Waiting for the Last Gasp – Adam Overland

I’ve been feeling uncharacteristically (at least so far on this trip) frustrated as today has progressed. And I think I can pin it on two things. Thing 1) I’m starting to get a little pissed off about not catching fish, and thing 2) I get frustrated with myself if I don’t accomplish things, whether that’s a creative project or physical labor, or even exercise. 

Don’t get me wrong: I know how to relax. I am a professional at relaxing. So it doesn’t even have to be every day that I accomplish something. But I need that sense of accomplishment—it’s key to how I perceive/judge/feel about myself. Accomplishment for me usually requires some form of work. This week has been slow at my work/job, and I’d rather be, if not busy, then at least creatively occupied. 

If this ever happens at home, I have hobbies I can turn to, like stonework. Sometimes it’s cutting and hammering rock into things like birdbaths, or building a stone wall, or some outside project. Because of this, I’m usually feeling the best in the spring, summer, and fall when I’m at home, because I can always think of things to do, where at the end of the day, I can say “I did that.” I already have a plan to put in a driveway extension this spring and summer out of stone, and I’m really excited about doing it. But I can’t really build stuff out of rocks or anything else at the campground. Fortunately, the opposite of a creative outlet is a destructive one, and I’ve always been good at those. So I’m going to have a fire tonight and watch things burn, and tomorrow I’ll at least go on a bike ride or a jog or do some pushups. 

Last night I took a shower late in the evening at the campground bathroom and there was a tree frog in the stall with me. He looked so perfect that he didn’t seem real, so of course I had to poke him lightly in the butt. He jumped from the wall to the shower stall door astonishingly fast and just stuck there. You can see the tiny suction cups on his frog feet. Which got me thinking about poking things, and the history of poking things. 

On this trip, I’ve poked or prodded with my hands and feet a bunch of stuff. Mostly things on the beach, odd detritus that had washed up, or freaky sea life, like horseshoe crab shells, or sea pork. Then, after poking it, I’ll usually go back and look up a little about the thing I poked on the web. I feel like humans have likely poked things since the beginning of time, and we’ll continue to do so, probably right up until we poke the wrong thing. If something fell from the sky during caveman times, and a couple cavemen were standing around—let’s say they are two friends named Grog and Treeg—one of them is going to poke the thing, and the other will watch from a safe distance. 

“Hey Grog, what that?” Treeg will ask. And Grog will say, “Me not know. Why not Treeg poke and find out?” 

And ever since then, that’s basically how we’ve lived. That’s how discovery happens. Successes and failures. Grog might observe, “Today Treeg eat bright thing found on ground. Right away he shit self.” 

And so if Treeg lives, he doen’t eat the thing again, and neither does Grog, of course, because Treeg is an idiot who always goes first.

I know it’s an oversimplification, but today we poke things all the time to find treatments and cures for everything from covid to cancer. We poke things into space. We poke them into the ocean. We figure this thing called life out and hopefully we poke it better as time goes on. That’s all we can do. 

A final thought from Grog:

“Little Grog always ask questions. He say, ‘Why this? Why that?’”

“I say, ‘That just mystery of life.’ But I never have education, so maybe not so mystery.”