‘How many people have you met who truly make and follow their own paths?’
I’ve been reading about Bill Coperthwaite over the last few days. Deep dove into him after discovering him in the winter months. That lead to me searching out a hard to find documentary made about him from the local library system. This lead me to meeting a friendly librarian neighbor who lead to me vending at the library fair this spring.
I had been building yurts a season or two ago now and while I’m sure I had heard about him tangentally, spoken about by others–I had never really gotten into looking him and up and hearing about his philosophy.
Like most of the various interests that come to inspire and drive me forward- I haven’t the slightest clue what brought me upon him this winter. Not specifically. That’s now lost to the sands of time, and left behind is this path.
I’m reading this book about him, “A Man Apart” and I came upon this quote, which it the subject of this post and it stopped me in my tracks. It was spoken about Bill from two Sailors who came upon him unexpectedly.
“How many people have you met who truly make and follow their own paths”
Yes how many people have I met who have truly made and follow their own paths?
This thought tends to drive my life – I find people who manage to do it quite fascinating and respectable – even if I don’t agree with their way of life necessarily. Credit where credits due for breaking free of the limited molds our society goads and then forces us in with the various carrots and sticks of modernity.
And like lots of things in my life- I didn’t quite realize that this did, until I came upon this quote. Not consciously at least. Yet looking back at the various choices I have made, people I admire, skills that I have learned and been drawn to- it becomes quite clear that this man seems to be a kindred spirit in a world awash in corporate sponsored conformity.
It seems these days that while there are more and more ways to stand out, still we find ways to follow others paths. We want a field guide for our lives, how do I do this? Which way is best to optimize my results? Who has done this before that I can follow?
Now I’m not discounting mentors and saving time by following where the successes in a journey are – what I’m here ruminating on is how often we simply become copies of others by doing so. At the point in which we are meant to veer off onto our own paths, we instead choose the safer path that has been trodded by those in front of us.
What am I really attempting to say here? Or I am I simply rambling on a post from months ago because it popped up on my computer. Disjuncted from the stop and go nature of the writing. Up to walk the dog. Over to tend the garden. Down to harvest the mushrooms. Each time coming back to sit in front of the computer to finish this post- only to feel the pull of various form of life I desire to tend to – instead of staring at a backlit screen in a room removed of the precious sunlight which drives us and orients us in this natural world I hold so dear.
Outside I can hear gunshots- it is summertime and one of the things people who live in the woods(or more precisely, vacation at their second house in the woods, away from the city) like to do is fire off their firearms on their property. I’ve met the man, he is a retired MA policeman who, due to his wife’s alzheimers was unable to complete their retirement plans. The move was too destabilizing for her. So before one assumes it’s some redneck firing off guns, yelling about immigrants because we live in a rural place- please remember we really don’t know what sorts of issues people are going through. We all process differently and we all find solice from this, at time unfair world, in different ways.
This post is getting too far away from the initial topic and I’m at risk of burying it in the drafts folder again.
So with that I’ll be on my way for a woods walk with Owsley before coming back to troubleshoot the new website.
I wish you at some point in this long life to experience the thrill of forging your own path through this world.
Even if only for a day.
Awen
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