About

Welcome to This Isn't The Place, where I get to talk at length about where my feet have been and how I plan on getting there. This is a new project, and still in the very early stages: it's a great time to get involved, so please do subscribe and comment on the things you find interesting.

 To that end, there is a three part introduction piece that will do a better job of explaining what exactly here is hoping to be. You can find it by following the links:

 The Goodness of The Outdoors (Part 1/3)
Choose Only One Master – Nature (Part 2/3)
Signposting The Trail (Part 3/3)

Popular posts from this blog

An Introduction: The Goodness Of The Outdoors

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The virtues of travel, dirtbag climber writes, live life elsewhere - these are all phrases clouded in the fog of pretense that have been used to describe what I hope this place will become. During the week I work, like most people reading this will, a nine-to-five gig. My job is great, it fulfills me in most of the right ways and consequently any negatives can be comfortably ignored. But there is still a hankering for something else, a longing to get out and away from comforts, to learn new things, to explore. I don't remember a time when this feeling wasn't there, and I don't imagine it will go away anytime soon. So, here we are.




Each journey starts and ends in the same place, that is, the beginning - there and back again in the words of Tolkien. This is the beginning of my blog. This post will tell you a little about myself, the next a little about this place, and the one after a little bit about where I want to go with it. I've no pretense of majesty, just a want and…
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An Introduction: Signposting The Trail

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In the Introduction series so far there has been a discussion on what this site aims to be and who I am as a person. This post is to set out a plan for the near- and far-future. One trap so easy to fall into is the thought that the future's clear. Unfortunately it's rare that events unfurl in such a straightforward manner. As is often the case, life finds a way and before you know it you're wearing shoes on your hands and a hat on your anus. No plan survives contact with reality, but to avoid the planning process because of this is foolish: it is better you have 80% at completion than leave 100% to chance. Here, I lay out tentative plans for the future, which have been broken down into the immediate and long-term distances.


It is wise to make a distinction between the two. Doing so means a plan can exist that lays out the foundations to build from. On the other hand, having a goal to work toward creates the conditions for (hopefully) new and interesting thoughts to be gen…
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An Introduction: Choose Only One Master – Nature

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Earnest Shackleton once said that "it is in our nature to explore, to reach out into the unknown". This I believe to be true. There is an innate desire in all of us to understand the incomprehensible and know the unfathomable. It exists in the infant reaching out toward a world of possibilities, a teenager toward the secrets of adults, and in the elderly toward that which is still to be done. At the age of 78 (nearly 79!), my Grandpa still tends to his garden. I'll be damned if a season goes by where he doesn't tell me about a new thing that he has learned, something different to normal happening, or of  new flower arrangements blooming. The problem, if there is one, is that the act of discovery in all of us is increasingly becoming a feat of mind removed from matter.



Picture this, it is an ungodly hour in the Black Mountains. The temperature has been clocked at minus 26 (centigrade, you heathens) when windchill is factored in. After one questionable turn you find you…
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