Jefferson Weaver
Everywhere you turn right now, someone is offering a new virtual reality system.
If you’re like I was, and don’t quite know what these things are, then you better get ready to be besieged by your kids and grandkids. Apparently the next generation VR systems are the coming thing for Christmas.
Near as I can gather, VR gaming involves putting on a helmet or headset that blocks out everything except what’s going on in the game. I reckon it’s a normal next step in technology, just a little bit shy of having the equivalent of a USB drive implanted in one’s skull.
They allow video game players to become immersed in a cartoonish version of the latest games involving blowing up zombies, fighting aliens, saving the world, dancing or playing ball. I am sure there are other games that involve virtual reality, but I haven’t played a video game in at least 25 years, and don’t really plan to do so anytime soon. If you enjoy them, I am happy for you.
I guess that in reality (pun intended) the new VR tech is a good thing, since it requires someone to get up and move around. A lack of exercise leads to obesity, laziness and voting for liberals, so this is a positive step for those who insist on escaping into a computer-generated world of supersoldiers, aliens, car thieves and athletes. If we can get more of these gamers out of their parents’ homes and into work, well that’s even better.
While I realize those who create these programs couldn’t care less about my opinion, since I am not of a desirable demographic, I can’t see a reason to pay someone to create a temporary version of reality when there’s so much “real” reality out there to enjoy.
I watched the International Space Station cross the sky the other night, just one more light in a sea of blue-black scattered with millions of other lights. The owls were holding a congressional hearing while I stood in the yard listening as my goats bleated softly like little children complaining about going to sleep. Sally the nanny was fussy and uncomfortable, being just days away from delivery of her latest little ones. Sensing cookies in my pocket, Melanie the Mammoth Jenny magically appeared behind me, nosing me with a gentleness that seems impossible for 1,300 pounds of animal. Far in the distance, a brace of coonhounds sang their chorus as they struck tree and talked trash to their procyonid prey. I am sure had I been there, I could have heard said coon giving his own NC-17 insults to the hounds.
Just a few days later, my beloved Miss Rhonda messaged me that Sally had dropped her two little creatures, earlier than we anticipated. I went into their pen to make some repairs, and ended up picking up both of the tiny kids. Both thankfully are female and both look more like Sally than their father Bucky.
The larger of the two kept her lower lip petulantly pooched out, as kids do, while her sister nuzzled my beard and we exchanged sniffs. Regardless of how rank a full-bore weed-eating fence-breaking billy like Bucky smells, there are few things as sweet as the smell of a day-old baby goat, even when it tries to nibble on one’s beard. The essence is almost as good as puppy breath.
It was a sunny day, and I took the time to enjoy a few minutes of doing nothing with Walter the Wonder Dog. He’s more than a dozen years old now, and has come to understand the value of laying in the sunshine doing nothing on a crisp fall day. I may not have wallered in the grass in the sunshine with him, but I did close my eyes and lean back in the rocking chair for a few minutes, enjoying the smells of pine trees and horses, goats and geese, old dogs and coffee and the distant smell of leaves burning.
The wind was roaring into a nor’easter of sorts when I was heading to work the other day but had to stop to eyeball a pair of young bucks, both inexplicably fat for a month into deer season. They were enjoying some of the grain dropped by my horses in the front pasture, and for just a minute or so, they paid no attention to me. Indeed, were I not in a hurry to do the day’s duties, it would have been simple if unsportsmanlike to pull the Winchester from its place between the seats and drop at least one of them for the freezer.
Instead, I reached for my camera and quietly called them names as they dipped their gray-brown necks gracefully toward the grass, the sunlight filtering through the trees at just enough of angle to complicate counting points. Why two bucks were traveling together during the rut was beyond me, but the larger of the two finally noticed my presence, gave me a haughty look and blew to his companion. The two trotted off, disappearing in the pine thicket before I could bring my camera into play.
That almost-nor-easter made me remember the smell of the spray and the ocean when I still lived within spittin’ distance of the big water. Many people have precious memories of sun and surf and family, but my best memories of the ocean come from the times she was a little upset, if not downright angry. Cold water makes good fish, my late friend Hugh Howard used to say, but with cold water often comes a season of change, when the hypnotic waves of a sunny summer become violent, smashing rollers beneath gray skies.
We dealt with a morning like that far offshore one day, and ended up coming back in to fish a few hundred yards off the beach rather than chasing kings and amberjack. A shoal of spots had moved in and brought with them blues, Spanish mack and small sharks, all of which we caught as fast as we could throw a line in the water. The day was already as close to perfect as it could be when a humpback whale decided to join in. When the whale’s head broke the surface, dozens of fish flowed out of the cavernous mouth.
Virtual reality, indeed.
Have you ever watched the sun rise, deep in a beaver-flooded wood, listening to a turkey proclaim his love for a hen? Or ridden a good horse for miles on end, swinging gently along with no particular place to go? Or felt the softness and depth of a winter-prime hide, the reward for weeks of patiently looking at tracks and checking traps?
Maybe you have felt the tug, then the pull of a dinner-sized catfish on the end of a rod that bowed down toward tannin brown water. For that matter, you could have felt and tasted and smelled that same water, just a hair below warm but refreshing, on a hot summer’s day as you plunged into a swimming pool that was made by God without concrete, chlorine or tropical colors.
Maybe you have felt the Holy Spirit moving through a congregation as a longtime professional sinner went forward in a public declaration of faith. Or felt your eyes trickle just a little bit when someone sang the Star Spangled Banner underneath a flag that still proudly waved.
Indeed, I reckon some folks need an altered version of reality just to get by. I feel sorry for them.
I reckon I’ll stick with old dogs, good horses, cold starry nights, baby goats and seeing prayers answered. Those things and more are reality enough for me.
