Pine tea relaxes me.
I was standing outside the workhouse this morning, drinking a cup of soft and hot white pine tea and listening to the birds (especially the blue jays screech) when I had a thought, which - for some unknown reason - brought me a feeling of comfort. I thought: perhaps God does intervine in the affairs of this world, working his miracles, an apple tree for instance. Perhaps he intervines only rarely so that most of the time the world proceeds under the governance of its own free will. Perhaps the world is happy just to exist and the miracles only remind it of its happiness when it might lose sight of it. Perhaps a sunny day at the very beginings of spring is a miracle.
I chewed on a sapling pine today because a friend told me it would taste good. It's like that time in preschool. I was out in the front yard of the massive sandstone church where I spent my days away from my parents (but with my sister) negotiating a deal that would admit me into a elite social group of youngsters, a club of sorts. "If you eat this piece of grass, you're in." "Okay." Chew, chew, chew; swallow. It surprised me how little happened. The grass tasted bland. I was not poisoned. Everything was normal.
And, even earlier at the preschool across the river, in a little building with the fenced, pavement play yard: a little boy was eating ants. I told on him.
I left work early on Monday because of a lingering sickness. I went to the Ridges to a hut I built over the weekend. I lay down in it, smelt it, felt the wet leaves. The rain had soaked right through the roof into the bed of pine boughs and forest floor debris. Still, it was warm and comfortable.
The shelter must come down. It is not good enough. The process was full of learning: clear a circle, raise the bed, clear a larger circle, walls and roof, clear a very large circle, pile on leaves. The door faces west. The entrance is awkward. I'll take it down later.
I stepped over a rusty old fence, beat down close to the ground perhaps by human or animal traffic. Out of the woods into a field full of the memories of dogbane: the dead, woody remnants of last year's growth. That field would make a nice bit of coradage.
If I walk into the Wayne National Forest come September, I could stay there for forty days.
I chewed on a sapling pine today because a friend told me it would taste good. It's like that time in preschool. I was out in the front yard of the massive sandstone church where I spent my days away from my parents (but with my sister) negotiating a deal that would admit me into a elite social group of youngsters, a club of sorts. "If you eat this piece of grass, you're in." "Okay." Chew, chew, chew; swallow. It surprised me how little happened. The grass tasted bland. I was not poisoned. Everything was normal.
And, even earlier at the preschool across the river, in a little building with the fenced, pavement play yard: a little boy was eating ants. I told on him.
I left work early on Monday because of a lingering sickness. I went to the Ridges to a hut I built over the weekend. I lay down in it, smelt it, felt the wet leaves. The rain had soaked right through the roof into the bed of pine boughs and forest floor debris. Still, it was warm and comfortable.
The shelter must come down. It is not good enough. The process was full of learning: clear a circle, raise the bed, clear a larger circle, walls and roof, clear a very large circle, pile on leaves. The door faces west. The entrance is awkward. I'll take it down later.
I stepped over a rusty old fence, beat down close to the ground perhaps by human or animal traffic. Out of the woods into a field full of the memories of dogbane: the dead, woody remnants of last year's growth. That field would make a nice bit of coradage.
If I walk into the Wayne National Forest come September, I could stay there for forty days.
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