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AS I TRY TO EXPLAIN to questioning friends and relatives my motives and desires, and they try to express the concrete realness of theirs, we both must realize that even though different, it is just games we play, with no score and no final outcome. I am just a homeless bum, and you a successful citizen. There is a table between us. And we are alive. contributed story: The Wisdom of the Mountains And The Science of the Healthy Mind |
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STORIES::::NEW UPDATES, MORE ON THE WAY... NEW: visit The Buckeye Review open blog / adventure literary journal...for other, new writings.... •Unpublished Book Excerpts: •The Shadow of the White Mountains, a fast solo ski traverse of the White Mountains, California, and a bit of the human history and natural history of the range. •Chasing Bliss, a story about living isolated in the mountains, while also needing to pursue the beautiful surf of Baja. •The Thief of the San Joaquin, a true story about a mysterious food robbery at my isolated cabin at Red's Meadow a few years ago. Older •PORTRAIT OF WILDNESS AS A GIANT PACK CRUSHING ME, skiing home with the usual load...(Unpublished) •THE DEVIL'S COLD AND BORED THESE DAYS, our first ski of the season, touring through the national monument, snowed in for the winter (Unedited version of article published in Mammoth Monthly, January 2004) Others--- •DECEMBER, journal excerpts during 128 inches of snowfall spread over just a couple weeks... •FINDING THE RED LINE, touring/camping for solo mid-winter powder turns in a wild, steep cirque •BARBARIANS IN DEMOCRACY, essay on being a modern barbarian (Unpublished) •ENDLESS FREEDOM, 35 days on the duct tape fringe (Unedited version of article published in Issue 29 of Backcountry Magazine 2001) •DAWN PATROL, a slice of life (Unedited version of article published in Off Piste Magazine XIV, October 2002) •NEW HOME, musings about my new job (Unpublished) •SUNNY DAY IN MID-NOVEMBER, early powder skiing in the backyard (Unpublished) •BLANCO -> BOUNDARY, three days on the crest of the White Mountains (Unpublished) •A CHRISTMAS GIFT, this year's mystical, most unexpected gift (Published Winter 05/06 by Telemark Skier) •LIGHT TOURING, a random warm day in february sparks new inspiration (Published in 05 by Backcountry) •WINTER IN THE WOODS, Why did I move to the woods? (Unpublished) •MY VISION, fresh from the city, the awakenings and revelations of mountain life at age 18 (Published Los Altos High School Arts Magazine 1998)
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<(o-: - - - - - - - -P O E T R Y Untitled—January/2005— lost no meaning can be found ring of coffee cup rough bark, sharp branch beer can, faceless memory |
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FILMS - PHOTOGRAPHY - GRAPHICS- WRITINGS
Copyright © 2007 David Huebner, All Rights Reserved
I GUESS THE PROBLEM I HAVE could easily be described as trying to be respectably homeless in America. Sitting down at the living room table, or on the phone with relatives, it just doesn't jive. "How will you afford your car?" (Somehow.) "So, where will you be living up there?" (In my car.) "You need to work, what will you do for work?" (Laborer.) And so I sit there, smiling, everyone around me being well-to-do with histories full of "good jobs" and "steady income." And though I have answers for some of their questions, it's as if they're spoken in a foreign language. Looks of confusion spread over their questioning faces, tones of bewilderment, reluctant acceptance fills their voices, and they seem to regard me as dreamily living on a flat planet; pursuing a lifestyle that lacks substance or even the flimsiest reality. Or maybe it's that flimsy scrap piece of reality that my upbringing, and schooling brings to the whole mess that makes it just this side of completely crazy. Likely the small scattered "successes"---published stories, a ski movie, random high paying jobs---give them brief pieces of understandable reality from which to hang, if only to be broken up by vast periods for which they have nothing.
STRETCHES OF TIME when I'm just "hanging out - the skiing's great!" Or "going to the desert to hang out and do some hiking, then we'll come back and go climbing or something." Or now, "Mariah and I are going to Baja for three months to surf." Eons of nothingness. Goals built out of water: you might as well just let the hose run. Not the shiny polished things they dreamt of like a family, a nice house, and a good job; goals built out of mortar and stone, hard work and responsibility.I feel like I'm often telling them that the world they've been bred into, with it's rigid ideas of success, actually has a sister planet on which anything is possible. "You love living on your flat planet, don't you," they say with their eyes and faces, worried that I may never accept that Columbus proved me wrong hundreds of years ago, that I may never accept their reality as my own.
VISIT AFTER VISIT, year after year, me the english speaking alien that is constantly trying to convince everyone that I'm human, really, just like you. And yet I know that I'm not just like them, that if they're human, I'm from Mars, because I can't breath and live in their lifestyles and they can't in mine. In 1997 I was changed, mutated, reverted by the beautiful wisdom of the High Sierra backcountry. I turned to a more primitive calling, a simpler existence, and now their world only reaches me as a disease might be borne on the wind, or a seed caught in a pants cuff. I no longer breathe the same air, nor pump the same blood. My eyes don't see what their's see. Jobs and income, the city and grand highways. Conveniences and the latest thing. Like they look at me, I look at them and their world - annoyed that it feels their is a veil I will never lift from their eyes. They must often feel annoyed at me for the same reason. Each side feels vitally important. To them I am simply struggling to avoid the very system that keeps things together, that makes things work. To me, their false buildings hold false businesses which provide false necessities, often backrupting the people and the planet which they are their to serve. We are just inherently different now, yet still the same family, on opposite sides of the table, the phone, trying to communicate the incommunicable to one another. Is it a microcosm of the class struggle in America? Already an entire generation is growing up that has no knowledge of what life was like without the computer, the cell phone, or the microwave. And they will be running our country before long. Yet millions will continue to be born into families and individuals too poor to support but the minimum of clothing and food. And like me I suppose, they will watch the lips move, and read the headlines of the newspapers, but it will be a foreign language. The country will no longer be speaking to them, they will be lost.
ALREADY I FEEL THE WORLD IS MARCHING to a drum beat I can no longer hear, barely imagine in fact, and I only seem to be getting farther away. So boggling and enormous, complicated and entrenched is the humanity of this earth that I find my only grip, ironically, in the temporary nature of life itself. What will live always is not you or me, nor the bum lifestyle versus the rich one, it is Creation. Creation will go on till the sun burns out, and bums, art, computers, and money may only live as long as a blink of an eyelash on the face of geologic time. We are a small diversity in the world of evolution, and our lives are trivial in the face of history and future, so wide is the span. Our differences, our passions can only be universally understood by an acceptance of unimportance and impermanence. As a mountain/surf bum I can only relate to a Wall Street broker by realizing the sameness of our truly unimportant, impermanent lives.