Two Hours In The Woods

Buckeye with full red blooms, shooting stars just past peak, Jack-in-the-pulpit rising up, caterpillars (inchworms) hanging by a thread, butterflies looking for woodland flowers, insectus unknownus everywhere, green stink bugs landing on my leg, barred owl calls in the distance ... common names and their influences on my life in the past two hours. Plus some plant whose flower stalk comes out of the ground and looks like an ear of corn. I wish you could have been with me when I came upon the long field of shooting stars in full bloom - the aroma! The sight of hanging white flowers as far along the ridge as I could see in the woods! Accented by the scorpionweed, mountain phlox and white star grass.

Ahh ... I sigh with satisfaction. One in nature, no other humans in sight (the distant sounds of house construction and commercial lawnmowing keeping me in reality, though). Yesterday was cold enough for a parka and today I hiked in shorts. Who would have or could have kept up with me?

Other images I remember - oxalis, dried fern fronds, pools of water, weather-worn rocks, a bat cave, deer tracks, a field of grass under a tree canopy, spider webs with little green or yellow spiders in the middle, trillium all over the forest floor, weathered cedar trees, old barbed wire fencing, blue sky, warm sun ... the hits keep on coming.

I can barely remember what troubled me before I left the house. I'll look at the short notes I jotted down before my hike.

• Carl Sagan visited Huntsville back in the 1980s. He promoted his idea of non-manned exploration of space, which didn't sit well with the NASA scientists and engineers in the audience. I guess that's why many of us showed up, to hear for ourselves what this man had to say. He responded to the fact we worked in the field of manned exploration to keep our jobs was that the scientists who worked for the Nazis said the same thing about their rote roles. If you want to be remembered, be argumentative!
• I can resist temptation only so long, especially if it'll be something interesting to write about afterward.
• When I went to a boy-girl party in fifth grade, I played spin the bottle with Renee W. She laughed that I didn't know what to do when we went into the closet to kiss, a mistake I quickly reacted to, not being used to having lack of knowledge. Later, when I crawled up under a table in embarrassment, why did the kids think I was just being cool and was under there to smoke a cigarette? At age 10, no less. Renee had her first child at 14 (8th grade). Life is full of missed opportunities ... I played doctor with another friend to make up for my ignorance but never attended another boy-girl party at Rocky's house (which was also home to some of the adult swinger parties in our neighborhood).
• Why did my father the professor stay in hotel rooms and have his own apartment while he taught college classes 30 miles out of town? He'll never tell me, I know, because of Mom.
• My father ended up with prostate cancer. Can an STD cause prostate cancer?
• Poetry = fucking with words
• The recent negative health/gun stories in the news will falsely lead the public to agree to government-issued health/gun control regulation, just like we're going along with the economic stimulus package with its bank nationalization/regulations; what's in it for me? If I don't get anything positive, what's the negative impact on me?
• A rocket has to pay the price of a heavy, quickly-dissipating fuel load while reaching escape velocity to leave Earth. What's the price to escape the pull of the easy life in suburbia? What's it like out there? Is there anything out there or, as I reckon, is it all just various aspects of the human condition and you basically learn the same lessons anywhere/everywhere? Do I want to know a life where literacy is an option, not a requirement, and deal with heavy doses of superstition and ignorance, on a scale worse than I did while growing up in east Tennessee and living here in north Alabama? Huntsville and its high level of educated citizens has spoiled me.

I had more to say but can't remember, thanks to the relaxing hike in the woods.