Getting out in the rain after too many days cooped up, no date

Think I'm gonna dress up & take a walk. I've huddled in this propane-warm cabin too long -- I'm going outside for a walk. Got 2 hours before the next check-in. I'll take my radio just in case. I wanna get wet and cold, come in & watch the steam rising from my drying wool pants, and enjoy myself.

And this time I remembered to close windows to keep out brave, fat chipmunks.

****

Man -- I feel GREAT! just took a walk down about a mile or so to see what I could see. I feel so much better now.

On the path/road not 1/2 mile from here I found carnivore shit. Looked too big for coyote. Maybe Cat? I pray -- it's not far if it is.

Further down, after doing a second radio check to make sure I was still in contact w/ Mt. Hood Dispatch, I walked down the 400 Rd. I made about 1/2 mile -- no grouse by the way -- and it started to drizzle. I headed back, joyous as ever. I was just dripping with joy. When I turned around, the road looked completely different. Now uphill, now curving to the *right* -- so I didn't put my slingshot away -- who could tell if there were any grouse on *this* road or not?

On the way down -- I'd found some lichen that was in the road, blown off a tree. It was so seaworthy -- shaped just like some sea lettuce I've seen. My mind raced -- sea -- up here -- evolution.

I walked back, and it started to rain seriously, and I smiled at the change. I forgot all about the electronics in my backpack -- didn't worry about them at least.

I came to a boulder overhanging a ledge, headed Southwest -- into the wind. I walked out & stood, arms to the side -- huge smile. I felt *so* good, it felt so good to have the wind strong against me, reminded me of the times when I've felt the sentience of the wind -- when I related to it as a spirit. I walked back -- happy.

[to be continued]

July 20th -- eyes of cows

I'd recently written in a letter to my mother that I was pretty sure I was smart. I'm not too sure "smart" is accurate now. Thinking about it, "enthusiastic" & "passionate" came up. Something bred out of the majority of society.

You can see its lack in the eyes of cows.

Not that I'm not a cow, I may just be one of the ones that wanders off a bit to stare at the trees outside the barbed wire -- or one of those rangy-horned, sagebrush cows that scamper indelicately off when you're hiking in the Puebelo Mountains. Ones who've gone to seed a bit, whose meat is used for jerky & their hide for boot leather -- still dim, but Remembering, nonetheless.

The eyes of a deer, or an elk -- that's an entirely different story; one I hesitate to even start in on. The depth of a deer's gaze, the sex in the elk's (of course I'm thinking here of a full-antlered stag in the rut -- pounding the ground with his powerful, impatient steps, ripping up bushes for practice and release). I'm not ever going to go into it, I don't have the time to write such a volume -- or the maturity. My feet are still unhaired, and my hands soft. I'll wait until the bottoms of my feet are shod in thick leather, and my hands tawny & strong & brown like a rancher's tanned grip.

July 18th, The Sun, A Butterfly, and Chinese Poetry

Let it be said that the day was warm -- that the man laid nude on the catwalk and his flesh drank deep the nourishing rays of the Sun.

A shadow passed, and I looked up into a grey stormcloud, hinged bright penumbra halo.

I got dressed, and went back out to the walk, noting the flight of a Zebra Swallowtail below. So angular -- in my youth, the swallowtails in general were diamond & ruby to this butterfly collector -- but Zebra were nearly unheard of in the lowlands where I lived, and were especially prized. Never in all my childhood did I kill either species to impale them with a pin. Not that I wouldn't have at the time -- it just never happened.

Now, watching the jagged geometry of it's flight from above -- I wonder at the design it's tracing. A fractal perhaps, like the view from the top of the juvenile Doug Fir tree beside it -- perfect geometry. Or something more delicate, more subtle. "nonsense" to the uninitiated -- but a fluid, consistent 'chaos' to the new Scientists.

As a child, the erratic flight always seemed a programmed evasion technique; but I had a particular relation at that point. Now, I wonder if its sketching something more important to my understanding.

Maybe it will be one of those visions that lets gates fly open in your synaptic mass, like your first orgasm, or psychadelic experience.

I notice another butterfly off in the Rhododendron field, sketching its own, similar, chaotic pattern. I am reminded of a poem, "Visit to the Hermit Ts'Ui, by Chiien Ch'I -- written in the 8th century, in China (translated in the 1960's by Kenneth Rexroth).


Visit to the Hermit Ts'Ui


Moss covered paths between scarlet peonies,
Pale jade mountains fill your rustic windows.
I envy you, drunk with flowers,
Butterflies swirling in your dreams.



Ch'ien Ch'I
(Love and the Turning Year;
One Hundred More Poems from the Chinese
Kenneth Rexroth, P. 67)



I look out over the butte and realize I'm in a garden of pink Rhododendron flowers & small, precise conifers. I realize I'm alone, and will be for months. I realize I'm watching butterflies -- and have been for nearly an hour.

July 15, Storm moves out, napping contemplated, fasting

It's just beautiful outside. A storm has broken, the thick cloud bank & 15 mph winds, hail, & thunder rush in about the butte & then retreat again, quickly, into silence. The clouds have lifted, and there's a dark cloud above -- the ridges & peaks are offset by brilliant white mist, thick & curly, that travels down the drainages like baby dragons. Then the wind stops, and they sit -- curled & banked, like Tibetan fire in frieze -- blazing white against the dark blue-green ridges. One of my "chow-dog" ant friends just crawled around on my left hand as I wrote, tapping staccato with its bent, drumstick antennae.

As the clouds move back in, I have a strong desire to nap, to let this all sock directly into my subconscious. Why pretend -- just because my eyes are open doesn't mean I'm awake. Maybe I'll experience more if I'm asleep and unconscious. Maybe then my antennae will flow about in the wind like feathery tendrils of sea polyps, pulling perception in, like barnacles grabbing zooplankton out of the surf.

It is fogging in again. I'm writing while pacing slowly. It's raining. I may still take a nap. The fast today is burning out my back & arms & gut, slowly -- it feels like ashes re-lit & slowly blown on. Especially in my hands.