Hard to believe it was like 30 years ago, but it was.  The campsite in the Smokies basically looked the same.  I spent about a week pushing rocks around to re-outline the "garden" where so much is passed from generation to generation.  I also reflected on "the tomb of the innocents" spot.  Nobody's actually buried there.  It was created in honor of lost loved ones and human beings not given a chance at life because of abortion.  Thirty years ago the social-political scene in America was also contentious, also violent, also divisive and people went through deep processes of deciding to and how to participate.  Without planning to be together many of us ended up taking time out in nature and without planning an interdisciplinary approach to surviving so much transition many of us shared nuggets of our lives and experiences as professionals and students. This enriched and helped put outrage into context.

  A hot coal on a broken tea saucer; one sock with a hole in the toe drying on a stick; two typewriters next to each other with the same missing letters; a pile of glow sticks and empty tea candle holders.  The emptied by about brunch time artists' camp spoke volumes in its lackings.  A Works of Shakespeare had been left unripped up on the hearth beside a skimpy stick fire's ashes.  A friend and I ducked behind trees to paltry to actually hide us.  A man and a woman ferociously argued whether or not "art" should have a point.  The man's spit flew as he barraged contempt for art that is just response to "them".  The tiny woman to his tall would not look away, would not break eye contact.  Her head seemed to flutter like the Monarch butterflies as the words were wielded.  Later she would tell a woman friend, Listening, always listening.  To which the other woman shrugged and sighed a maybe that is all he needs.

  "Again," a stiff-necked young man positioned his hand in that way of trying to nail down a talking point, "I say people cannot have it both ways."  Firewood was stacked neatly beside a makeshift vehicle console cooking table in the next camp.  "Or they can," another young man threw both his hands up, "That's what society is telling them!"  "Society, yes, but we'll see."

  Other campsites were also packed full and each seemed to take on a dominant flavor the way cities people by group a block or a neighborhood.  People who'd been out fighting "foreign wars" were both dismal and exuberant in spirit.  One student from the campsite where diversity was the buzzword was drawn to watching or watching over that camp.  Long periods of silence in our conversation were broken by a watery eyed coming back to something we'd spoken of a day or more before.  When you said...Remember?  I do.  We were drifting towards a philosophical take on war.  But the philosophy does not match up to reality?  Right?  Pretty much.

  In yet another camp there wasn't ever time for food eating, so busy were tradespeople at forging metals in fire and comparing beads and handmade clothing.  Broad gutteral laughs would break the low hum of casual talk while working.  The sun making its way across sky, leaves falling one by one would occasion a knowingly person to remind, Winter is coming.

  The occasions to learn from each other were not limited to observation!  

  We ran from camp to camp around midday to check in on the progress of campers' missions.  Some were leveling up professionally in outdoor sports like rafting, others were earning credits to apply to science degrees.  After an update on who couldn't be trusted in camp, stealing snacks from the group kitty, and so not likely to be chosen for a prized competition on the river in a raft where people have to trust each other with their lives, we ran over soft soil and pine needles through a switchback in ledge.  Middle agers, many of whom had been forced out of the workforce, were a favorite to visit.  The men in stretched tank tops and baggy-butt jeans jostling to impress the divorced and been there, done that women.  Each a McGuyver with tool and know-how.  One day one of the few black ladies in the mostly white camp declared, "The word is HOMOGENOUS."  From the hushed crowd a mechanic-ing man asked, "Like an egg?"  The black lady didn't respond.  There was tension in the air but it was not overt and there wasn't really an argument.  

  It was as if the mid-1990's posed a challenge only to people not in herd format.  One could hook up with "rednecks" or "black folk" or "queers" or even "Muslims" or "Jews" or "Christians" as a "tag" like on a file folder, and from there get into that "lifestyle" or find something else to do with your time.  Well, except to working people.  There was some amount of grudge talk towards lazy assholes and too good to be like us.  And there was no shortage of ailment due to working and working and working.  It took one woman more than a week to get people to stop griping long enough to actually think about what someone might want in life.  And that was risking being told to fuck off and go live in a dream world.  Yah!  Pipe dreams, a parent of a foreign fighter had moved to the Middle Age camp and had clearly been soaking up English catch phrases during the stay.

  The split between same old reality and a "youthful"/"wishful" thinking that envisioned change, hoped for a brighter future, tried to convince that not all was misery was, at that point, no longer just an elephant under the rug but a widening chasm in every conversation.  FINE!  GO BE GRUNGE! a young woman who wanted a family said to more than one guy in a kind of camping speed dating.  With us or against us, was mantra touted by as many groups as there were campsites.  It wasn't horribly surprising when such attitude started to take a turn toward nasty actions against "other".

  It made the peaceholders and carekeepers bristle but double up on ways to keep the calm.  People, men and women, started sharing insights.  First it was like Momwork.  Like, one mom notices another mom's son seems angry about something but didn't want to interfere.  Naturalists and the good psychology-minded found common ground in being well.  Potential clashes were headed off by teams of people just trying to have a nice time.  The way people in situation fight terrorists, the group dynamic can be changed by whoever joins to survive the peace.  It's a resistance to warring.  It's civil service.  It's really cool, whatever it is, a Forest Service worker said as he cut open a trout and stuffed it with croutons.  It.  It was something, we said to each other the way an artist might realize after speaking off the cuff that whatever was said maybe resonated or stuck or sparked or was an it.  No formula.  Just holding down the fort, we'd say to inquiries like "What are y'all doing in there?"  Or, lots of stuff!  Living, loving, learning.  Sounds queer.  Not me.

  And we were learing to lie about that kind of stuff.  Queer or not, redneck or not, Muslim or not was like a taunt from the elusive permission to enact violence, like ready or not, here we come for you--whatever you are.  The category or type of person was taking precedence over a simple notion of "human."  Some blamed it on TV, others on "the machines running society", still others claimed to have a War's On meter not attributable to sources or evidence.  Makes the meter tip towards war every time, a deaf but speaking person said about a poisoned dog.  Which came first?  The chicken or the egg? An actor with a European accent stared at nasty graffiti on a campground bathroom wall and asked.  The feeling of scales jumped on and throwing peace all about brought people down in first light of day and time had to be spent to analyze from where the negative behavior had come, to weigh the seriousness of escalation, to communicate what had happened and what precautions might be taken...to guard against.

  The background scenery of a coming together was filled with real and imagined aggression.  You'd think the clannish types are hanging people just over the mountain!  Another visiting European said very loudly.  THEY ARE!  More than one person retorted.  Repressed truths of the past were seeping into the contemporary like black mold in sheetrock.  Just don't go there, some people took to warning of sections of forest and local overrun by gangs and "associations".  I thought it was the economy, a visiting Hollywood type grimaced.  That too, was the brisk answer to why can't just sit and relax.

  Things seemed to level off in the PC (politically correct) period if you didn't look around.  As beige was the big color at the start of transition from modern to postmodern culture, PC was a sort of herd response to extremism.  Better to nod and say, nice and great even when someone's poetry was as bland as a biscuit or someone's lyrics really sucked than speak your mind.  Better to keep the peace than to be watching a drive-by shooting on TV happening outside your apartment building.  Better to pay for personal psychoanalysis than criticize another race or lifestyle group.  Even efforts to help, how can I help? were often met with just listen.

  Specialized media bolstered the drift away from judging and into divied up territory.  A generic moderateness suppressed an old fashioned patriotism.  I found similarity to Europe at the end of World War II in a chapter of Gordon Wright's The Ordeal of Total War titled "Europe's Response to Conquest".  In it the author talks about an initial "inspired patriotism" in response to the Hitlers if the world trampling over boundary.  Resistance, the "underground", collaboration, isolation, a slow return to humanism, the guts of flag waving in democratic nation.  Sabotage of "enemy", using armed force to protect and defend, rivalries between ilk of patriot.  There were shared goals to undermine Germany but there were also ongoing tensions between partners.  Ideological differences, different understandings of power, people with differing opinions about leadership and post-liberation governments.  There was hope and there was hatred just as there had been before all the economic and social destruction.  Mass movement towards a strong display of nationalism provided sweeping current, sweeping enough to churn economies back to life.  The overarching notion of Western democracy sealed allies like a balm.  Processes and policy ironed Communism into a past where stuff like that happened.

  Democracy as antidote with all it's challenges to personal and religious values was the victory.