Outside The Box

We begin today with yellow jackets, those pesky and dubiously beneficial wasps, the bane of hikers, picnickers, and grass mowers. There are two nests still troubling me now, this late in the season. I’ve never seen them this active in November, but they have adapted to the warmer weather and managed to overcome the frosts and nights in the 20s here on the mountain.

With a working philosophy that all of God’s creatures have some part to play in the grand design, I don’t seek far and wide for nests to destroy. But with a sneaking suspicion that yellow jackets may not actually be creatures of the Almighty, any nest within ankle range of the farm is on borrowed time here. I dispatch them with a bottle of concentrated rubbing alcohol poured into the hole at night and ignited after a few minutes for evaporation. This method does not poison the ground and produces a very satisfying “blowtorch” effect with flaming wasps ejected to add to the light show.

Alas, the yellow jackets have improvised an effective response to my efforts by building in places not easily accessible or able to be torched, and the ongoing drought has rendered them effectively immune to the flames. If the next frost doesn’t kill them, a can of aerosol poison will. I, too, must adapt.

I first heard the title phrase in the movie “Heartbreak Ridge.” It has been attributed to the Marine Corps, though it wasn’t commonly used when I served. It does reflect the values of the Corps, and I think you will find that it is an element of all successful entities, whether a group or an individual.

Over an extended timeline, “successful” means something very different from the shallow materialism that dangles like a carrot on the stick which guides the intents and purposes of modern life. Not everyone follows that carrot, of course. Success for many is still focused on simple survival, or the desire to be left alone in peace or, at best, in the pursuit of happiness.

Arguably, the majority of human history has been the story of our attempts to improvise and adapt to survive and, in the balance, to overcome those who refused to leave us alone in peace. It is the definitive American story, and the story of the pioneers who came to these mountains and valleys where we now seek sanctuary from a troubled world.

For those of us with roots here in the mountains, our ancestors arrived in a land that could be as brutal as it was beautiful. They came here to be left alone in peace and to pursue happiness as they saw fit, just like the original colonists who displaced tribes of people who wanted the same.

Unfortunately for the first peoples, they had not improvised or innovated the technologies necessary to successfully resist colonization by European settlers. They were unable to overcome the challenge of alien diseases that decimated their numbers, followed by the overwhelming numbers of European migrants who came after.

Our mountain ancestors lived in what they considered splendid isolation, despite the fact that they did not share equally in the technological and cultural advances of the more populated places. Lacking access to many of the goods and services more common in the cities, they had to improvise, and they adapted beautifully to their world built by hand.

They endured hunger, hardship, and privation. My grandparents and their neighbors were the children of those who overcame all of this, as well as influenza, cholera, and typhoid. They were tough as nails. They were people of faith, patient, enduring, whose minds required engagement rather than distraction, which is the opiate of consciousness today. Many of this generation of mountaineer descendants, my grandparents included, lived well into their 80s and 90s and enjoyed good health for most of those years.

Hard times make strong people who create easy times, which make soft people who create hard times. The successes of our ancestors have made our generations successively weaker, though it began innocently enough. Parents always want better for their children and tend to view being able to indulge them as a sign of success.

What troubles me most about these troubled times is the level of weakness, distraction, and self-indulgence that is actively promoted by almost all of the institutions that form the pillars of our society. It threatens our ability to overcome the troubles gathering at our doorstep. It renders us unable to meet the obligations of our collective stack of unpaid bills. Rather than promoting a culture that can improvise, adapt, and overcome, we are conditioned to fret, rebel, and ultimately to surrender.