My greeting party on the way to my sit yesterday: two of our Ameraucanas (Pippy and Smokeyarm), and an unnamed Rhode Island Red. My kids and I have always had trouble telling the Reds apart from one another, so we just let the individuals meld into a group identity. My nephew up the hill did his best to remedy this situation by dubbing one of them "Brownish" and another "Brownie," though I'm not altogether certain that he's able to tell them apart, either.
And speaking of the cousins,this is the new delight I get to pass on the way to my sit spot: handprints of the four cousins on the top of their grandparents' stone wall! (They were pressed into concrete in this carved-out section of one of the rocks.) After each child made their handprint, their Nanny tenderly imprinted the palm with their first initial. My girl's is on the bottom left and my boy's is on the bottom right, with my nephews' up top.
A fairy garden of moss on the path to my sit spot, holding the afternoon's raindrops.
Following the Kamana suggestion to go a different way each time you travel somewhere, I struggled to find a path through waist-high greenery as part of my "new way" yesterday. Curious about the mouses'-eye-view of this miniature forest, I stooped down low to the ground, and discovered abundant blackberries growing low beneath the bushes and flowers. I enjoyed many of the treats, but left some as my thanks to the small ones who helped me discover them in the first place.
The river is so low that essentially everything under the water has become visible, including rocks, branches, and various pieces of an old washed-out dam upstream. I'm doing my best to memorize the location of all the big objects, so that as I swim after rainstorms, when the river looks like melted chocolate, I can steer clear of them and save myself from getting the what-did-I-just-touch?! heebie jeebies.
An old hemlock near my sit that I'm growing increasingly fond of, as it teaches me daily about what effective umbrellas hemlocks can be. I've been noting the orange areas visible on this side of its trunk, and wondering if they are evidence of squirrel foot traffic. A naturalist friend of mine pointed out years ago that some trees bear the marks of generations of squirrels who've taken advantage of the convenient location or other characteristic of a particular tree. Tiny sections of outer bark are thrown off by each animal's passing claws so that over time, the accumulation of missing bark reveals the most-traveled paths of a forest.
A good sit, continuing my new pattern of assimilating quickly into the woods as I enter. Whereas earlier in the month, I enjoyed my visits to the woods, I now feel myself an inhabitant of the woods, returning home to them after my forays elsewhere. It feels as though my pulse has slowed to match the speed of the forest.
Happy sitting!
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