Campfires with Dr. Joe - 195

I blame “Campfires with Dr. Joe” on the antics of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, two adventurous river rats who floated the mighty Mississippi just because they could. I found their story between the covers of a book and, of course, I’d have to follow their example; subsequently, my buddy and I build a raft and floated the Bronx River hoping to reach Long Island Sound. When we shoved off in the early morning, 1961, life as I knew it would never be the same. It overwhelmed me with a sense of adventure and, for the rest of my life, adventure would govern my soul. A fortitudinous gift from a novel. As a child I devoured wilderness writers, philosophers, poets, and classical quixotic stories: “Don Quixote,” the “Knights of the Roundtable,” and Shakespeare’s “Henry the V.” These stories told tales of adventure, courage, and the circuitous path through the labyrinth, which led one toward a centered soul. “Campfires with Dr. Joe” would assume this pedagogy. These were ideas worth sharing,thought I. Their lofty thoughts enabled my quixotic nature to transition from a street kid to someone with an intellect, a purpose. I wanted to take this zeal to the streets and pay it forward and help the lost souls of the neighborhoods who slip through the cracks and never realize there’s another way. Subsequently, I became a counselor with the Police Athletic League. My academic, athletic, and particularly boxing skills were tools I would use to help quell the souls of the street rats from whom I evolved. Thoreau said, “In wilderness is the Preservation of the world.” I took his philosophy one step further, as I would believe wilderness is the preservation of the individual soul. In 1966, following Thoreau’s dictate, Campfires took 12 hooligans from the block and brought them into the wild. Fifty-fiver years and thousands of campfires later, I still believe that Thoreau was right. In college, I devoured the classics. Referred to as the literature of the spirit, they speak to the inner life of humanity and the eternal values that center our lives. The classics fueled my inquisitive nature helped with such inquiries: “Who I am? What is my purpose? What makes life significant? Is there a value to my life?”“Campfires with Dr. Joe,” became the vehicle to answer such quandaries. Although I enjoyed my academic focus, I searched for something else to believe in, something that would tax the limits of my physical, emotional, mental endurance, and stand for something that was far greater than I. By examining the antiquity of thought, the theoretical had become mundane. Subsequently, I sought definitive principles that I could depend on. I came to the right guru. The Marine Corps professed a distinct creed. There was no ambiguity in its dictates. It demanded honor, courage, and commitment. I threw myself into the cauldron, and three years later, I became a lieutenant of Marines. The lessons I learned in the Corps would supplement my classic education. Along with Thoreau, Emerson, Campbell, and the legendary ethos of the Marine Corps, I built a paradigm with a distinct mythology, which made possible the ethos of “Campfires with Dr. Joe.” “Campfires,” written as a story, attempts to do justice to the ideas of the great minds that understood the secrets of the universe. I stole them and wrote them into a backpacking adventure where students were challenged physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Reading “Campfires” it is a primer on philosophy and literature. The sheer pageantry of circumstance that happened over 50 years of taking kinds into the wild.
ASIN: B0B2TRCYDZ
VSKU: BVV.B0B2TRCYDZ.G
Condition: Good
Author/Artist:Puglia, Joesph Mark|Stewart, Jeanne Marie|Puglia, Sabine Gayneh
Binding: Paperback