Howl Traditional Geocache

Introduction

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

If you know angevine and me you might know that I really don't like poetry and she likes it a lot. Actually, let's make that a bit clearer, she really really likes poetry and I, for whatever reason, really don't like it. I mean, I even skipped over the songs in The Lord of the Rings books because they looked an awful lot like poetry to me.

Howl

who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hungover with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices,

"Howl" by Alan Ginsberg remains both one of more notorious and popular poems by an American author. It is a long poem about consumer society's negative human values. "Howl" was "discovered" in 1956 by New York Times poet Richard Eberhart who traveled to San Francisco and called it "the most remarkable poem of the young group."

This poem contains explicit language and was tried on obscenity charges in 1957. Nine literary experts testified on the poem's behalf. Supported by the American Civil Liberties Union, Ferlinghetti, the publisher, won the case when Judge Clayton Horn decided that the poem was of "redeeming social importance."

Ginsberg's poetry was strongly influenced by modernism, romanticism, the beat and cadence of jazz, and his Kagyu Buddhist practice and Jewish background. He considered himself to have inherited the visionary poetic mantle handed from the English poet and artist William Blake to Walt Whitman. The power of Ginsberg's verse, its searching, probing focus, its long and lilting lines, as well as its New World exuberance, all echo the continuity of inspiration which he claimed. He was also influenced by the American poet William Carlos Williams.

Ginsberg's leftist and generally anti-establishment politics attracted the attention of the FBI, who regarded Ginsberg as a major security threat.

Ginsberg's spiritual journey began early on with his reported spontaneous visions, and continued with an early trip to India and a chance encounter on a New York City street (they both tried to catch the same cab) with Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist meditation master of the Vajrayana school, who became his friend and life-long teacher. Ginsberg helped found the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, a school founded by Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche. Music and chanting were both important parts of his live delivery during poetry readings. He often accompanied himself on a handheld organ called a harmonium, and was also often accompanied by a guitarist. Attendance at his poetry readings was generally standing room only for most of his career, no matter where in the world he appeared.

He died of cancer on April 5, 1997.

Then I came across a copy of Howl at a local bookstore and the connection was made. Lake Massabesic is almost the anti-Howl. It is so peaceful and beautiful. It is also a public treasure, not private shoreline. I would like to think that Ginsberg would have liked that.

The cache is located on the part of the Lake Massabesic land called the Sheep's Nose (and no, I have no idea how that name came about)! You may have to cross a damp bit of land to get there but once there you'll see a trail almost all the way to the cache. While walking to the cache, take note of the woods in the center of the Sheep's Nose. There are almost no pine trees there. This is very unusual for forests in this area. In the winter the deducious trees have no leaves, this make for quite a bright forest.

The cache is a small Lock and Lock container with the usual contents. It will only hold small trade items. There is a full size logbook, however; it isn't a micro by any stretch of the imagination.

There is a great view from a tiny spit of land a short distance away at 42 58.928N 71 22.925W.