The proper outdoors experience

Last year, for my birthday, I was given a copy of "The Lost Art of Reading Nature's Signs," a book that contained a lot of new information about a very not-new-to-me subject: looking at things while you're outside. In the interest of context, I provde an excerpt here that summarizes one of my key takeaways from the book:

"Which way am I looking? What will the weather do? How far is that? What is the temperature? How old is that? What will I see next? These simple questions and many others, if answered without the aid of dumb tools and with clues from smells, shades, colors and shapes, will force the senses and mind to work together afresh and light an intriguing bonfire between the walker's ears.
A fair warning should be issued here: this is not a process for all; not everyone should be expected to enjoy such ignitions. There are many kinds of walkers. There are some who like to walk to switch off their mind, and there is nothing wrong with that. There is however a large group of walkers who like to feel their minds flex with their legs and this book is written for them. For those who feel that the mind will get plenty of rest in the brief lulls during sleep or the apparently abundant downtime after death, then walking is a time to revel in fresh insight.
There have, I am aware, been documented cases of these two groups of walkers tolerating each other's company and even passing pleasant hours together. However, the worrying twinkle in the eyes of the latter group tends to scatter the former and the two should not, in the normal course of events, attempt to walk together. They are best advised to place small hills between each other."

The last week has seen my housemate start to identify birds by call after two or so weeks of walks, intensive, with returning migratory birds and with year-round residents beginning their 'it's good weather, so it's time to establish territory' calls.

My parents have talked before about how they notice things outside, so I assume at this point that I got my outdoors behavior from them. I don't think the Boy Scouts helped, and I know having multiple coworkers awake to the things that lurk in bushes and trees hasn't done anything to help me not pay attention to literally everything I see while I'm outside on the trails.

That's actually not what this is about - I've reached a peace with this, an understanding that whatever my past-life predator or prey drive is, I can't change that and I might as well just acknowledge all the things that catch my eye. What this is about is the realization that, no matter how committed to being the first kind of walker one may be, I think the right attitude from those of us among the class of the second can bring members of the first into the ranks, as well. In the case of my housemate, just caring at all, then extended to identifying which birds are yelling at the feeders as her cat watches from the open bedroom window, seems to be an indication that my constant babbling about which bird is making what yell is taking root. A friend who I introduced to white-breasted nuthatch some weeks ago, who did not seem previously inclined to me to care deeply about what kind of little upside-down butt-nugget (thanks, Field Guide to Dumb Birds) was mewing at us from a tree alongside the mall at work, was delighted to see our new friend hopping madly down a tree trunk. And I just concluded a conversation with a friend who appreciates flowers, but at the cost of spending time getting to know them, instead preferring to take a picture and move on.

I wonder if I could change that. I wonder if, given time with someone who recognizes that outside exists, if you can't turn 'hey look at that thing.' into 'hey look at this thing.' The difference is subtle, to be sure. 'That' is an outward-bound word, one that implies acknowledgement but not understanding. 'This,' in this case, implies a desire to bring an understanding together with the object.

At any rate, if you're the second type of walker, try just sharing what you're doing with the first type. Not trying to get them to do the appreciation themslves, just appreciate in front of them. See if they don't join you next time you're out.

Musical Arrangement, certain values thereof

I just bought an album (Failure - In The Future Your Body Will Be The Furthest Thing From Your Mind) and realized for the first time ever that I had to add it to two playlists.

I have a delightfully anachronistic relationship with iTunes: I still use it in this, The Year Of Our Lord Two Thousand and Twenty. Not only do I still use it for listening to music, I still use it for syncing things (namely: music) to my phone. That makes more sense now that I'm on an iOS device, but the other big 'benefit' to it was that Google Play Music's Windows app would sync playlists to Play Music, and then also the software does a pretty good job keeping my folders organized and labeled correctly.

All of which is to say that I have a playlist scheme

My primary playlist is another anachronism, called simply 'iPod.' This has always been the playlist I use to sync tracks to my portable music thing, both back when I was using an iPod Mini and its subsequent replacement Nano, when I had an iPod Touch from work, and my more modern work iPad and personal iPhone. Basically, this is a more convenient way to deal with not syncing things than unchecking them form my library. I don't need Short Music for Short People ruining my music app's view, but I do want it to come up on random.

The other playlists started life more recently, I think about 2011 or maybe 2012. They are: 1 - High School, 2 - College, 3 - Adult Life, and 4 - The Cancer Years. I only created 4 about six weeks ago, because I 'forgot' I had had a new life-changing event, and I believe I use life-changing events to categorize my music strata and determine where terranes begin and end. This isn't as simple as year of release; I didn't 'discover' grunge until late 2018, so I can't place it in 1 without being dishonest. To an extent, I also won't count something I listened to on and off in a previous era unless I actually owned the albums. The ex that was super into CAKE when I was still in college did not mean that I got to put their first three albums in 2 - they went into 4, because that's when I bought and incorporated them into my consciousness.

Anyway, I think it's worth documenting somewhere that the signifiers - to use my language from earlier, the faults - that separate my listening are graduating from high school and starting college; graduating from college; and beginning diagnosis and treatment for cancer. To use a slightly different metric, the first CD I remember buying was Oasis' What's The Story, which I would have bought in 1995. Some of the earliest music I had at all were Green Day's first works, the collected 1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours and Kerplunk, though I'm pretty sure I had a copy of Dookie before Insomniac came out. I started collecting music in 1994, basically. I graduated from high school six years later. Owing to my garbage performance as an academic, I finished college six years later. Owing to random chance, I was asked to go get my neck ultrasound six years later. I'm actually, by the logic of my musical proclivities, two years overdue for a life-changing event. I'm pretty sure nothing meaningful in-the-long-run happened in 2018, but who knows. I'm decidedly still operating within The Cancer Years, so it's not like I have a convenient name to assign to the new stretch. I stopped performing music in 2019, but that would have been seven years anyway... it's not terribly important if there's no answer to this, I just thought it was interesting that there's probably a perceptible shift in my listening tastes for each set of experiences. If I use the right music tool, I can even time travel to whatever the most relevant group of music is. Pour one out for my college years.