For this weeks installment we are going back to this Tuesday and the Thoughtful Tea Tuesday. Don’t judge me. This is what is happening. Okay, now moving on.
This week has really been the end of something and the slow start of something new, with fall pushing summer away with the heavy, hard rains and winds that seemed to come from no where and change direction at a drop of a hat. Summer really is over. Just like that and I really shouldn’t be surprised since this happens every year. With the rains came some chaos. When I look back over my books and photos taken over the last week, I am astonished on how much went on and how little I have actually slept. Besides the last two night, I have finally slept.
Tuesday marked exactly one week until we get the keys to The House. I can not explain the excitement and trepidation I have been experiencing. This will be my first house and the first time I will be living above ground, ever in my life. Mountain Man has experienced this many times before and is amused at my pleasure about this. I have hopes that living above ground will help ease some winter pain and lessen the season blahs I always fall into. If we begin to talk about how perfect this place is for us, for the dogs, for us to grow, it all becomes too much and I must ground myself. I have been slowly planning on how best to transport all the animals and tanks and honestly, I have only packed a few boxes but I have been preparing items for packing. Dusting, cleaning, creating donation piles. All these things make UNpacking that much easier. I have also been looking at the internet here and there for nesting and decorating ideas, mainly different ways to hang plants without putting many holes in our ceilings. Macrame plant hangers will probably be made this winter, even though I have a handful I have been collecting from thrift shops.
Speaking of plants, there is a whole garden outside here that slowly, or quickly depending on how you are looking at it, that needs to be potted up and brought over to the new home. As well as the bunny cottage and pen area. Thankfully, getting the keys early and our current living situation allows us to have more time than most would have. I have whispered into my friends ears of a painting and cleaning party shortly after getting the keys and I have been met with a astounding ‘yes’. Very much looking forward to that event and gathering of friends. Then, I am thinking of convincing Mountain Man to let me spend a night there alone (or with a friend) to do what needs to be done. Lady Althaeas book will help me make sure I have touched all the bases and more. Warding and defense are not unfamiliar to me, however, she found a way to put it all together in a way that leaves no stone or bone unturned. You can find more about it here.
Because of this weeks events, most of which I can not tell here, I have been feeling pent up, snapping with Mountain Man and craving nature. Not only did the dogs need a walk but so did I and not a 20 minute walk in a dog park, something more…wild. I packed my forest bag and gave him ‘the look’ and told him we ARE going to the boardwalk in the forest. This place is part of the bog that makes up the valley below us, some years ago someone decided to turn it into an ecopark, building a boardwalk through the bog, highlighting certain plants, animals or events along the way (I keep reading about a old ‘bear den off a certain pain’ but have yet to find it.) The main path is gravel and follows along a wide creek that is home to tiny fish and frogs and allows exceptionally tall cat tails to grow ( and garter snakes to bask ) but there are three paths that branch off the main path, these are the boardwalks. Our (his) plan was to follow this main path and allow the dogs to run and play, however, they both fell into the water and shortly after that we noticed the path ahead of us was flooded. The beavers have been working hard apparently. I gave a quick thank you to the beavers and we turned off the gravel path and stepped onto the wooden path. Slippery as all hell since we have had nothing but rain but we were not going to turn back now.
Shortly after stepping into those old, slimy, wooden boards the sounds of traffic minimized to a hum. Along these wooden paths many things can be found and many benches have been built along the way. Most, if not all of the benches are memorials to people who loved this place before they passed. Children, Mothers, Fathers, Lovers, Friends. They can all be found here with tasteful memories around. An old teddy bear, covered in moss, no one daring to touch it for years. Heavy pots, planted with a favorite plants or flowers, carried in all this way. Picture frames and loving words written on benches and so much more but somehow you never notice them until you are right on top of them, or about to sit on something. This is also a place of many ecosystems, wetlands, hemlock forests, fields of skunk cabbage and groves of maples. I will miss this place when we move, it is so close to our current home. A place we discovered after my Dad died.
I was annoying, making the pack stop for every little mushroom or pretty view I saw and they did well, waiting for me to get what I needed. I was breathing with the trees as I left peanuts along the way and my own roots were digging into the soil with each step. We found skunk cabbage bigger than Fish, Bells and myself and gazed upon the beautiful jewelweed as I taught MM its uses and where and when to find it. At one of the many spots to sit there is an old tractor. Story is this tractor was stolen from a construction site up on the hill and being only bog in the valley, of course the tractor got stuck, very quickly. A second was sent in later to pull the stolen tractor out. Do you see where this is going? Yup, it also got stuck. However, they retrieved that one with a helicopter and decided to leave the original one. Each year it sinks more and it will eventually be consumed by the bog, forever. It is really an environmental shame and and eye sore when you think of it. It was not prepared to be in a bog. The gas that got it there is still in the tractor. Well, some of it is. There has been a steady, slow leak of gas since it sank. Some days you can slightly smell it and most days you can see it on top of the water. Most people are not even aware of this.
But if you keep walking you come to a dark, tall, open hemlock forest where apparently the elusive coral mushroom grows! I may have shrieked and stepped off the boardwalk and dropped to my knees, soaking them in the needle covered moss dense carpet, releasing the scent of soil and decay into the air. I first found them on the roots of the hemlocks but not on the ground, in the ground, deep holes surrounding the bases of these tall trees and the roots followed in. Brilliant white mushrooms tucked into pockets of the earth like treasure, jewels of the ground. Once we saw them here our eyes became sharp, looking for that brilliant white along the bases of the trees until we came to an opening and in the distance, off the boardwalk, we saw a huge patch. Only I went, watching ever so carefully where I placed my feet until I came upon them. I bent down, careful to not touch anything other than what my feet were. Closing my eyes I sent down my roots and opened my hands to them. The feeling of water, breathing clean and moist soil came rushing to my senses and as I breathed out I felt some of what happened over the last week leave, a lightness settling in my shoulders replacing the heavy. As I went to open my eyes a word whispered in my ears and my eyes fixed upon a single mushroom. Whispering a prayer back as I picked this single specimen I stood and pulled some hair from my brain, wrapping it around the ground. Promising to return, not to pick but to give more offerings. To honor it.
To honor something else. You must honor yourself. You must listen to your soul and you must do the hard work because if it is easy- it is not the right choice.
Rewilding The Witch 