Spring Sailing 2021: Part 11: The Trust Levels Of Society

As I sailed back to camp I had a discovery of the “Captain Obvious” sort. What had seemed, in the twilight of the day previous, to be a series of shoreline trails and fishing docks, was actually for boats. Duh! I thought they’d built all that stuff for guys like me to sit at sunset and listen to loons (or possibly for wheelchair accessibility). In better light it was clearly for docking boats. Obviously, this campsite has somewhere near a dozen boats docked near the campsites most of the summer. At this early season, it was abandoned. In fact, the whole lake was empty.

I sailed in like a stud. Then, I ran my mast into an overhanging tree branch like a putz. These things happen. Clearly no sailboat has ever docked at these spots meant for smallish bass-boats. It only took a second to hop out, sort things out, and tie up.

Then it was off to “celebrate”. The Dodge was still back at the ramp. (Where else would it be?) So I hoofed it back there and set out to buy ice. I’d left for this trip in disarray. I’d brought beer but no ice. I’d crammed a frozen pack of brats and a six pack in a little cooler and fled. Now that I’d sailed like a pro, I’d earned beer.

At the park gate there was a kiosk. There was the infrastructure for an attendant; a whole cabin in fact and one of those little tollbooth things where you can pay a human upon entrance. But no humans were present. There was an ice cooler. It was unlocked. I grabbed a bag of ice and tossed it in my cooler and then set about figuring out how to pay for it. Eventually I found a sign on the kiosk and envelopes to pay for the ice. I counted out $4 (which seemed usurious) for the ice, slipped it in an envelope, and stashed it in a theft resistant steel box. There was also camping firewood… which I didn’t need.

Back at camp, waiting for the beer to cool, I reflected on the kiosk. There are high trust societies and low trust societies. It had never occurred to me to steal the ice. Nor would it occur to me to steal firewood. Nor would I trash the place. Such things simply aren’t done. Yet they are done. They’re done all over the world. This campground was tidy, well cared for, and completely abandoned by management. Yet I counted perhaps a dozen occupied campsites. None of us would think of damaging anything.

High trust society; happy little campsite. What would happen to the same infrastructure if it have been established in say… Detroit? Submit your own city for my observation. Would this little camp, which had hardly a pinecone out of place, fair any better in Miami? Paris? Moscow?

It’s mostly cultural and perhaps a city versus rural thing. Would the place be trashed if it was in Appalachia, the Mojave, a Canadian pinery? Nah. I’ve been all those places. None are heaven but all are places where people will dutifully pay $4 for an unattended bag of ice. This is why I say cultural instead of “wealth” or “poverty”. The poorest white trash camped on a Pennsylvania hillside wouldn’t steal ice from the park. But in Detroit someone would have taken a shit in the ice cooler by sunset.

This is a thing to know. People of the high trust societies are unimpressed with low trust societies. Nobody here would vandalize my tiny little sailboat, tied to a dock, unguarded, half a mile by foot from camp. That’s a delightful aspect of civilization which feels like it’s degrading. It’s an aspect with which I’m loathe to part.

Does this mean I’m a chump? A goody two shoes little pansy? A dipshit who’ll follow every rule promulgated by far off management which hadn’t yet staffed the tollbooth to this camp?

Of course not. Stupid rules should be treated with the disdain they deserve. Back at the kiosk I’d read something about banning alcoholic drinks. There was some sort of warning about glass bottles too.

I sipped my ice cold beer from a glass bottle and smiled. The rule is for Paris or Detroit. A place where the bottle might be smashed against a tree. Where drunks might get into fights. When I finished my beer I carefully stashed the empty and fetched a second. The fact that it was banned made it taste better.

What to make of this? I live in a world where people bitch at each other about who will and who will not wear masks. Those who refuse are painted as inconsiderate science denying troglodytes who recklessly break the rules. Yet the place you’re most likely to find a masked face might be where someone took a piss in the collective ice cooler. Meanwhile, I wasn’t sure the actual mask rules of the state where I was camping. I don’t know if they’re required or not… only that I’m not wearing one and (with caveats) never will. Also, I clean up my campsite so well that Mary Poppins would approve. Ignore the stupid laws, follow the wise ones even if nobody sees you. Such a concept would once be called “morality”, now it’ll get you deplatformed off social media.

I savored bratwurst and beer after a long day of miniature adventures. That night I slept like a log.