Creek Running North

I read CRN EVERYDAY !!!!! How can you say posts are declining after the Stephen Hawking thing? I mean unless you were getting getting eighty comments a post last year or something. I think there are two reasons you are gettng fewer posts: 1) People ARE on vacation/outdoors in the summer and 2) a post like the Hawking post INVITES comment, I guess because it is political in nature and everybody’s got an opinion, but MANY MANY of your posts are descriptions of your experiences (hiking, riding, gardening) and while I read every ONE of them, comments don’t spring to mind except “that sounds nice !” or “I wish I was hiking instead of at work”.
I beg you to keep blogging. I L*O*V*E CRN. I don’t think there is anyone out there (at least not that I have run across) who can write with such clarity about the place where SCIENCE and POLITICS collide, like your High Fructose Corn Syrup post. I live in TEXAS, and I know more about what is happening in Mexico from reading you than I have learned from all the other information sources in my environment.

Really, I wish you would be declared President of the United States. If only you had spent the last 30 years stacking SCOTUS in your favor.

Ah, my friend.  What I am about to say is no surprise to you, but I will declare it publicly. I love this blog.  It’s one of those that I feel I must visit daily.  As often as not, your writing takes my breath away.  It’s hard to comment sometimes because I am speechless.  I know someone who gets 200-300 comments on many of their posts, and nobody would ever call that person a great writer.

I will miss this blog terribly, but I think you are capable of much bigger things.  Bloghanistan will be significantly reduced if you leave it.  But I want to start buying and reading your books.  You have so much to offer all of us.  Just keep writing in whatever way makes you happy.

love,
Neen

Here’s the thing. I think blogs are on some sort of a decline. I doubt if it’s permanent, although maybe it is; I think it might have more to do with summer than anything else. I just think that people are being less blog-obsessed than they used to. Our long national nightmare is over - at least until the congressional election cycle really heats up.

All this has been proven in an n=1 study by the Center for Anecdotal Research.

Chris,

I really enjoy reading your site, and I enjoy your superb writing.  I’ve been out in the field training folks for my job and have seen myself coming and going these last few weeks and then with the nice summer weather and all that that entails unfortunately haven’t had much time to do anything except try to keep my own blog going.  But as a blogger I then find that I have a better blog (at least I think I do??) when I keep up with my list of bloggers who I enjoy, because it’s from them that I draw a lot of inspiration.

I sincerely hope you will keep writing.  ;-) You’ve been at this a while longer than I, it seems.  But sometimes as a blogger, I do feel that I may be tossing my words into the wind.  The good thing is that I’m enjoying the discipline of trying to write something every day.  It’s an excellent way to entertain myself and also to become a better writer!  And I’d like to say a heartfelt thank you for sending traffic my way.  My readership has grown as a result of your very gracious linking to I Gallop On! (Even if I am a meanie.)

Now it’s time to disappear back into the whirl of the day.

cheers.  k

Oh yes, and I’m with Janeen.  I’d be tickled pink to see some published books of yours at Borders!

My commenting has slowed since I started using bloglines.  I read every day and wondered why you hadn’t been posting lately.  Love the blog.

Five posts in Five minutes !!

Chris, I just found CRN when you were writing on BitchPhD. I look forward to CRN every day. I get my vicarious hiking here, among other things. I enjoy your subject, your style, and your attitude. Most of the time I don’t comment because all I have to say is “me too” or like another reader, ,"I wish I were out hiking too.” I live in flat ol’ central NC, known as the Sandhills, a full and accurate description of the topography. Enough whining about my region - please keep writing. Thanks.

Wait!  Don’t go!  I just got back! 

I don’t know if I count as a regular reader or not, but I moved to Cuba two months ago and have only just gotten my internet connection now.  I have quite a bit of reading to do here. 

So there.  Now you have 1 reader in Havana who desperately needs literature and other brain stimuli from the outside world. 

I love your poetry but would prefer not to comment on it.

I’m with SS, I wouldn’t comment on your poetry or your hiking non-fiction… if that’s what you mean about certain content being ill-suited to a blog (assuming the norm is to comment on everything), then you’re probably right.

You know I love CRN. I would miss you dreadfully if you decided not to write here. I understand, though, how it feels to write something (or photograph something) and not hear a word. It does make one consider why they are going through the exercise. I’ve decided that I do it for my own record - my own practice of observing and keeping track. I think you know how awfully you would be missed!
(Kiss the pooch for me)

I have your blog on my Favorites List. I stop in every day or two for new posts. Pardon my reticence in commenting before, but I am kind of lazy about providing feedback to most of my best blog-stops. Please continue to write. Your meditations on wildnerness trips relieve the ennui I feel in this filing cabinet for office workers in which I spend most of my daylight hours.

Of course your writing is very well suited to a blog, as a blog (in my view) is often supposed to be a reflection of the blogger… what they want, like, believe, feel like writing about. I agree with others that the reduced reading/commenting (except for serial lurkers, like me) is probably due to the season and vacations and such.

I come here to read whatever it is you feel like writing about at the moment, as I love the writing, and I do take some of it with me. In fact, just this morning I was out on a walk and first swerved to give wide berth to a bunch of flowers that were hanging over into the sidewalk area, then moved completely into the street to avoid a tree with very low hanging branches - a bug might drop on me!

Then, when walking on a pathway through an empty dirt lot, I looked askance at the ground squirrels scurrying in and out of their holes on one side, and some weeds with flowers and prickly things on the other, and somewhere in all this definite avoidance of “nature”, I remembered the photo you recently pointed to with envy (and I looked at with horror) where a woman (kat?) was lying in the grass of a field or something somewhere - no blanket or anything! and I laughed to myself and thought… “Jeeze, Nanette… you wouldn’t last a day in Chris Clarke’s nature world”.

But I can live in it through your writing and get inspired by the sights and sounds of the desert, see entire worlds in Joshua trees, be terrified of dogs but still tear up or laugh over Zeke, be righteously indignant right along with you about some injustice and laugh at the snark… sometimes all on the same page!

My vote… do what is best for you, but don’t think your writing here is unappreciated.

Chris, if you’re going to start measuring success in terms of how many readers and comments you get, you know there will never be enough of either. Might as well quit right now.

Your blog continues to be one of the most consistently entertaining and well-written in the blogosphere. I think we’re in a summer blogging lull, perhaps. But maybe, indeed, the blog fad is fading a bit. If so, good. I hate the feeling that I might be part of something trendy.

Chris, if you’re going to start measuring success in terms of how many readers and comments you get, you know there will never be enough of either. Might as well quit right now.

The reason I write is for people to read it, and the more the better, and I’m not gonna apologize for that. The self-satisfaction of having created art might well be enough for some folks, and more power to ‘em. But I need to communicate. I’ve always kind of thought of that as a character flaw, the need to show off, the need to command attention. But I’m starting to wonder if that’s not an unduly harsh assessment. The world is breaking, and there are things to be said about it, and why say things if you’re not sure anyone’s listening?

To clarify a point Kathy MCCARTY asked about: The Hawking post definitely got a lot of comments. Whenever a post gets linked by one of the Medium-Sized Kids like PZ or Amanda, it gets a lot of comments. And I love that, and am grateful for the links. And I know that some of you are regular readers because of those links, because you found your way here and stuck around. And I’m really grateful for that.

I also understand the reticence at commenting on some kinds of posts, and reluctance to leave content-free comments. I struggle with that myself.

But I have to be honest with myself and admit that my motivation for blogging is to hear what you folks have to say about what I write, good, bad or mixed. No comments = no motivation for blogging.

Have you done a seasonal analysis? Could it be the summer outdoors that it drawing away your readership? Could you see a similar dip last summer? I know my visits drop off on the weekends when there are other things to draw people away.

Also, I think there might be such a thing a blog fatigue, in which regular readers just get exhausted from all of the great blogs out there. If so, I suspect that will turn itself around.

Just a small technical matter: I’m usually more inclined to comment when I read other people’s comments, too. The way your blog is set up now, you have to click the comments link to see what comments have been made, and I find myself simply not checking them.

It’s a small thing, but maybe others have the same second-click reticence as I do.

But I still read every damn thing you write. I love your writing.

Ok, I"m leaving a comment for the first time.  I have no idea what to say and I’m still feeling that I don’t have much to add (the reason I don’t comment) but I do read you every day and you are by far my favorite blogger.  I have a friend with a blog (I believe I found your blog through his) and he almost never gets comments.  I don’t think he cares but I can understand that you feel that you’re yelling down a black hole when no one responds.  A reason I’d never start a blog.  I so hate to be ignored.  Besides I have my 3-year old to ignore me I don’t need more people not listening to me. 

Well here I am at paragraph two and I haven’t really added anything to the debate.  I have to say it’s hard to choose which writing of yours is my favorite.  I do enjoy the way you seem to be able to cut open a vein and bleed when you write.  You really do put yourself out there, exposing all your foibles and pain.  It’s amazing to me that you can be so honest with your readers and yourself and with your family.  Not an easy thing to do and I would find it exhausting and irritating to not get a response. 

Ok I’ll wrap this up now.  I too would like to read your work in print one day but at Barnes and Noble (as I work there and get a huge discount).  Most of all if you stopped blogging I’d miss Zeke and the bunny and the garden and....Oh heck, I guess I’d just miss it all.

I live in New York City, and I have no car, so I never get out of the city. I miss Tennessee and mountains, and reading what you write makes me homesick for trees and green and stillness. But in a good way. Please keep writing.

One of your strict lurkers chiming in here. When you were dealing with daily issues I used to pop in almost daily. You’ve been getting a tad cosmic of late, which means I can stop in every few days instead of every day and still keep up. That’s just the nature of cosmiticity (Cosmania? Cosmitaciousness? Well, whatever). The upshot is: if you keep the blog, I’ll keep stopping by.

I read you faithfully (if not every day, because the dissertating don’t have the luxury of blog reading every day, lest they do nothing but read blogs), but I do so through the LiveJournal RSS feed most of the time. I’m unsure how that affects your numbers. Of course, I would definitely show up if I clicked over to comment. I’m guilty of not doing that for few reasons: mostly sloth and feeling somewhat shy about, as you put it, contentless commenting if I just want to let you know that what you’ve written has moved or entertained me. But you do move, entertain, and educate me regularly, and if a more regular wave to let you know that will keep you in the biz, count me in.

i visit nearly every day, and love the writing, your views, the windows on worlds that i don’t necessarily visit myself.

with a lot of what you write, my basic reaction is, “wow.” there is nothing substantive i can say.  i don’t hike or go to the desert, and some of your posts are such rich rememberances of a personal experience that it almost seems intrusive to comment.  that is an awesome gift you have, chris.

zeke posts will usually get a little comment out of me because, hey, zeke is a hell of a dog!  even a stressed suburban un-hip work-at-home mom like me can muster an appropriate response to the love story of zeke.

that said, my commenting is down in general because work has been extra-busy, i’ve been out of town a lot, one teen is knocking around at loose ends for the summer, blah blah blah.  there are good reasons i don’t have a blog, and you do.

I just started coming here!

I don’t know what to say.  Emily Dickinson is my hero model in terms of deriving unpublic, unpublished satisfaction out of figuring out words.

But, I’m also working on a novel which I intend to see published come hell or high water.  So I understand mixed and contradictory longings and impulses and needs.

I would also point out that this is a very great and important historical moment with the birth of this new form of culture and communication on the internet; honestly, in years to come, your blog (and others) and the comments will be read as primary historical documents of importance.  And it’s all text-based archivable and searchable material!  No really, I know that sounds gradiose or melodramatic, but I don’t think we’ve even begun to understand the social, cultural and historical implications of this online internet thing.  I spend way too much procrastination, muddled, weird space out time on the internet; but I know this is a new, weird, profound, mediated important place and way of communicating for all of us.  I kind of think everyone should have a blog, and as soon as I finish my novel, I’m gonna plant one.  It may someday give everyone the possibility to be an artist. 

It’s like the infinite stars of the infinite universe are winking into existence!

Don’t blow up the sun, dude!

It’s SUMMER! Of course things slack off a bit. I’m seeing it at my site, too.

Why not just imagine all your readers off hiking far away from the Internets?

Why not just imagine all your readers off hiking far away from the Internets?

Because then I’ll get jealous, and I’ll go hiking instead of blogging even more than I already do, and… hmmm. There is no downside to that.