Archived post- Identity Crisis?

This is a post I wrote a while back on my I-pod, I figured I'd share-

Blythe and I were having dinner with some friends the other night-- cobia that I had caught the day before, along with the shrimp I had caught and a salad full of lettuce from a garden in Canaveral Groves and tomatoes and peppers and onions from our small plot—and after dinner the conversation between Blythe and I turned to trying to figure out where we fit in in today's society/social structure.  I’ve been mulling over potential names for a business, which involves a certain amount of soul searching and trying to figure out where I fit in. I wouldn’t say we’re hippies or granolas but we do live off the land to some extent, so to say, and we do enjoy this type of living.  I guess you could say we’re in some way having an identity crisis. What would we be called if someone was describing us?  To answer that, I made a list of labels that were close to the mark but not so close that I would say "yeah, that's it."  I've put a few words down behind each label indicating what I think of when I hear it.

Outdoorsman? Reminds me of hiking in the mountains…

Salt cracker? I think of beach sand and sea oats…

Redneck?  hate it; pisses me off when someone calls me one.

Cracker? dust, tanned leather, cows.

Pirate? not really…

Islander? Maybe? But I'm not black…

Harvester? Sounds bloody.

Hippy? Ugh, smelly.

Granola? Old school? Weirdos? Self Sustaining?

Pondering those labels led me to think about a podcast I heard a while back that mentioned silent sports: sports like surfing, rock climbing, and hiking that can be done in solitude and don’t put much of a strain on the earth.  A few nights ago we did our yearly inventory of the chest freezer and it kinda made me think…  Am I just a barbaric meat- monger?  Or is my hobby justified because I provide the friends and fam with good, wholesome non-hormone pumped protein?  At what point does polluting the soils with shotgun loads and pumping the rivers full of emissions from the outboards increase my “footprint”?  Better yet, how do I wipe it out of the sand after making this theoretical “carbon footprint”?  I don’t go trash islands and dump fuel into the water, but I am out on the ocean or river week after week.  

And why is it always in the pursuit of game? Does it have to be? Why do I get up and pack the boat at 0400 in the morning in the bitter cold when so many people are walking home from bars and night clubs? Does the drive from within come from the pursuit itself or the yield at the end of the day? I think it stems from the worky job: working in a field that doesn’t yield anything tangible and has no real outcome other than numbers in a spread sheet.  No new walls built or real measureable outcome to hang my hat on or walk away from at the end of the day.  I think this is what has driven me deeper into the woods and further out to sea over and over every weekend: the drive to have a performance measure, whether it be a full cooler or a story of the one that got away.  At least it’s something.

One of my favorite things Blythe has quoted out of a book was “the journey is the destination.”  I’m trying to execute my outdoor activities with this in mind so that as soon as the boat hits the water I’ve fulfilled my goal and anything beyond that is just icing on the cake.

So, this leads me to today and the coastal type of living I enjoy.  Following migrations, patterns, seasons and stories looking for the next thing I can do to make another story.  Trying to live like the people that inhabited these islands and swamps long before any of us were ever even born, the Florida Crackers, a rag-tag bunch of misfits that drove cattle, hunted gators and manatees and fished and shrimped till they couldn’t stand anymore. Identity crisis solved- I consider myself an “Island Cracker.”