More Trail Work

Our days at the coastal sanctuary are numbered, but I'm glad to be leaving the place better than we found it.  Here's a before and after series of the latest bit o trail work.

The beginning, a dangerous slope with loose soil. 

The log cribbing -- halfway done.

Most of the cribbing done, with willow spikes at either ends of the logs.

The final product, with rocks capping the logs and some pine straw to make it look pretty. 

Core Rocks and Face Rocks

On good days, I get to balance my computer work with some trail work.   This trail was precariously located on the edge of an unstable and eroding slope before I moved it upslope and shored it up with a rubble wall. 

Working with stone is so satisfying, especially because it balances out too much time spent in front of the computer.   It's really grounding.  I've always wanted to work on a trail crew (a la Gary Snyder and Jack Kerouac)-- I thought I'd missed my opportunity after I turned 30 and no longer enjoyed living out of a backpack or my truck.   Nay, these days I get to work with stone and enjoy my recliner. 

The secret to a formal stone retaining wall (and to a lesser extend a rubble wall) is knowing how to use face rocks and core rocks.  Face rocks are the first large stones you place, some of which are buried into the soil below, which lean into the slope.  Core rocks are smaller stones that you fit behind the face rocks, Tetris style. 

Some face rocks are headers, and they extend into the core rock.  Others are spreaders, which are parallel to the length of the wall.  Tier by tier, face rocks backed by core rocks. 

There is something alchemical about working with stone.  Somewhere deep in my mind, a new philosophy is growing that has something to do with face rocks and core rocks.  Maybe also something about keeping your spreaders to a minimum.  Not sure yet, but it's reorganizing my brain, shoring up the slippery slope of consciousness with quartz and granite.

Solid.

Squirrels on the Alarm

This is a view of the swamps outside of Hart Springs, where we recently canoed to along the Suwannee River.

I tell you what, the swamps knew long before I did what these months of transition would bring. The soggy still waters of quiet putrification are quite beautiful in the late winter. It's an eery beauty that feels out-of-time.

Later, I walked through the cypress, oak and palm forest near my parents' house and the silence was broken by five squirrels who alarmed me in bitchy stereophonics. I've never been so aggressively stalked by squirrel before and I stood befuddled for a while. Finally I moved forward again on the trail and spooked the young buck that waited around the bend - he took off and honked at me repeatedly from a safe distance.

The squirrels are well trained to report humans to the forest. Turns out this is especially so in these woods because a neighbor often hunts, both in and out of season. The watchful squirrels sent out the alarm in all directions, carried forward by the birds like a ripple of disturbance in a still pond. That's the metaphor naturalist Jon Young uses for the "concentric rings of nature."

Can't a man just traipse through the forest like the gentle pirate he is? Not yet; the squirrels will make that call.

the Murky Murk

Besides reflecting on the particularities of marsh ecology, the following quotation also reveals why Luke Skywalker had to train in Dagobah.


"What should the seeker of enlightenment do? Fearlessly look into the seat of the trouble. Where the grief is the strongest, the doubt most disturbing, the turmoil most opaque, the ignorance most dark - that is the place where enlightenment will break through. Lotuses only grow in swamps."
David Brazier, from the Feeling Buddha

Peak oil and bleak marshes

A longtime reader of Dreamcrisp requested more photos of Paynes Prairie. Well, here you go. The subtle beauty of the north Florida wilderness is hard to capture, and I'm sorry to say that this image reveals little of this ecosystem's certain magic. But if you could just smell the breeze.... I'm hoping to get out for another photo foray soon, so stayed tuned.

In other news, I recently found this authority site on Peak Oil by Matt Savinar. This information has been well cited in government halls, including the floor of the Senate. If you only read one article on peak oil and the imminent collapse of our economy, let it be from Matt's library.

The landscape dreaming

Faithful readers,

it's time for a quick update on my adjustment to life in the southern hinterlands. North Central Florida is a place of delicate beauty, most of which has gone unnoticed by me as I tend to focus on picking the sand spurs out of my feet and the ticks out of my various nooks and crannies.

But check out this sleepy eyed view of a local cementary, complete with banana spider:

and just so there's no question as to the mythological framework of this place, ie the dreaming of land:

This is a place of fragrant breezes, big skies, and quiet mornings. It's also a place of stories, deep roots, and long memories. My friend Raven lent me the book Cross Creek just before I left California, and this book has turned out to be a spiritual guide to this area.

Here is what Marjorie Rawlings sez about entering a grove - she's talking about orange groves but I feel it with the live oak savannahs too:

"Any grove or any wood is a fine thing to see. But the magic here, strangely, is not apparent from the road. It is necessary to leave the impersonal highway, to step inside the rusty gate and close it behind. By this, an act of faith is committed, through which one accepts blindly the communion cup of beauty. One is now inside the grove, out of one world and in the mysterious heart of another." (p15)

A big theme for us has been walking down the trail and running straight into spider webs. The spider webs on the trail are thresholds like Rawling's rusty gate, and they are showing up in dreams too as signals to pay attention. As it turns out I'm not the only blogger paying attention to spider webs and dreams either. They're more than a call to alertness, but also a reminder of interconnection.

Grounded part II

Week 2 in the swamps:
I killed my first poisonous snake the other day. A juvenile moccassin, aka Florida cottonmouth aka Agkistrodon contortrix contortrix, it was hanging out by the front steps of my parents' house. I'm all about respecting nature, ya'll, but humans are territorial too. I might bleach out the bones because I've always wanted an articulated snake skeleton.

In other news, my girlfriend and I found a place to live in a tiny town (650 residents) on the outskirts of Paynes Prairie. I'm psyched to be so close to this amazing natural feature, and also well out of hollering distance of the college football scene.

I'm really humbled about how friendly and trusting people are down here. I mean, my new landlord didn't ask for my credit report or even housing references. Actually, he didn't even ask for my last name! Wow. Everyone else in the community has been friendly and I think a little shocked that a couple of San Francisco cats like ourselves are interested in hanging out in Swampville USA. I tell them that luckily their coffee's hella good otherwise I'm outee.

Intense dreams continue in this transition. I'm trying to pay more attention than usual, writing them down when I have the chance. All kinds of dream characters from my past are coming up - people and places I haven't thought about in years. I figure that parts of myself that have been underground for years are coming back to life now that I'm back in the south. Whole dream ecologies breathing life into my conscious mind. Old ways of thinking reviverating against new patterns, really bringing into light how I'm not who I used to be.

But I'm not just a Californian fish out of water either. No, now I'm a snake-killing, biscuit-eating, small-town-living cracker with a penchant for archetypal thinking and apocalyptic dreaming. And the living is good.

Don't feed the animals

Just got back from a backpacking trip in the Trinity Wilderness. Here's the lake we camped at deep in the Klamath mountains- spring fed, clear and cold. The mosquitos were rough at sunset so I kept the incense burning.

One night, a brazen young doe approached our camp and fed quietly on nearby mosses. Then she made eye contact and approached further until she stood within ten feet of me. As she craned her neck out and sniffed the air, we realized she was expecting to be fed. She must make these round every night to the campers, and judging from her behavior, she makes out all right on this welfare system.

I finally stood up and told her to go away. It would have been a sweet moment, but I don't want any part of domesticating the wildlife of the Trinity Wilderness. By feeding the deer, we make them dumb.

While this was happening, I suddenly remembered a dream I had about six weeks ago in which a deer approached me to eat. In the dream, I held out an apple and the deer munched it quickly. Then it transformed into a translucent red glowing scorpian and finally into a kokopeli insect figure that played its own probiscus like a flute while the sounds of classic jazz piano filled the night. I'm not making this up.

Despite this experience, I decided that feeding the deer in real life was not an appropriate way to honor this dream. There is no simple parallelism between waking and dreaming life, despite our hopes. What is good for the deer in my dream is ultimately harmful for the deer in consensual reality.

Besides, I didn't have an apple.

The zoo-like spell of this "wilderness" lake is our own creation. My fascist environmental self gnashed its teeth and beat the drums as I contemplated making a sign that read "Don't feed the animals!" That attitude doesn't help either - now I'm the zoo-keeper!

That's all from the western edge of the empire this week. Stay tuned for further adventures in wilderness trangressivity and smooth jazz.