Ridged

The glow of the Red Maples breaking bud on the far side of the hollow, a lovely thing. Rain coming in, but gloriously warm. I'd been reading so much non-fiction, it was a relief to spend the day reading the latest John Sandford novel. Great escapist reading. After this next rain should be the first big flush of morels. I'm getting a few, but there hasn't been a flush yet. A flush is where you stand in one place and collect eight or ten. Several windows open, to cool my old black Dell. Beans, a fried egg and morels on toast for dinner. Down to a tee-shirt. Frogs having a last go at it, out at the puddles. The puddles need some water or we're going to have another die-off year for the frogs. It's not critical yet, but the egg cases are floating on the surface, slightly exposed, and they want to be under water right now. I want to do a book of the frog pieces, a conversation that would put Emerson off his feed. I did learn a lot, and there are hundreds of pages, over a three-year period, that mention the frogs and my association with them. A small book, a novella, about the fox, and a somewhat larger book about converting starches to sugars. Play to my strong suit, what I do every day, navigate the schools, try to make sense. I'm so far behind I think I'll never catch up. Those Red Maples, they just appeared, as a spread against the lowland, am I supposed to make a connection, or not? The Poplars spray a soft green on top. Thinking about how well B framed his reading yesterday. He read the work chronologically, and it was all about direction, and walking, and seeing. There's a much more complex, abstract, side of B, that I know very well, but there is also this thrush addled naturalist, others as well, we should all be so gifted, to have such a neighbor. I try to hold up my end of the stick. I'd been reading for hours and I wanted to take a walk, but I was only dressed in boxers and a black and white tee-shirt that depicted a surfer giving a finger to the world. I picked up a very heavy canvas shirt at The Goodwill, and D had given me a pair of rock-climber pants that are ballistic cloth, and I know my capacity for finding myself in a thicket. Our Spring Line includes outer-wear that repels blackberry canes. You forget the number of thorns. So I suited up and walked out, and I'm blown away, immediately, by the fact that the inside is not the same as the outside. These dudes are crazy. I might defer to a symbol . A trout rising to the fly. We'll sort this out tomorrow.