“Poverty with a view.” Spoken by a waitress in Jackson, Wyoming, bordering Grand Teton National Park who lived fifty miles away and drove to work every day because she couldn’t afford a place to live where she worked. The same thing would be applicable to most of the national parks, and state parks, everywhere. The Appalachian wilderness is beautiful, but it is no place to make a living. Taoist poets in 500 BCE China were destitute. Life without money has been the rule through the ages, and beautiful surroundings are very little help in making ends meet. We live with anomaly and make the best of it. Squaring ourselves up with disparity is the way it is for most of us worldwide, and those who do the best job of doing that live with low expectations and very little in the way of opinions, like corks on the water, leaves in the wind. Doing what needs to be done, when, where and how it needs to be done, as Lao Tzu put it in The Tao Te Ching, “Do your work and sit back, let nature take its course.” Accommodating ourselves to the world rather than expecting the world to accomodate itself to us.
