Andy 📍

🖼️ Photos

Is Andy Gay? 🏳️‍🌈

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I think that’s the assumption with the pride flag I hang at camp and the fact that I am a male in my forties who is never married without kids.

The truth is that if anything I’m a pyromaniac, I love burning things. Watching that log burn in the campfire, that plastic bottle shrivel up and disappear in the flames really makes me horney.

Give me a cabin up in the woods with a woodstove and a burn barrel out back for the burnable trash and I’d be happy as a pig in shit. I don’t need the government to tell me what I can and can not burn – I’m well aware there are places like rural Pennsylvania and Missouri with far fewer restrictions on open burning.

It’s not that I haven’t thought about settling down. Or that I didn’t try sessions with a licensed mental health therapist. But ultimately I am who I am and despite maybe a little black smoke from time to time in the wilderness, I doubt I’m hurting anyone much. I get that modern trash in full of chemicals and some of them are going to be released into the environment went burnt but so is the world we live in.

I’ve been told I would be happier if I settled down, got into a committed relationship with a man or a woman. I’ve been told that masturbation is fun but sex with a fellow human being is far more fun. I do like my pictures of burn barrels and reading about rednecks burning their trash when I can’t be up in the woods burning my own stuff.

Some day I will settle down, have that homestead and time for a committed relationship to a man or a woman – I don’t know I’ve never gaven it much thought. Somebody who shares my interests, wants to spend the rest of their life on my homestead. Join the local fire department when I live in a rural area, not just for the fun of participating in controlled burns but also so I can help my neighbors, develop fellowship and make sure they’re not on my back when I’m burning debris on my own land.

By no means am I anti-gay. I say live your life as you choose, I’ll do my thing, you do yours. I’m not ruling out someday a relationship with another man or woman but I enjoy my life as it is today – even if it is a redneck dumpster fire.

Pride

When I Had Long Hair

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For a while this spring, while I was working remotely I had long hair and grew some big sideburns. Evidently, once it got hot out this summer, they didn't last for long.

Thursday June 11, 2020 — Andy
Terrain Map: South Western Adirondacks Peaks
Map: Empire State Topography
Map: Galen Wildlife Management Area

Put a girl in it… 👩🏻‍🌾

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That’s the song that Brooks and Dunn made famous about 20 years ago. And that’s the advice of my counselor to help me find more order and contentment on my life. It’s actually not a bad plan. I have to say I agree with a lot of his idea.

I can go alone for the rest of my life with the freedom to do whatever I want whenever I want. I do like my freedom. But there is a lot of benefit to living together with someone and having a relationship and shared responsibilities. Stools are more steady with more than one legs.

The truth is my off-grid dream or owning a homestead really isn’t super practical to do it all alone. It is nice to have money and invest it, with a dream but it’s hard to make it a reality alone. Plus it seems like all my friends are settling down, buying houses and starting families. While I doubt I’d ever want to have kids except maybe young meat or dairy goats, certainly more hands can bring a homestead closer to reality.

Having an extra leg in the stool means both partners have somebody to fall back on and provide mutual aid. I can shovel horse manure, break ice in frozen water troughs or haul garbage to the burning barrel or slop to the pig pen in exchange for help when my truck breaks down or just needing companionship when I’m lonely or need some one to bounce ideas off of.

I am not sure that I am ready to settle down although truth be told I’m kind of bored with doing the same old trips to the Adirondacks alone. I kind of want to have land and livestock. I’d like to meet some new people and new horizons. I feel like I’ve run low on interesting unique places close to home so maybe the next best thing is new people and groups. Not looking to spend more time with Albany insiders though.

Albany is fine, it pays well and I like my work. But the suburbanite, everything is plastic isn’t the life I want to live. I want to be closer to the earth and be able to take care of myself and my family when things go wrong which are certain to happen in an era of accelerating climate change.

While I want to set down roots, I’m just as committed as ever to get out of New York State eventually, just because of the gun and open burning laws. To say nothing of what is happening to so much farm land and forest with the industrial solar farms or how humane laws and climate change restrictions might make it very hard to have a homestead in New York. I worry a lot about New York versus the kind of lifestyle I want to live eventually. It’s not homestead or rural life friendly.

Map: Doodletown Wildlife Management Area
Map: St. Regis River State Forest