Chalk and doves

I created worlds out of white chalk and the dark shadows of summer’s time. 

Steering bike handles over pavement, sun on my shoulders, hair wet with chlorine and sweat.

Circling round the trees and mourning doves high in the branches, suitcases full of crumbling letters in shrubs, rusty tin boxes holding the treasures of an eight year old. 

Jaguar skateboard, flips and falls, the bump of the driveway terror to my wrists. 

Slender leaves of eucalyptus tearing delicately under wheel, under flip flops then casually tossed aside before jumping back into the pool. 

The days long and languid, Goonies in the afternoon, air conditioned and stale indoors, 4pm light strips through dusty blinds, dusky minds. 

Wrapped in towels and nostalgia, pouring forward into the time of scents and scenes. 

What is different now? 

How has time accelerated into this flow of words and not actions? 

I want the pool and chalk lines constructing a world of solid and fluid, swim and stand, tag not it. 

The light changes, my skin reddens, my eyes close again and again, season after season. 

This is the how and the why, the circle and the shadow. 

The now and the past kicking past, Marco Polo, tag, we’re all it. 

Summer

is
time. 

Mama Tree

Roots scratching towards the sky, fistfuls of soil clinging to softly wooded fingers. 

Those in the ground still hold out for hope, 

hold on to water, 

hold off this trunk from the forest floor. 

From her horizontal pose springs trees down the line. 

A dance of branches and solid trunks following a path that was once up up up. 

Now the lineage soars towards the jagged (firs, hemlock, mountains) horizon. 

The smaller trees queue up in their sky bent pursuits, business suits of bark and moss, briefcases of needles and dirt.

Are they young trees rooted into a dying elder? Or is it the mama tree fighting back against fate and gravity, not ready to give up on this being, not ready to decompose into the web of life below, sending out shoots? Are those young trunks her prayers to the Universe for one more shot at this being a tree thing? Is that what all young mamas think, unable to differentiate between the seed and self?

Branches tangle and confuse themselves as roots. 

The sky goes crumbly dark to match the tone of the soil. 

I reach up my hands to feel the rough skin of her back against fate-lined palms. 

There is no end, just roots and sky and branches and soil and the heartbeat of this giant forest within me.

A Walk through the Fall(ing) Woods

I should not have been in the forest. 

When I first stepped in I tilted my head skyward, eyes fixed on branches 200 feet above the mossy ground below my feet. I grew dizzy as the tips of hemlocks and cedars swayed and shuddered in the river of wind dampening all other sounds in the forest. Old limbs creaked and crumbled under my boots scattering compost into the soil. New limbs creaked and split above me showering lichen into my hair. 

I breathed in the movement, smiled at the dance of the forest, and kept walking. 

I walked and breathed and swayed with the trees. My deafening thoughts competed with the rumbling of twisted limbs through turbulent air. Then quieted as I climbed the hill and gasped at the beauty of a thousand tiny mushrooms, their bright orange caps like braille spelling out Mystery on a rotting log.

I heard it from the clearing. 

I had backtracked from the path to find this little shelter in the woods. “Frolicking meadow,” I think the sign proclaimed when I last visited. But the sign was gone and evergreen branches lay strewn across the grassy field. Yellow leaves littered the wooden platform where an Adirondack asked for my company. The planks soft with this week's rain, the seat squeaked a greeting and attempted to soak memories of once being a forest into my skin. 

Summer frolicking officially ended.

Crack shudder whoosh bassdrum. 

I assumed a truck from the distant road hit a pothole. Or backfired. Or dropped a huge trailer of something very, very, heavy.

The wind picked up again, the trees around the clearing danced frantically, a moss-covered branch landed near my foot. 

I knew it wasn’t a truck. 

I knew I should probably get out of the woods.

If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound? 

Yes. I was that somebody there to hear it. 

I packed up my journal and took one last long look at the coniferously-tipped horizon, distinct grey clouds hurrying by on their way to the sea, perhaps late for a celestial Thanksgiving dinner. I was about to run a gauntlet and I wondered how long a tree takes to fall. How big of a branch it takes to kill a person. With how much of a concussion could I stumble out of the woods.

The tree trunk was broken in six places. Fresh jagged chunks confettied the surrounding ferns. The trail, the one I had backtracked from 20 minutes before, was now partially obstructed by this newly fallen tree. This newly fallen pretty damn big tree. Definitely out of “concussion” territory and in “full blown dead” realm if we’re talking diameter. Right on this path where I had stood. Not next to the path, or 50 feet from the path, but Right On The Path, following the trail with its broken body like a dis-jointed toy snake.

Now, I’m not usually one to hide at home in fear of being hit by a random bus or struck down by lightening. Hell, I go to sea for a living knowing that once you are Out There, there is very little  control (as in None) you have over nature. Anything can happen. But for some reason walking through the woods on a thoroughly windy day seemed like asking for a (large jagged) stick on (in?) the noggin.

I skirted the newly fallen pretty damn big tree and listened to the thousands of shaking leaves around me as I sidestepped blushing mushrooms and flooded dips in the path on my way home. I sang and skipped and smiled my way to the road where I live, the lingering anxiety dissolving as I stepped into a nearby clearing. I raised my hands to the branches and gave gratitude for the reminders about flexibility and impermanence and the unknown consequences of simply going for a walk. Simply being alive.

How quickly does a tree in the woods fall and if so, can you hear the sound if standing directly below that tree? Today I didn’t need to be the one to find out. 



(but if it had been my day to be smashed by a tree, I would've gone out with deep gratitude in my heart and an overjoyed sense of a life well lived.)

It is a Day of Deep Thanks:

I am grateful for being alive, not just Not Being Smashed by a Tree Alive, but Living a Very Amazing Life Alive.

I am grateful for the woods and wind and water that surround me.

I am grateful for my community of friends and family; those who I already know and those that I have yet to officially meet.

I am grateful for my strong, healthy body (especially when I need to get the hell out of the woods).

I am grateful for all the wild blessings in my life and for my gut leading me to more and more every day.

Provided for

There is an apple in my palm. 

There are ants on the apple and bruises on the skin. I brush off the dirt gathered after its fall, its settling on the forest floor. The ants and mites abandon ship and search for other fallen apples among the crunchy leaves. 

White teeth through green flesh into another sweet whiteness with which my mouth cannot compete. I chew, I smile, I scrunch my eyes at the mingling of tart and sugary deliciousness. My fingernails excavate caves of brown and pick at speckles of black across the otherwise smooth surface. I watch a lone mite crawl on the stem and jump off.

I was hungry. 

Not a starving hunger, just a little nibble of a nag, a grumble of intentions south of those (my) lungs gulping fresh air. I had one of those protein bars in my little black bag, next to my water bottle, nestling against my notebook. But I didn’t want a chewy bite of soy that looks nothing like a soybean. I didn’t want that sweetness that sticks to the top of my tongue but doesn’t infuse my whole mouth with luscious thoughts of rain and golden afternoon sun. I didn’t want a square instead of a curved or jagged or root-haired morsel. 

I don’t know why I looked up when I did. Maybe it was the smell of cider mingling with damp leaves in the clearing of this narrow valley. I looked up and saw globes of green hanging from haggard brown branches. 

I thought about climbing. 

I thought about throwing rocks. 

I thought about grabbing and shake shake shaking until orbs of tart came raining down on my head.

Taking action, right?

My eyes pulled down to the earth I breathed in the stillness and birdcalls and slight rumble of a deer trampling down saplings, creating mulchy compost underfoot. Apples were everywhere. I picked up several, gazed into smooshy tan, returned them to the ground. The ants were five steps ahead and devoured flesh and innards alike of the decomposing fruits. Sharing.

I found her: only slightly bruised, minutely gnawed, and totally perfect. For me.

There is an apple in my palm. 

I wasn’t expecting there to be at the beginning of my walk through the woods. I was hungry but I waited for something real. I didn’t really wait, I just walked forward into the shadows and breeze and let my gut speak to the trees. I trusted I would not starve and the universe provided, surprised me. 

This apple makes me happier than anything right now. I trust it will all come to me as I open up my hand, open up my eyes, look up and ground down. Find the bounty surrounding me, not perfect aesthetically, but perfect in this moment to nourish me among my grumbles and sighs.

I take another bite and savor each step into this trust, this process, this devouring of luscious life.

Under A Harvest Moon

The quilt holds us in the moonlight. 

We stretch out and sing loud and lay tangled in a nest of strong bodies, heads on hips, fingers woven into each others hair, shoulders against bellies. 

We howl at the harvest moon and plink hawthorn berries into tea as we whisper of letting go, of love, of growing our hearts open.

We laugh and strum and growl and lay silent and waiting for the light in the darkness to tell us something. 

We listen. 

We write our own stories as we stumble across the rocky earth, we draw the others in with our voices clear and joyful. 

We are each others heartbeats. 

We (I) don’t want the moon-bathed night to end.

I fall asleep under the trees alone in my nylon cocoon. 

I hear the coyotes and chickens and trucks and oak leaves create a symphony of the valley around me.

I leave tomorrow.

Another full moon, another place, another life awaits. 

I will bring my quilt, I will bring my big ole heart, I will let the seeds germinate and grow and create lives of their own. 

I will sip tea and think of these (us) souls on top of a hill in the moonlight, singing, howling, comforting, being. 

I will love and cry and laugh and break open.

I will carry this gratitude with the rocks and shells and notes and tiny flower buds in the cracked mason jar of this one infinite home.

Just Float

I am.

Waterlogged.

I cling to scratchy branches, seeping wounds in bark, splintered trunks, attempting to stay afloat. 

I thrash and gasp and scramble atop my unwilling (unneeded?) raft.

I was the one who cut down these trees.

I lose my grasp and go under time and again, fighting for breath, fighting for words, fighting to know Why. 

The river is winning. 

I kick my legs and flail my arms and add to the (self generated?) turbulence, white wash, din.

The sky is blue and calm above the chaos. 

There is water in my eyes and I look down, trying to find the stones in my path.

I don't see above.

When I decide to let go of these trees and float down this river, 

(surrender?)

I will see that infinite calm clearly.

I will see the land on either side.

I will swim to shore and set up my tent and roast a marshmallow (crispy burnt!) and smile.

I will wonder what all the fighting was for as I wring out my jeans, pull silvery fish from jacket pockets.

I will dance naked under the flickering stars, wet hair slithering down my back to remind me of the struggle (until the fight evaporates from my skull). 

I will lay with the water rushing by my toes, the land singing me to sleep.

The logs will keep moving until...(I stop cutting them down)

Oregon