safety

But if you judge safety to be the paramount consideration in life you should never, under any circumstances, go on long hikes alone. Don’t take short hikes alone, either – or, for that matter, go anywhere alone. And avoid at all costs such foolhardy activities as driving, falling in love, or inhaling air that is almost certainly riddled with deadly germs. Wear wool next to the skin. Insure every good and chattel you possess against every conceivable contingency the future might bring, even if the premiums half-cripple the present. Never cross an intersection against a red light, even when you can see all roads are clear for miles. And never, of course, explore the guts of an idea that seems as if it might threaten one of your more cherished beliefs. In your wisdom you will probably live to be a ripe old age. But you may discover, just before you die, that you have been dead for a long, long time.

-Colin Fletcher, from The Complete Walker

walkin'

What can be bad about a song about walkin' ... and love?

under the category of...

things you may need to know someday -- if you're lucky:

easy peasy, lemon squeezy!

cannonball

Another one for the summer soundtrack:

tribute

gin, rocks, olive.

field notes

To be honest, I just wanted to find another way to see the rain this morning.  To want it as it fell -- heavy and laced with the exotic perfume of the oregano that is growing over the walk, its battered leaves giving up their faintly bitter history to the torrent.  Now that it has stopped I can hear the birds again.  And the lonely cricket who has taken up residence in our basement.  

song for summer

This one makes me think of riding around, circa mid-1970s, with my teenaged aunts in their shared Mustang.  I don't quite remember, I think it was green and it seems like it had only AM radio -- but I can easily recall the smell that black vinyl seats get when they heat up in summer sun, and the way the backs of your legs sizzle when you slide over them.

field notes

from deep within the belly of summer:

Queen-Anne's Lace

Her body is not so white as
anemony petals nor so smooth—nor
so remote a thing. It is a field
of the wild carrot taking
the field by force; the grass
does not raise above it.
Here is no question of whiteness,
white as can be, with a purple mole
at the center of each flower.
Each flower is a hand’s span
of her whiteness. Wherever
his hand has lain there is
a tiny purple blemish. Each part
is a blossom under his touch
to which the fibres of her being
stem one by one, each to its end,
until the whole field is a
white desire, empty, a single stem,
a cluster, flower by flower,
a pious wish to whiteness gone over—
or nothing.

-William Carlos Williams

if

If you prefer smoke over fire
then get up now and leave.
For I do not intend to perfume
your mind's clothing
with more sooty knowledge.

No, I have something else in mind.
Today I hold a flame in my left hand
and a sword in my right.
There will be no damage control today.

For God is in a mood
to plunder your riches and
fling you nakedly
into such breathtaking poverty
that all that will be left of you
will be a tendency to shine.

So don't just sit around this flame
choking on your mind.
For this is no campfire song
to mindlessly mantra yourself to sleep with.

Jump now into the space
between thoughts
and exit this dream
before I burn the damn place down.

― Adyashanti

story

We think we tell stories, but stories often tell us ...

-Rebecca Solnit

I was asked, this past week, were we here on vacation?  To which I immediately answered no -- well before I had a chance to realize how strange it sounded.  But I don’t see these expeditions as recreation in the conventional sense.  Maybe that’s a problem ...  but to me vacation is a week in the sand with a stack of books, empty agenda, little ventured, simple gain of relaxation, rest, renewal.  Other trips hold more than that.  Adventure, adversity, opportunity -- a quest for ...  for what?  The MacGuffin could be anything really, because it loses its significance as the story begins to unfold.  It’s the action, the characters, that make the meaning.  The place and play between the place and person, and person and person.  The story.

And so it’s interesting really, that in literary terms the denouement of a story is the final resolution, the moment when all of the details fall into place, order emerges.  And yet denouement, in French, means the untying, unravelling.  Which feels to me like unpacking from the trip -- first the physical things we carry, clothes, gear and then the intangible things that also return with us in the form of thoughts and memories, emotions, all tumbling into the pile to be sorted.  This process is complicated by the fact that the unpacking of the intangibles is, by nature, indeliberate and it is unclear as to just what and how much of it there is, and when it will reveal itself.  These fragments of memory, anecdote, happiness, regret ... steep cliffs, unfathomable colors, sore muscles, short tempers, long talks, sunsets, northern lights, shooting stars, the brief interval between the dying light of one day and the first flicker of the next, constellations of mosquito bites, deep water, cold water, falling water, drifting sands that won’t hold footprints, cold beers and campfires, marshmallows, al fresco dining, dust, heat, lake breezes, thrills and tears, baptisms, epiphanies, mysteries...  unravelled into a tangle that I want badly to take and weave into a single frame that might tell a tidy story but it doesn’t seem to want to work itself out that way.  I have to be content then to simply pour it all out ... and to let the story continue to tell itself.

great lakes III

Superior: