Harvesting Water

I need to stop by Goodwill and the get the year's supply of tee-shirts to be cut into filter-cloths. What I should do is recycle my current collection and buy some new ones, but I can buy a bag of clean ones at Goodwill for $2 on any Thursday morning. Some of them would be in better condition than my ragged pile, and I switch them out, the worst of mine for the best of theirs. Of my three all-time favorite tee-shirts, one remains: the "Amanita Trails To You" that Jude made me decades ago. The "In Cod We Trust" and the "Stop Plate Tectonics" both died and were turned into paper. Mostly, now, I wear feed-caps and tee-shirts that don't say anything, or say something I don't agree with, which I collect because they're free. I have to filter things all the time, mostly dirty water (that I boil before using, just for washing) but also various tinctures and condensates. The life of a creek-bank alchemist. It's amazing how close to a river rat I became, moving further up the creeks as society extended. Run a string of crab pots and a trot line or two, you can live for nothing on the water. Samara calls and is worried about my well-being. She's quite concerned and wants me to visit in the fall, to be sure, somehow, that I'm OK.. I agree to visit, when I can drive out at my leisure, maybe spend a second day and night in Nebraska, a state I dearly love; I could live in Valentine, if someone else would cut my wood and do my shopping. The Niobrara is beautiful and the native fish are feisty, a ten inch trout on a slender pole (I have a seven foot bamboo rod that is perfect for fishing under brush), 2 pound-test monofilament that is almost invisible, and it's an interesting battle. Stopped raining long enough for me to get out, stopped and got some daylily buds, mailed some bills, whiskey and vegetables at the store, lunch and a beer at the pub, books at the library, then stopped at the Diary Bar for a shake. A kind of normal day, out in the world.