Skiddaway

I brought my homework into the woods today. It's very easy to lose track of time in there. It's also easy to physically lose yourself in there too. Unless you have a compass, a good sense of direction or a trail. I only had the latter. But it seems that when you are lost psychologically, the woods are a great place to find yourself.

It's calming and comforting (except for the sounds of boats, cars, and other trail roamers...although it was really nice to hear the kids shout out things. They led me to find some nice clay at one point.)
But, the sense of being totally alone and totally outside-it does something.

As I walked around I was keeping my eye out for little inviting spaces for me to sit and read. These spaces seemed to call out to me almost. (yeah so what if that sounds silly) It's like when I saw them, I knew it was my turn to occupy that space. ANYWAY. At one point I was sitting behind this tree that sprouted into two at the base. At another point, after reading for a while I looked up to my right to see a single spiders web strand going almost perpendicular to me. That was NOT there when I sat down.

So, I got up and walked more. I got so into looking at the guts of the trees where either woodpeckers got to, or limbs were torn off on the LEFT side of the trail that I never noticed how different and empty (the point of it is that it was shockingly different) the right side of the trail was until I was turned around. Kind of makes me think about that in relation to life.

So I walked further. On the Left side of the trail I came upon this sort of C shape and on the hump side of the C shape was this tree that was all twisty and had grown to the ground then up again. The hump of the C shape was about 5 yards from the trail. The tree said to me "come, sit, please." At first I was kind of like.. "poo snakes" but then in the same second I went anyway.
AND WHAT DO YOU THINK I FOUND!? The tree gave me a present! He said "thank you Jamie for listening." He gave me an almost clean-not very stinky-and actually very beautiful opossum skull! Then looking further I found a jaw, some vertebrae, pelvic bones, leg bones, and some weird flat bone! YAY! They were all spread apart though. Poor little guy. He's getting a clean bleach job as we speak. I didn't end up going sit on that tree though. It had poop on the only sitable spot.



I realized too that I'm actually less scared of snakes than I am of spiders. Later in my day I came to the river. I'd always liked this spot of the trail. There's a large tree that's knocked down, but it has all of these long vine-like roots and limbs. It's really cool because last time I was there you could see his pink guts. This time instead of looking for his guts I wanted to climb him. Especially because I saw that in the river were PELICANS! Once I climbed up I watched these 5 or so pelicans do the most funny thing that I wish I could do. (They were actually looking for food) But it made me laugh and smile. SYNCHRONIZED they would all fly up, glide over the water for a bit, flap their wings to get height, glide, then DIVE down and PLUNGE into the water...then pop right back up like a buoy. It was so great. So VERY great.




Then I walked more and found another passage to the shore. I thought I was all cool for finding this mysterious hide away. Then I heard a kid and his mom looking for deer tracks..and I noticed that later on the trail led right to where I was. Ohhh well.

I realized, while driving home, that one should never go into a situation with expectations. I feel like preconceptions and expectations kill the moment and puts a stigma on the situation. Where as if you go into it with NO expectations, no matter what you get out of it, you are surprised, and you got something and you don't know... or don't know to think about what you didn't get. I use to think, at some points in life, that going into situations with negative expectations and preconceptions would yield better results. My logic was that anything you get that is better than what you are expecting...is GREAT! and if things are shitty..well... "I told you so."
Bad move. Because that constant thought of badness lingering over you...will bring you..to that doom. I mean, think happy thoughts get happy results-think bad thoughts you stay in the shitter.
1+1=2 Okay so maybe it's not that easy. But. It makes sense. And..who says 1+1 cant =3.

Anyway. One of the articles I had to read for Fibers was about "organic fibers" actually all the articles I read are about organic-itizing things. BUT it made me think...even though there's a huge awareness now about doing things "organically" ..everything is becoming so completely ARTIFICIAL. fiber wise. food wise. everything-wise.
Which then made me think of holidays.
and then I stopped thinking about that and kept walking.

I found a piece of soaked bark. It was crumbly and mooshy to the touch. It made me wonder if fibers (for clothes) are made out of wood pulp. Then later I read another article and it answered my question! They make cellulose synthetics out of woodpulp.
fun.