Asakiyume mita

Today I went out to mail a letter, walking through the woods, like I did the day I dropped a card by a pine tree. It was much warmer today, but the path through the woods was still covered with ice. If I had been wearing ice skates, I could have sped along it, my own tiny Rideau Canal.



On the way back from the post office, the clouds were thickening and the wind picked up, and I worried about trees falling on me. I never used to worry about this in the woods, but winds that bring down trees are much more common now. At home, I picked up mail from our postbox... and there was this postcard:



It's from minoanmiss --she sent it for me to share with the pine tree.

Isn't that great?

Next time I walk that route, I promise I will! Thank you, MM!

I was saying to malorys_camera that a switch has flipped in my brain and now I'm tired of thinking about COVID 19. The other day I went several tens of minutes without thinking about it at all, and that was great! (Don't mistake me; I'm not saying that it's not serious--not saying that at all--I'm just saying that having my thoughts chained to it feels like being Alex in Clockwork Orange when he's got his eyes stuck open and is being force-fed Beethoven's Ninth. You could be exhausted by something as lovely as Beethoven's Ninth if the circumstances were right, and let's be real: COVID 19 is not that lovely.)

So for a change of scene, let me show you the Hardware of the Street which I discovered. I mean! Programming for a whole street! Admittedly a street in a housing development in western Massachusetts, so like, not the most crucial of streets. But just imagine what directives and protocols it might hold. What if roads communicated up to the things that pass along them?



And speaking of, you'll enjoy a year's worth of animals passing over this natural bridge (condensed into five minutes--try watching just one! You'll be hooked), if you haven't already encountered it on your social media feeds. You'll be surprised at the variety of animals using it--fun to see the river in different states, as well.

Work's been intense, but I took a break and met wakanomori for lunch, and we read a little from this book, The Old Ways, by Robert MacFarlane, and there was this passage:

The way-marking of old paths is an esoteric lore of its own, involving cairns, grey wethers, sarsens, hoarstones, longstones, milestones, cromlechs and other guide-signs. On boggy ares of Dartmoor, fragments of white china clay were placed to show safe paths at twilight, like Hansel and Gretel's pebble trail. (p. 15, italics mine)

May you find your glimmering twilight path.

What if when you journeyed, the road only appeared after you? I guess that's the case for explorers--they create paths behind them. So, snails and slugs are explorers.

... Also, when you see a slug's silvery path, you expect some amazingly lovely creature must have made it.

"And you'd be right," says a self-confident slug, maybe blushing a little that you should reach such a flattering conclusion.

shining trail


almost across the Great Hard Waste

I walked along this path and didn't stumble.

Because of Pen Pal, I pay attention to volcanic eruptions. Yesterday Mt. Sinabung, one of Indonesia's 130 active volcanoes, erupted. The Guardian has a photo essay here. Two photos from that set below:

Mt. Sinabung (Photo by Ade Sinuhaji)


Ash coats a motorbike (Photo by Binsar Bakkara)


Meanwhile, where I live, the land has fever-and-ague, going from deep, deep freeze to bursts of heat, during which it sweats and pants--not steam, though; just water vapor.

During this brief melt, the secret roads of voles and mice are revealed. Their motto is a straight line is an abomination