Where we belong

I've been thinking about Mark's comment on July 23 on where we belong.

In "The wild places" by Robert Macfarlane, he says:

"We have come increasingly to forget that our minds are shaped by the bodily experience of being in the world - its spaces, textures, sounds, smells and habits"

I may be romantic, but have spent hundreds of hours alone in the woods with my dogs, absorbing their beauty (the woods AND the dogs!)

RN ships always carried a  RNSA 14 ft gunter-rigged dinghy, and when in port I liked to take it alone to explore all the corners of the harbour - not always beautiful, but taking in the sense of place.

I'm also very grateful to have spent hundreds of hours watchkeeping on an open bridge in the navy. What memories!  Duffle coats and oilskins, feeling the weather,  steaming cups of Ki (thick cocoa), bacon-and-egg sandwiches, or just looking at the stars and watching the sun rise over the "wine-dark sea" (really).  Looking at the coast and wondering what it's like there. The first exercise in the Med that Cygnet took part in was escorting a "convoy" from Thessalonica down the Aegean to Malta, watching the islands go by with their little white villages.

In the 1960s, because of the  threat of nerve gas and nuclear fallout, bridges were enclosed, with air conditioning and windscreen wipers, and the magic was gone.

Comments

[Charles]

I don't wish to be crtical, and I enjoy reading your blogs, but it is quite eerie reading about the past in the future! There is either something wrong with the blog dates either from the computers (probably) or from yourself (possibly).

[Tone]

I use blogspot, not typepad - but they probably function in somewhat the same way.
If I start writing something, save it as a draft, - work on it a bit, and then publish it for others to see some days later - it is the date of the first draft that is shown as publication date.

I imagine Mike wants the real publication date to be seen, and has used that as a header. Am I right?