kinds of crepe

...well there's really no denying it. it is the Official Onset of the Chillblains. a few clues are:

-the ravaged, limp, and frost-glistening tangle that the coleus has collapsed into

-the test of will to brave chill of the house with all of one's skin after darting out of warm bed

-the new found delight in curling body and palms as close as possible around the hoarse rasp of the gas burner while the kettle heats

-wearing wristers inside
-possibly borrowing someone else's, bigger, slouchier sweatshirt in lieu of the svelte and (seemingly right now, very silly) leanly cut red one that has one has made do with over the summer
-the itch to haul out all of one's knitting materials so the morning runs can be braved in a more practical sense, rather than leaping out in tiny shorts and goose flesh pricked arms, brazenly bare-headed.

i have required of myself one hour, minimum, to get Important Jazz for School done daily. it's a good goal because it is easy to meet and often exceed. but today i spent more time than usual fooling about with the little enamel teapot, and whizzing milk for coffee and hauling out two blankets and a sleeping bag to swathe myself in while i sit outside and decidedly Make Some Progress.

the dangerous thing about procrastinating is that often it feels very productive. totally worth it to have a warm milk belly and wooly mitts for sitting outside. but definitely too late in the day to be eating breakfast.....

by the way,

still thinking about Lacan's question- the subjective experiences of life shaped by language. often Lacan used 'algebraic variables' to describe his somewhat intangible concepts. for example, his model of the Other describes the relationship a person has with herself as she separates herself from the oher Other's around. (seriously intangible grammar.) Lacan, in an attempt to assuage some anxiety labeled the 'big' Other "A" and the 'little' other a. thus, for a child (A) all the other Other's around (mother, father, chair, popsicle, fear) were a series of a's. in this way, Lacan translated a creative experience (that is, ascribing to subjective perception the tool of language) with a more cognitive, concrete one (translating this perception into mathematical variables.) thus, a conclusion could be made that a person goes through the life distinguishing herself from other numbers, all named similarly despite their inherent, formal differences. which neatly brings us to this:

the artist, Hans-Peter Feldmann conceived of the current exhibition at the Guggenheim wherein 100,00 $1 bills are affixed onto the gallery walls. while his statement (a commentary of the coexistence of art and money in a very literal way) does not necessarily align with mine, it is an interesting thing to conceive of being bombarded at once by such a fantastic sum of wealth (of which, ordinarily, it would be difficult for us to conceive) while at the same time having a visual register of the absolute lack of inherent value in a space papered with what might as well be crepe streamers or pinata roughage. certainly a thing to let burn against the back of your eyes if you're near by. out here in the decidedly less affluent living room of a small desert town i have to satisfy myself with ogling electronically.

the latin for filling-her-pockets

so. research and cataloging. happy pursuits really. one thing, among many, that lights up my insides is the phenomenon of amassing, sorting, dividing and displaying. this, potentially, was cultivated (and then propagated) by two simultaneous experiences in college. the first was my maiden voyage into the swoony field of the cataloguess/librarian while assisting in RISD's nature lab:

and also by a trip to RISD's special collections where i was thoughtfully introduced to this magnificent woman by the collection's curator who thought 'it might appeal to me.' likely she had no idea what kind of impression the collection and this book in particular made on me, but i am nevertheless gratefully indebted. 

this is the work of Candy Jernigan. she called herself a 'collection artist' and practiced in New York City until the mid-80s. this catalog of catalogs is mind blowing. someone, at long last, publicly displayed, with love, the mundane trash of our lives and showcased it into something meaningful and potent. one project involved the collection, display and precise mapping of dope vials Jernigan found within a specified area. others are less a commentary but no less powerful. a collection of single sheets of toilet paper from various famous museums in paris, lined up and labeled. or a similar treatment of various bits of dust from the houses of the famous and deceased, presented in the sterile glassine windowpanes more commonly used by lepidopterists. nevertheless, Jernigan's thesis (that the overlooked is consequential) stuck with me through college and up to the present day. friends of mine have joked and rolled eyes when i pass my sketchbook around at breakfast and demand everyone spill their coffee on the page and write their name nearby. certainly cumbersome and my notebooks have (at least a few) taken on a certain vegetal quality from all the food documentation. but then, my memories of every tuesday in the month of october, 2008 are all right there, literally stamped in acid and saccharin which is a most crystalline way to move backwards in time.

the reason i bring this up is because, autumn being upon us, i am always beset at this time of year to collect and catalog the living things (or their remains) before they are wiped, whitely, out of view for a few months. seed pods have been objects of fascination for years and i dutifully bring them inside and brush by them all winter leaving a trampled carpet of straw and obliterated leaves in the carpet, doggedly refusing to 'clean them up' even when their mess persists. but a seed pod is kind of dependable, solid vessel. we know that sorts of patterning it is cradling, just waiting for famine or fire or flood to release it and start the uncurling green newness we are so desperate for later in the year. this year, having wide lapses of time to myself, the catalog of the mundane has grown. thematically it is a collection of the outdoor leftovers and so, as a small joke, has become 'the science pile' and it spreads daily over one of the few pieces of furniture in the house as a record of all kinds of exploits

 

that said, one question that is coming up while researching the dreaded critical analysis paper is Lacan's question. it is a very good one. actually, Lacan feels he has answered the question for everyone, but many people will make a fuss on this question's behalf. thus, i am of the opinion of presenting his thesis as a question, allowing everyone to come to her own decision about it's implications. the question is this:

is language a result of subjective experience?

or rather

is language an innate host for meaning?

do we use language to describe our surroundings and orient us or is our experience of the world informed and shaped purely by language?

if i deem the items in the science pile 'mundane' i have assigned them a kind of (loaded) weight, but while we can, as speakers of the english language, agree on the definition of 'mundane' its consequences are infinitely individual. which either makes language meek and limited or so abundant in variation that it makes the throat creek like a dry riverbed at the thought of saying. anything.

so currently, this question is being held captive in one of the spare vials above until better things can be attached to it (or pasted down, or pinned, or stapled, or affixed with a manila label and inscribed with a quill pen.)


ps...
...if you're wondering what's up there:
- two shreds of wasp paper, from a mysteriously absent wasp house
- a knuckle of rotted wood, shorn down so as to appear exactly as a hermit crab on land
- the petal bodies of two tuberose
-a stack of shards from a beautiful, lost, Port Marion china saucer
-vial i: a salvaged nasturtium seed from last year's first successful nasturtium propagating
-vial ii: glacial chips from a tundra in Alaska
-vial iii: a caribou tooth (likely a bottom front one)
-vial iv: very special, luminous, important glacial chips, with a promised metamorphosis
-another caribou tooth, obviously a molar (and eNORmous)
-a glacial stone
-a salvaged cutting tool from the southern deserts (similar to an arrowhead, but more rounded, maybe for scooping)
-a perfectly forked stick whose individual forks are also forked, and then forked again
-larkspur blossoms from a certain lovely homecoming
-a butterfly wing
-a shiny piece of stone obviously with some graphite or obsidian- wet-looking. all the time.
-a rock with a hole in its center, almost all the way through (a kind friend once told me these are the luckiest)
-a moonface whose brother belongs to a much loved friend
-a butterfly wing
-a tiny tin vial with an even smaller, more fragile butterfly wing
-a thimbleberry leaf underneath:
-three more bright blue glacial chips
-a strange cheese doodle of an early seedpod
-an icy chunk of quartzite from down south
-a smooth stone (probably feels good in the mouth) from a similar place
-a knot of webbing from a retired (and inexplicably exhausted) hiking sandal
-a moqui ball/devil's marble
-the first yellow leaf of autumn with (you guessed?) more glacial stones
-various shrines to the virgin mary

could you have guessed them all?



 

swiftly

before i go stand behind the bar and dole out pints and mixed drinks that will most assuredly be returned due to their wateriness, and before i explain to them the sillyness of our government's insistence on meddling in the blood alcohol levels of its citizens, and before i sneak pommes frites and butterscotch pot de creme on the very down low, please note a good deal of production this morning!

read: a good eight pages of notes for the critical essay, a chunky pile of dutifully inscribed index cards, fanned out logically in a deeply satisfying graph on the kitchen table, a three mile run and lastly (but mostly) voila! our good Kim Boyce has helped me through another morning. read: ginger peach muffins; amaranth, oat flour, hemp seeds, fresh ginger, sinfully luscious peaches, a very moderate knob of butter and the best part: the crackly sound of the parchment paper as you ease it back to reveal a steamy noseful of snacktime. 

thaaaank goodness.

[ yikes ]

time will unravel without you most definitely. at least most likely.

suddenly summer is over, little sockets like empty gums where color used to heap. now, an economy of monotones; a minimalist gesture in distilling color and teasing out mileage from one crispy, sunbent, heat wrecked, time blown and inconsolable kind of brown. the autumn kind.

in the mountains it is more drastic. in a sneak attack, following a perfectly suitable and mild summer sunset, frost and recoiling mercury will lick delicately against the doorjambs like fire until you wake up one morning only to yelp and dive back under collecting every warm body and down-stuffed article available.

maybe it was last week's snow (yes! real! still there in high bowls!) or the tang of leaf rot and pumpkin vine that come in the snapping cold mornings, but it surprises me that, really, only a few weeks ago we had

and, more precisely,

 

now, upon waking, wool is being pulled over gooseflesh, knitting projects crown braids and (worstly...) socks and shoes, to brave the once lush and sagey backlands that are now

there is some romance certainly. a kind of (perpetual) theatrical backlighting, lonely blowing winds, banks of low clouds, the clutter and grate of winds heaving along sidewalks. as a mountainy kind of person none of this is new, but it is surprising how bone sadness sweeps in on cue and with crushing force.

....especially this year as i prepare (at very long last) to get great hulking gears back into motion for graduate school. for which i have tried my hand in a few times now with somewhat dismal results. but. with a great twist of fate, despite:......applying to a program at BFA student has never applied to (read: nor ever been accepted into), the challenge of presenting work which proves my abilities are strong enough to be accepted into said program which is comprised of 80% doctoral candidates, coming up (some some how) with a critical writing sample of 6 pages which i should have "lying about, leftover from college", passing the graduate record exams (can we talk about the last time i did math? hint: i was in the back of the car during driver's ed...), by, i might add, october 28th! and doing this all in the newly chopped up time frame of between-now-and-december-15th (vs. the original time frame of between-now-and-april-15.)....... i may be accepted into the Modular MFA Program in Creative Writing(!) (?) this is a program that works in conjunction with the Book Arts Program and the nationally acclaimed letterpress studio in the Marriott Library along with possible Fellowship study opportunities in the special collections of rare books. phew! work cut out for me and all the rest.

as a precautionary measure and for good morale, i have amassed various sizes of index cards, a fresh bouquet of fine tipped pens, a few ugly old notebooks to jam into backpack pockets during walks, a few hefty and poorly illustrated GRE guides, a good study software program and a thoroughly potent dose of anxiety. all i need is a highly fancy and well crafted silkscreened somethingorother to lug it all around with, then i'll be all kinds of hip.

i will seek to to be vigilant in my putting up of scraps of thought, image, occasional snap of a good braid, etc. you can count on me. that is, unless it's apparent i've fallen into some sort of hole due to fill-in-the-blank-overload.

snack related revelations.

ok. so breakfast. it is one important thing that is truly rewarding in this stasis i have embodied. a kind of waking hibernation without much change in skeleton or skin. but with all the time that heaves and rolls from me it seems mornings stretch out most. swell and then pause, wait for me bang and jingle about in this little kitchen of mine. usually my extensive breakfasts are reserved for weekends. or at least for charming company, an excuse to wrangle the mismatched collection of coffee mugs. but. between the jam making endeavors, the ritual of morning nettles, the covered deck with the knee-high sunbeams and the gas stove, it seems like festivities need be kindled at least as often as possible. and i have some time.

lately their has been abundance of fresh eggs. i am sucker for this archetype of the idyll. partly it is their shape and diversity. partly is the relative ease of access to this little luxury. partly it is lining them up in the tea towel lined egg basket i have and cherish and knowing i can snatch up a few when the urge takes me. but actually i have never sought out an egg for the sake of eating an egg. usually i eat them because i understand they are complete proteins, whose amino acids and fat soluble vitamins are vital for a lady whose meat intake is rather low. but i am admittedly squeamish about an egg yolk that chases after the toast and potatoes on my plate and prefer them scrambled, boiled soft or puffed up with some tangle of vegetables.

except that i have been reading fannie farmer and, in a gentler echo, some of mark bittman who have only exultant praise for a phenomenon known as shirred eggs. read, whole eggs baked as custard in little butter ramekins and further tempered with the addition of some heavy cream, chopped herbs, buttered bread crumbs or caps of puffed melted cheese. the instructions are very straightforward, break an egg into a buttered ramekin, place in a pan with hot water poured to within an inch of the ramekin's top and bake at 300 for about 25 minutes until mostly set. which is fine. however, for the yolkaphobe i am the idea of dipping into a lovely custard only to find a slurry of yolky offal i was somewhat deterred. one fact is that i adore custard, so steps had to be taken. i longed for a shirred egg (what else in our lives, after all, can be shirred?) and so i took it upon myself to pursue a savory breakfast egg that would follow in shirry footsteps.

 thus

which is a wholly successful cross between a shirred egg and a creme caramel- minus of course the caramel part. it is an egg, a yolk, a cup of boiled milk steeped in bay and thyme, whisked with a blizzard of grated gruyere and chopped broccoli and baked in a waterbath. it was creamy and satiny like a proper creme caramel, but eggy and savory, as (i presume) a shirred egg would be. and it went marvelously with the previously mentioned oatmeal sandwich bread (thanks Kim Boyce! did i ever mention Good to the Grain? if you are unlucky enough to behind the times and know not of this exceptional treatise on contemporary baking with whole grains (esPECially if you are a kind of person who cannot take gluten comfortably) get ye here or here and check it out, it will change your life!) and the previously previously mentioned strawberry rhubarb jam. in addition to the stodgy and practical but hugely nutritious whome-made-whole-milk yogurt, superfood blueberries and sandy sprinkling of hemp and chia seeds. (if you need any persuasion on the goodness of hemp seeds, by the way, certainly read this and her blog in general which is good for all your bones.)

but, if you are not persuaded to shir-custard yourself self an egg please please read below on what new dimension of pleasure breakfast has recently (as of today) provided me.

this brings us to the chapter on Heber Valley Milk! (and circumnavigates to that brown compost looking sludge in the jar.) this  milk business is exciting for those Utahns along the Wasatch Front who have been seduced by the creamy magic raw milk promises but who otherwise had no intention of driving 60 miles to pick up a gallon a week. who, additionally, had no intention of attracting the attention of the law by forming secret (illegal) milk-coops that allowed the circulation of raw milk at a less cumbersome speed. now we have access to a perfectly legitimate dream milk business! $2.50 a gallon plus a deposit of $2.50 for the beautiful glass bottles which is waived upon return should you remember to bring your bottle back. it is of course best to drink your raw milk cold, or at least under 110 degrees to keep all the live cultures and heat-sensitive vitamins in tact but sometimes you need dream milk coffee and that happened to today!

dream milk coffee stems from an allegiance to this blog, who seemingly got the recipe it from here, and it ultimately came from here.

it entails grinding coffee roughly, covering it with cold filtered water and leaving it overnight to steep, then straning it, and drinking it cold with a cap of cold milk. such promises made are "smooth." "powerful." "zero bitterness." and "all the rage."  some suggested additives have been almond extract, agave or maple syrup. i have a hunch it would be great with a devilish ribbon of sweetened condensed milk or a maybe a thimbleful of kahlua. however, i had just returned from a blissful exchange with the Heber milkmaids and had every intention of drinking my coffee humbly, with that. thanks to some tiresome time spent at the dreaded Whole Foods waiting for groceries to be beeped i happened to be drawn into the ever-tempting and usually-quite-a-let-down Tips section in Cook's Illustrated for which i am a sucker. therein i found a way to at home, with no terrifying zaps in the microwave or investment in a costly espresso machine, render perfect milk foam. keep this under your hat but: if you heat your milk just until steaming in a heavy bottomed pot, pour it into a mason jar leaving an inch or two of headspace, screw on the lid and give it a ferocious shake and one good plunk on the counter you too can pour billowy clouds of milk into your coffee should you so desire. but! dream coffee? powerful? check. smooth? check. zero bitterness? check. (despite using Mtaro, a staunch Kenyan bean whose bitterness is the hallmark of devotion to some.)  totally delicious. also check. no one had mentioned that one, so i'll add it to my roster.

dream coffee (adapted from the sources mentioned above)
1/2 cup coffee, coarsely ground
1 1/2 cups cold water
milk
ice
optionally- kahlua, sweetened condense milk, small dribble of orange blossom water

mix coffee grounds and water minimally preferably in a jar or a french press coffee pot. cover and let rest at unrefirgerated overnight or at least ten hours. strain through cheesecloth/coffee filter/french press screen to collect the coffee concentrate. this is elixir is a bit stronger than espresso, so you use only a little for every glass. pour  a few inches over ice, fill the remaining to the top with milk. stir gently. swoon.

**ps
should you want to sweeten your dream coffee, beware that granulated sugar will provide only sandy, crispy dregs without much sweetening effect. better to use the suggested agave or maple syrup or to make a simple syrup (which is where you'd add the orange flower water should you want to be fancy) by dissolving one part sugar into one part water over medium heat until no crystals remain.

and with that, we are off on a walk.

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little altars everywhere. we are surely getting settled.

an actual epiphany.

we went walking early yesterday. it was a proper desert sunrise- heavy clouds with the crimped white edges, like molten metal, that promised soporific afternoon thunderstorms. red sand rolled everywhere with the tracks of birds, snakes, moose, rabbits, marmots...there was a buoyant coolness, one that was certain to sink and cloak the ground as soon as the sun razed the horizon. often these walks happen after a pot of coffee and stoop breakfast, so in some ways, this familiar winding trail felt new if only because the light was unfamiliar.

we were flanked with debris as we mounted the first rise. strangely localized, it littered only our immediate way, didn't flake like confetti in the fields or groves. here and there neatly shorn boughs off young aspen saplings, a fringe of crushed sage fronds, heady with scent, and the chunky paws off conifers. its precision was disarming until, of course, it registered that the trail maintenance crews must have forged ahead in the dimmer hours and neatened the scraggle and scruff of these manicured wild places. my heart fell a little- somehow a dimension of wholesomeness always present in these expeditions had been pared off; to think that everything was kept up with shear or blade and not because of the eager traveling of sandaled ladies or beasts.

but one thing the clipping crew had unlocked with their well intentioned savagery proved to be somewhat of a revelation: in the wake of the cuttings was an undeniably transcendent fragrance. its force and pungency stalled me to the very lobes of my heart. it rose and hovered, almost viscous in its presence and filled every of my eager cells with an electric snap. my hair stood on end, light rang behind my eyes. i reeled.  later i learned the tree was a subalpine fir.abies lasiocarpa. a common conifer after all, prevalent on all our walks, abutting neighborhood streets, lined up in the dull polished cultivated yards of most everyone here. and so it was not that the tree itself leached all common sense momentarily from me, but its intimate inner workings. all its blood vessels, secrets, histories, sleep, dreams and essences utterly exposed. what kind of dreams do trees have?

it is useless to try to fasten words to the smell. clumsy, foolhardy. it was yes, as you can likely imagine, wincingly piney. but also unlike the smell of other pines or firs. lemony, or like the smell of wet terra cotta. it was a smell i had no right to Name, no right even to smell. when trees die and topple, or when lightning sears the the water into steamy departure, a tree's death has a familiar smell. sweet, like rot. one to which we are accustomed as we walk through any place with shade and water. and when a tree is cut down and the pulsing coin of its stump throbs, that smell too, is different. a defeat smell, a cauterized smell, heated over by the friction of a blade. this smell was different, it was the exact, tangible smell of secrets which will forever crackle in the foreparts of my brain when i summon the word. this tree's very living sluices seeped into the air and poured. even the dogs lifted their noses, froze, arched their necks hungrily. i picked up a piece of the neatening that laid in the path. kept it. felt a kind of green spread of gravelly pins and needles echo in my bones. i looked up at the tree, as one might look into the eyes of a lover, searching for an answer as to why, exactly, those eyes made one's heart leap and gallop so fiercely. and the tree. sighed. it sighed upwards. it arched back and filled the spaces between its branches. it most certainly sighed, took in air (or is it the other way around?) and, as if on some sort of hugely rolling cosmic cue, a breeze was stirred from the lowlands. the trees boughs shuffled and straightened. if i had ears enough to tip forward, tip they would. the tree sighed. i looked up in a swoon, and the tree sighed at me. a kind of resinous romance.

the walk home is absent for me. a block of something white. i spent some time admiring the appendage of the tree i had laid among the little nesting trinkets i have recently been reassembling. it is a kind of reliquary, i suppose. something profound but utterly recognizable. that windowsill hums.

after recovering i tried to line up my thoughts like paperclips in a saucer. after all it was a matter of the optics, probably. the swimming light, the moving wind, the height and spread of the tree. not so mysteriously it only water and hydraulics that hold up plants. even the diminutive among their species excel at drawing water tightly into their cells so they might hold their heads high. conifers drink an especially astounding amount of water, even for their slightly smaller stature. it is because their growth is so slow, so dense. Annie Dillard seems to have pinpointed the awesome quantitative data on the exceptional strengths of plants:

"There's real power here. It is amazing that trees can turn gravel and bitter salts into these soft-lipped lobes, as if I were to bite down on granite slab and start to swell, bud, and flower. Trees seem to do their feats so effortlessly. Ever year a given tree creates absolutely from scratch ninety-nine percent of its living parts. Water lifting up tree trunks can climb one hundred and fifty feet an hour; in full summer a tree can, and does, heave a ton of water every day." --Pilgrim at Tinker Crink.

Every day! Unabashedly and for the benefit of no admiring audience. The sighing tree and I in a kind of camaraderie, in agreement about undertaking to live like that weasel. With quiet and ferocious purpose. To do potently for the sake of the task. I undertook to lapse tree-like into the most regal silence I could muster. Cloaked myself in it like crimson and ermine. Moved little, listened and watched openly, took every opportunity to sigh upward, straining with all my electrified cells to adhere to whatever daunting mechanism moved the wind through the pine's needles and changed everything with the smallest effort.

swindled

i took to the hills. drove off the solid heavy lines of the map onto the ticked faint ones and urged the Volvo down inclines that were perhaps not in her best interest. as i have said the snow mass is still unreal, even in mid July! we slushed along, with noses tuned to the smell catalog of a mountain on whose backside i have never set foot.

dogs are at their happiest when they see a cooler being heaved into a car, followed by their food bowls, bed and human sleeping bag. for them, despite a claim to color blindness, it is a visual equation for empty places. those without crosswalks at which they know to sit until they hear the walk signal chirp, or strange men with beards or bicycles (which terrify them completely.) they know also that if their beds and bowls are coming along with the cooler they will likely have an opportunity for long-term chases of any small boned things that scoot along under the sage and an opportunity to root their snouts in little freshets and creeks until, covered with mud, they will ignore the rule of no dirty dogs in the tent and pile onto the down and wool and made a muddy show of denning down for a night crushed with stars and pine winds.

the Volvo got us safe and sound down the sloping grades of Guardsman Pass and the map led us to a wide meadow, circled with singing aspen groves and not (surprisingly) cut up and slashed with the garish hieroglyphs of a ski resort in summer. we hauled all manner of heavy cumbersome things along when the sign told us the Volvo had to stay where she was and ended up finally in the quiet we had anticipated.

(excuse my lack of finesse in the realm of constructing an acceptable panoramic view...)

and were of course ready to eat some snacks out of paper packets (a few almonds twisted up in newspaper slips, a clutch of apricots, a wedge of Saint Andre that was coyly trying to talk me into eating its entirety before it melted and pooled) and a few bottles of Elephantino, lay around in minimal clothes, paint and read and snooze. we did all of these things. and then were interrupted by someone who, apparently, had more genuine claim to the grove than we. read: large cow moose and luminescent calf crashing through the bluebells to water. it was a lucky thing we were stranded on a rock. if a little humbling to be somewhat of a voyeurist spectacle- we all three being topless and in only our bathing suit bottoms...(although the dogs, to be fair, weren't wearing either bathing suit tops or bottoms.) a cow moose and her calf are a thing that strikes fear into me. not because moose are generally fearsome creatures (just monolitihic). but because the unpredictability of a moose, paired with the unbelievable speed at which you can suddenly be confronted all tucked around a mother's universal and manic protective aggression usually mean a person is stuck. especially when in a broad field with two small animals with sharp voices. we froze and i am grateful the dogs stayed, ears forward, tails puffed, but unmoving and quiet. the rest of the story is anticlimactic really. no there were no heroic shots snapped of the animal pair (a silly ingredient, usually, in those stories involving crushed wilderness enthusiasts who come too close and are too brazen in these situations.) nor was there a stampede of hooves paws and feet, barking or howling, blistered bones or narrow escapes. there was instead just a retreat, with head lowered, backpacks carefully and slowly pulled on, and quiet steps back out of the glade. thus we were unharmed. unharmed and surely swindled out of the abovementioned denning down. the wind was whippy and the celebratory atmosphere had really gone right out of everything. (please let me mention a better part of the Saint Andre was left sadly on the rock.) and so we beat it home, brazenly drinking Elephantino out of a water bottle on the bumpy ride back to the state managed highway and took up on the deck. it was a conciliatory evening, plied with pencils and paint, gin and tonics and some leftover snacks, but we slept inside in a heap of clean cotton and a rotary fan in the end. not much in the way of wild dreams to report.

however, there was a little walk-drawing progress, which is good enough.

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