smell of tomatoes on the vine, in the sun, can you stand it?

Swimming naked in lakes... watching sunsets fade slowly over cornfields... music festivals filling my head with what will be deep fond memories... running along the river, racing it to sea but losing each time that I have to turn back home.

I rediscovered some of my own soul, listening to the sweet sound of gospel knock on the door of my own ideas about what I like and don't like, then kicking it down like a blast of cool wind and rain that just tore across a desert. Guitars and drums thumping, compelling beyond strumming and inviting the gently rowdy crowd to their feet. I clap and sway, the old man with the beard wailing on the mandolin, the deep voice ringing cosmically true from the black man in small black glasses, the country girl on guitar closed her eyes so she can't rightly open them but she sways with something, you can see the hand of someone moving inside them, fingers wiggling behind the eyes and pushing lightly on their backs in time with the unstoppable maple sap they just tapped...

I got to drive a tractor across some farm fields. A big one, hard to shift but with surprisingly responsive steering. So much fun! Then I ground some spelt (similar to wheat, but with less gluten so wheat-sensitive people can more often eat it) berries into flour by hand which was great. Planning to bake with it soon. Banana bread...

I made some pottery on a wheel with a great teacher who let me screw up only a bit but left me feeling like I did it all myself. That was divine, feeling the soft clay turn in my hands, feeling the centrifugal and centripetal forces, getting in touch with the rotation that makes up all of us down to our atoms and apples, watching evolution unfold as my stationary fingers meet the smooth rotating surface to etch new possibilities and ancient patters to old to be trite. Creating useful things...hmmm... that's certainly part of my calling... tangible objects crafted with only patience and an unimagined future that will last as long as people love well-made things.

Loving the place, loving the people, working on loving myself and learning to wait...

so that's where I left it...

With much regret I must announce that after spending two weeks in the wilderness of mid-northern Ontario, I was neither transformed into Henry David Thoreau (as I had previously hoped I might be) nor did I fully let go of existence and discover my true Buddha nature (which would have been a decent showing on my part, I think, as well). I did however get to stand about 30 feet from a truly wild moose and her calf, watching them watch me while they nibbled on some tender lily stalks in a marshy offshoot of a lake. We shared a moment together, accompanied by the occasional slap of a beaver tail in the smooth dark water nearby. It was a lovely few minutes before dinner, as the sun was setting behind the mountains and water dribbled off both their long, stringy beards into the lake.

I came to the lakes to hear myself and the sounds of nature. Perhaps I came to live deliberately, to taste the marrow of life and see if I know it already.

I heard much silence, and I saw much beauty. I saw patience, and felt the cradling of water. I heard myself slowly letting go of some attachment. I heard the loons' hollow, serene and haunting cries in the evening. I saw sunsets that couldn't be anything but beautiful. I felt a world that is fine without people, and mildly tolerant of us during our species' sojourn searching for meaning.

Again I feel a common thread that runs through us and our ecosystems, the air we breathe and the living water we drink, the views we cherish out our windows and the homeless sleeping on tired, dirty pavement, chainsaws and beavers' teeth, love and frenetic action, wood and plastic, electric lights and teakettles on cast-iron stoves. The thread is elusive yet perceptible, fleeting if we stare too hard and too long but always tangible at the periphery while we smile on sunny afternoons with friends. It's feng shui de-mystified and Freud when he wasn't neurotic. It's so much that of course we can't grok it all at once, but it's always there in the brushstrokes that make up our memories.

What can we do to cultivate it, shelter it, draw on it, grow it, spread it? Get out, love life - go to Fairmount Park, Prospect Park, Central Park, Golden Gate Park, People's Park, Hanover Park, Exhibition Park, The Mall, Peers Park, or even better the park of your choice. Walk barefoot in the grass, offer a stranger some home-made food, hold hands with friends, do whatever... The whole universe probably started with a giant, homogeneous explosion, is now divided up into usable elements that make up us, and will likely eventually cool to about 4 degrees Kelvin and slowly pull itself back together in a giant, shrinking disk of energy. Remember where we came from in this tiny slice of cosmic time - we evolved over tens and hundreds of thousands of years of just us and the forests, rivers, lakes, and plains. If we feel down in the earth to explore our roots, there are useful things there to remember, if only vague impressions of a time gone by that we may want to feel again sometime in the future.

Have I gone totally granola hippie-dippie? For a little while :-) but I recommend it every now and then - I always feel like I'm onto something bigger than myself...

wilderness reflection from the lakeshore

far from highways
sweet chunks of granite and quartz
split sheer along hillsides and jagged ridges,
cluttering the forest with loose interglacial sparkling love,
beautiful in the patience
of nature.

thundercloud mist
rolls mountaintops savvy,
grays broad-leaf maples
lush raindrops collect

wind bending treetops
birds arise in sudden silent
flock turning in the dark
afternoon wind
the smells of deep pine crowded lakes
are so foreign to city pavement smog,
incomprehensible while
I'm adrift in this golden twilight
burning towards purple.

We must save this, wild
part of ourselves with
ancient roots,
the memory of bone tools
in our rough hands,
the crackle of firewood
and patience of a rhythm
so slow we can hurry nothing.
How can we reverse trends
curve straight lines
let the freeze and thaw
and sensual spring work
on our ossified, cancerous
ideas of controlling
the universe?

How can we return to simple lives,
the patterns that
never went silent but
were drowned by steel mills, internal combustion, photons from screens,
mass-produced drugs, the silencing effect of
lipstick, the hum of chest
freezers?

Paddle me to shore,
steer me in the rich sounds of a bustling lake,
for we're tired and full of love
in our hearts-
some simple food and
emerging stars will tide
me 'til tomorrow
when we both wake
to create our world.

crossroading

Reporting from the country with universal healthcare, a state-protected dairy industry, and lots of thoughtful, kind people...

I'm off to Killarney Provincial Park in about an hour, to canoe with an old friend for two weeks in something resembling wilderness (occasional other campers, hopefully lots of bear and moose, and definitely some silence). I'll be out of touch and out of tech completely until July 24th, so look for more white-knuckle blogging action soon thereafter.

To all those who I hoped to talk with in person before leaving, know that I'm thinking of you, palms together and face raised to the sky in thanks. Life is so good, and you have all been good to me. I'm just working to let it all in, flowing through me while I try to create a good life.

Peace from the east...

home on the range

So I sit and ponder life, munching on some free-range buffalo summer sausage that a wonderful couple down the valley gave us when we stopped by this afternoon. Their ranch is small, about 330 acres, and straddles the river/creek that flows with a ribbon of green down both banks in between desert rock bluffs. It's a sweet little spot amidst high winds and snowy peaks, a little haven for meat and love in the high country.

I'm off on the train tonight, watchin' the wheels all the way to Buffalo NY, from where I will head on two wheels to Guelph, Ontario for my next adventure in the wilderness above the Great Lakes. It's been great here in Jefferson, Colorado, building with friends and learning new things. I will miss it. Some peopel have mentioned the lack of pictures, so I promise to post some as soon as I can.

Life is so good, full of options and produce and hope and green grass and more. If you're following, I'll try to write once more on Friday or Saturday before heading out of contact for two weeks. Until we meet again, on this screen or in person, may you find peace, contentment, and all that you're looking for.

starlight through a working dawn

Small keystrokes softly fill my
dark room,
screen below and spread of
Milky Way above
bending thick and pale across
deepening black sky -
satellites wander to fill it,
beaming our lives full of
distant radio waves
echoing our needs and
wants

But tonight it's windy silence,
sweeping through aspen
silver leaves,
new and delightful like
snow in alpine fields
of green.

Sleepy morning sunrise,
red against distant rainclouds
so close as our mountains
scrape the sky,
I smile rumbling over
dirt roads down to
our house in progress.

Dust clouds float up,
our faithful dog jumps
out of the car,
I slip on my sunglasses
and stretch tired shoulders,
deltoids twitching in
cold bright dawn.

I don't plan to die with a hammer in my hand,
but I know a bit about what John Henry was trying to say.

Sometimes the world is so beautiful it just wells up inside me, and I am overwhelmed by it all. Those days are nice, a counterpoint to the darker ones filled with more doubt and confusion. We can make our lives so good, and create so much satisfaction for ourselves.