Monday, June 9, 2014

Secret Belief in Perpetual Spring





There are only nineteen photos from yesterday's solo hike on Sugarloaf. I love hiking by myself, I love hiking with Earthgirl more. The slideshow will only take 38 seconds. Were you taught to type out alphabetically all numbers between one and twenty, start using Roman Arabic Numerals for numbers from 21 up? I was. Photos fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen, the rock pile and the cairn (on this map it's the top of the hill between B5 and B6): I sat and shared conversation and their delicious hand-baked peanut butter gorp over water and catching breath with an wife and husband, combined age 167. They've lived in Flint Hill for 60 years (Willy Bayne lived in Flint Hill while married to Treva, exactly one of you knows of what I speak), have been hiking together - everywhere near, but Sugarloaf most - since they met and married and moved to Maryland. I love hiking by myself, I love hiking with Earthgirl more.

The below Lambchop was the last song on the shuffle before I parked, Lambchop was in my head the entire hike.







IN PERPETUAL SPRING

Amy Gerstler

Gardens are also good places
to sulk. You pass beds of
spiky voodoo lilies   
and trip over the roots   
of a sweet gum tree,   
in search of medieval   
plants whose leaves,   
when they drop off   
turn into birds
if they fall on land,
and colored carp if they   
plop into water.


Suddenly the archetypal   
human desire for peace   
with every other species   
wells up in you. The lion   
and the lamb cuddling up.
The snake and the snail, kissing.
Even the prick of the thistle,   
queen of the weeds, revives   
your secret belief
in perpetual spring,
your faith that for every hurt
there is a leaf to cure it.



3 comments:

  1. start using Roman Numerals for numbers from 21 up

    you mean arabic numerals

    leaves when they drop off turn into birds if they fall on land

    this a.m., driving from i-370 west to 1-270 north, i saw a goose on the road surface, crumpled but still moving - i expressed a quick wish that its suffering would soon be over

    wife and husband, combined age 167

    like some humans, geese pair for life

    The lion and the lamb cuddling up.

    http://tinyurl.com/mqr2q38

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  2. Honestly, I didn't remember that he had been married, although now that you mention him, I remembered that he's dead.

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  3. Nice pix! Looks like a good hike. I'd do it.

    Also, good thing you didn't discover a nascent peanut allergy midway!

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