Leaping tall buildings in a single jump. Soaring over the hi-lo country. Adjust the tailfeather ever so slightly and catch a thermal floating over the checkerboard farmlands.  Why? Cuz its Spring at last.  Boing! Boing!  Amazing things, systems of species, buds unfurling, the departure and return of seasonal migrators,  the Hawks' mating ballet, exist all around us, maybe we'll take a glider today and get the lay of the land for once and for all? 

 nothing left to buy

Millions upon millions of human beings typically see life as one dimensionally flat.  Born on the ground, schooled on the ground, driving on the ground, stuck on the ground.  Some are rattling the ice in cocktail tumblers on balconies overlooking the ground, others are waving from a ferry's stern to the crowd on the ground, some are lying on a beach watching each other lying on towels on the ground, a lot more are watching from behind windowpanes and windshields and sunglasses and the poorer ones look through ground floor store windows. Lots more lately are watching from cellphone cameras for that youtube moment...on the ground.  Videos of ground activity, uploaded from the ground.

When a thought occurs a mental map appears in your mind, many maps accompany it, centering us into the destination of the thought.  Imaginary maps from partial portions of photographs supplement the thought.  The scenery of your mind,  more often than not, is the scenery on the ground as if the mind has difficulty giving us an overhead shot where we might learn a lot more than we can recall about an experience, or when we're analyzing it later on down the road. The difficulty with that panoramic view is the part we most want to know. Apart from the desire, the mind balks at showing you anything you didn't see in your brain, looking at it through your very own eyes.  But of course there was more, lots more.  So you have to figure it out, but first figure out how to get mister mind to chill while you get the stepladder out of the cellar.

Hey, when we run out of oil, there really will be plenty to see and do!  Like examing 10 million year-old glacial irregulars ( see bottom of page) left behind from the Pleistocene when oceans raced over the coasts and dragged groups of pebbled granite with it, now covered with black, brown, chartruse and cadmium orange moss, moisture-seeking pines and introduced  cheatgrasses filling all available seams, surrounded by Oak sentinels, home to coon and hibernating reptile.  The McMansions of  evolution.  They are still standing and they will still be standing 10 million years from now.  Even the slanted rocky hideaway where Vasquez the Mexican bandit held off the feds is a trendy tourist destination.  You think a meteor is going to change that?  Hmmm, you're not living on the fault line, are you?

 glacial irregular

The propane water heater broke this week, (an adventure we see as the glass half-full since disaster was mysteriously averted) and we had to make do with plain old cold water.  Very quickly, I found myself living the pioneer life, again, and it was not bad at all.  It was just another experience in thinking outside of the consumerism box which is very natural once you get the hang of it.  We actually dried the dishes.  With dishtowels.  Yes.  Thanks to the Bill Monroe's fiddles and mandolins. Me and Jake, two-steppin' with the colander.

Our garden is coming together quite nicely as our grandparent's gardens did and their grandparent's garden did and their parents before them  In the larger scheme of ancestral farming, gardens will grow everything necessary to sustain us.  Everything is organic.  There were no box supermarkets selling prepackaged "homestyle potato latke mix."  No cuisinarts, no kitchen aids, no mister coffee, no dishwasher, no bread machines, toaster ovens, no toasters and so forth.  You don't have that stuff when you go camping, do you, no.  And isn't roughing it the whole point of camping?  You can clean up in a lake.  I hope you can anyway, because you might need to prepare yourself to like it.  We might all be camping any day now.  Save me a oceanfront space at Long Key.

After all the food is gone, even though it was beyond your means anyway, you'll be sorry you didn't have a little something growing instead of watching yourself diminish in size, all your rag jeans dripping from your frame, even a belt won't help after a certain point.   You'll be angry, but too weak to compose a continous thought.  Work out?  Stroll over to the glacial irregulars and ponder evolution, are you serious? 

Okay, at least we're in agreement these are strange times.  Maybe not for you personally (lucky you) but you know something's happening somewhere because you don't live in a vaccuum. 

If you are like me and see that blame is not a true problem solution, then get to work, roll up those sleeves and plot out your space.  Think John and Abigale Adams, the pretty yard, overflowing with abundance, think Monet, soft pastels, life as art in a garden, partaking in the never ending growth of Planet Earth. 

 Jardin a Giverny

A gardener-abstractionist-artist friend tipped me off to the secret of pest control.  Marigolds, she said.  Beautiful and useful.

  doesn't like bugs