On Mother’s Day weekend a number of other dads and I took all of our kids camping in a shelter on the Appalachian Trail in Frederick County.
It was great to be able to get the kids in the outdoors. And great to be able to do so so close to home.
And great, of course, to hang out by the fire after the kids went to bed.
Though it was a long night and a bleary morning.
Last night Kita and I met up with some friends last night at Frederick Cellars, which is a great new place in downtown Frederick. A guy who owns a vineyard in Frederick county moved his wine presses and everything into an old warehouse downtown. The wine and the ambiance are great.
We saw a great local blues musician there for the first time, Kelly Carmichael. He was fantastic. Righteous, old-time sound. Could do whatever he wanted with the guitar.
I bought his CD. Below you can listen to his cover of Robert Johnson’s “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom”:
It was another great night in our town. Our city is both so small and mellow. But we also have great culture like this that we can walk to. It is a blessing.
My friend Christine just wrote a post about belonging in life and how she’s found that in Frederick. It was very well written. A great articulation of what’s been a big issue in my mind and soul for a long time. And similarly Kita and I have found a great sense of community and of belonging in Frederick just like Christine and Jim.
Needing to belong, needing to having community is a universal impulse, I believe. In fact is is really the most important thing in life in my mind and heart. In our country we are, without really realizing it, eroding our ability to achieve such community. It is horrible. In Frederick we have a little outpost, a little bulkwark against the trend. Hopefully from here we’ll take a stand and reverse the tide.
Christine ends by talking about looking to bring other friends into her Frederick community. I’m always hassling my remote friends on the same topic. Hopefully by reading Christine’s post they’ll see that others echo my claim’s of Frederick’s wonderfulness and my pitches will have more credibility.
Photo of Frederick’s ‘06 “In The Street” by 2ndHalf on Flickr
Christine: despite being male, I relate alot to your post. Part of why I like living in Frederick is that we avoid lots of the pressures that make our lives complex. I think that we all do a pretty good job of making things simple. One of the biggest elements, in fact, is how compact our lives our here. I think that time spent driving around is one of the great time drains in America, and we are all quite fortunate to avoid that.
I think that business is also generated through isolation. There is so much that we do individually that we could accomplish much more efficiently if done collectively. Again, I think that our community does a better than average job with this, but we could do better. Co-housing is the next step. 
At the end of the day the challenge is entirely inside ourselves to weed out the distractions. It is all about prioritization. But it is a great challenge for everyone.
mason–
all right! way to post!
i like what you have to say here. i do think that we are indeed to distanced from nature and need to get closer to it.
then the specific issue you mention on fox hunting in england? to me, that is a rather small point in the big issue of man and nature. as long as foxes aren’t endangered, i have no problem with fox hunting, especially since it is done with dogs instead of guns.
i think the bigger issue there is probably the people of england giving a big “fuck you” to the lingering artistocratic class, no?
anyhow, i like the post. let’s keep the nature stuff going!
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