I live for the woods

Bush alder and pentaphylooides floribunda graced the south bank, while grasses and sedges and --what's that? a decaying old mushroom --with a fringed ring -- psychedellic! Definately a Psilocybe. I took a deep whiff and the on-beyond-earthy smell, as usual, constricted my bowels and while my heart raced to keep up. I gasped and staggered back, but soon I overcame these time-tested instincts and so, with a cry of "no time, no time!" plunge-stepped off into the wilderness.

My explorations take me gradually upstream. It seemed as if the days were flowing by, and I spent whole lifetimes at each bend in the babbling brook. Do not the fish also cause erosion? The elk with their thrashing?

In a clearing where the buck elk stood
squared their hips and bellowed their mating cry
thrashed their still-tender antlers against the sticky-hard
and brittle-soft
bark and branches of the aspen,
Quaking.


On this mountain I am climbing to meet you. I stop under a Ponderosa while the rain passes, and eat of the clear pine sap, and browse oregon grapes packed thick about, gently brushing my ankles, and dream:

It is not possible to tread on the Magic Island, the plants grow so thick. Instead one must swing from limb to limb! Or from stalk to stalk. Let nature show herself as she will. Often a juicy stalk of food will appear in the morning. Trash is simply dropped, whereupon is promptly vanishes into the udnergrowth (Sometimes you can smell where a lot of people or animals have recently been). But to what purpose the song of the birds? The angry chatter of a chipmunk? The ecology of sound? A mossy world where nothing has any weight. The long rise and slow intermittant relapse. The sound of bubbles popping underwater. Quicksand in the river deltas; even the larger boulders rock gently as if they were floating. A caterpillar living on a bed of moss.

I speak for the woods
I live in the woods
I speak in the woods
I live for the woods