored like him, too; moments of inspiration exist, but now the urge for the wild grows, a sentiment of unease that I believe McCandless felt after staying too long in one place. An itch to unsettle and be unsettled. Or to get to the unfamiliar.
Familiarity
The ridges, the trees, the landmarks, and the topography. There are people who cherish this familiarity, grow with it, and evolve. They appreciate it in different ways over time. Sometimes I wish I were one of those people.
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This is tough, Jesse. I do think it is possible to write without LLMs, depending of course on how we define "write". Some obviously copy and paste an LLM into their Substack without even mentioning it. Some use LLMs to rewrite, others to check for grammar. But I do believe it is possible to write without LLMs, without any of the above, and to produce 100% human-created content. Even if an LLM can write the same thing, writing is still a fundamentally human and crucial act. Few writers have ever said anything original. More likely they slightly retooled what has already been said. And yet they contributed to the ancient dialogue; they found meaning in the process; they saw the world through a new lens; they learned more about themselves during their time here. Maybe the solution is to slay a tree and enjoy its warmth in a fire—and then write about how and why this interaction of nature and human nature is so fundamentally human.
Time for a trip. It’s sometimes hard to locate, but it’s there, especially when a man returns.