Lake

You are a young girl playing on a log with your brother and dog The water in the lake clear and cold and deep, the rocks warm on the bank, little cottonwoods grow on the edge, in the distance: Mountains near enough to cast their shape on the waters surface. The water blue and green some rocks white, moved there in glacial time. One day you will be a woman Living in a city apartment And you will go down to a corner bar And you will meet a man, with curling dark hair And apricot eyes And you will tell him About the pink bathing suit you wore that day About how you called your dog giggles, but his name was Oliver How you tried to get him to float on the log About how warm the sun, and cold the water was About the moment your uncle and giggles fell off the log and shriekedAbout how your brother died that summer And you'd run down a winding road With the wind blowing in one ear,The grass cicadas drone in the other You’ll be shocked to feel so young Yet so far from something long ago Be alarmed and excited at the warm hand of this once stranger Holding your arm as your memories surge And you cry, and are held.

Transcript

Hello...

I am on the hillside listening to two coveys of quail call back and forth

They've been slowly getting closer over the last 15 minutes, and I think they're going to link up

I saw one group

They had a bunch of fluffy little hatchlings running around

I don't know how big the other group is though

I'm below a range of mountains with snow and avalanche gullies, forests up the sides, larch and fir, ponderosa pine

Ah, wow, a western tanager just landed in a pine tree

I haven't seen one yet this year

That was cool

They're bright, bright orange, bright red, yellow, golden, crazy looking birds

Probably the most brilliant bird in the west maybe

I guess there's lazuli buntings out here too

Or is it indigo buntings?

....that quail is trying to get the other quails to come over

There's boulders on this hillside, and one of my favorite tea plants which is wild tarragon

I gathered about eight stems of it just now

It's a good spot for it

There's a bunch of plants

It's nice to be here

I feel like my mind is already clearing out from the dampness of the coastal, humid, cold Salish Sea

Up here in the high mountains, a divergent part of the Rockies above a big lake

On a glacial moraine

I guess I wanted to offer this today as just kind of way of saying of thanks to people

Everybody that's supported me over the years

Everyone who listens to this podcast

I guess these quail are listening to it right now

I just feel really grateful

I'm kind of a recovering pessimist, you know, so a lot of that has to do with gratitude

Pessimism is kind of this idea that there's no safety. Or that things are never going to really be what you want

And the opposite of that, obviously, is gratitude for what you have

Which is actually simple, but for a pessimistic mind, it's harder than it might seem

And there's a lot to say about pessimism

It definitely comes from damage

Definitely comes from pain

It's definitely a protective mechanism

But I feel like I'm growing less and less pessimistic as time goes on, which kind of relieves a huge burden on a person

I heard a meadowlark this morning as I was running

Discovered some physiological linkages between my lumbar and knee that have to do with nerves

Researched this type of technique called prickly...prickling nerve stimulation technique, which is developed by a Japanese neurosurgeon

And it's a technique that's used to stimulate the nerves in the lumbar spine

Which is developed by a Japanese neurosurgeon

Neurologist named Dr

Nagata, I think

Basically, it's the idea that our skin is a direct door of access to our nervous system

Which means that we wear our nervous system on our sleeves

Which is something to remember, as sensitive humans

I think we're all very sensitive, actually

Unless we've been damaged to the point where we've been able to turn it off, or we've learned how to turn it off, or have been in a mode of having it shut off

And it's really fascinating to note that there can be healing in the skin and in the tissues, just by stimulating the nerves around areas of trauma

And it's interesting to note that, more or less, that's what acupuncture functions on, to access the meridians and the internal organs as well

Kind of working with the nervous system in a lot of ways

I kind of see these quail as part of the Earth's nervous system

As showing what the weather's doing, and where the good grass seeds and the insects are right now

It's quiet here, I like it

It's easy to get away, just be in a quiet space that feels really big

I like that

I like to be able to wander

It feels like it clears my mind

It's starting to rain a little bit

And I've run out of things to say

I'm gonna walk down this draw and back to the van and head into town, get some groceries and finish settling in to my friend's house where I'll be for the summer doing rangeland surveys out here until I go to school in the fall

Got a condo in Victoria

Everything's lining up it seems

I feel really lucky

Thank you for your support, and thank you for listening.

There’s finality to certain things in life. One kind has to do with naming something. Another has to do with speaking its name.

Listen for some thoughts on quietude in vast spaces.https://walkaround.run/p/owhyee-country

Public lands are in the process of being sold. Call your reps!(202) 224-3121https://www.backcountryhunters.org/take_action#/

Owyhee Canyonlands: Road to 30 PostcardsMore on Northern Paiute Tribal Member, and FOTO Board Member, Wilson Wewa

Distilled moments of presence in nature More at: https://walkaround.run

DONATIONS

I am currently at a residency, in the midst of a self-funded project. Donations on Buy Me A Coffee, PayPal, or Venmo are all seriously appreciated right now—Thank you!

In this episode I share a poem I wrote in Idaho last summer, reflections on the residency I'm attending, and some insight about remnants, joy, and grief—life, and death. I also have shared some photos from recent times.

Listen, read, and subscribe on the website: https://walkaround.run!

If you think about it, what draws people toward something these days is often about reclaiming our humanity.

What's healthful, and thus has gravity, are positive expressions about who we are, resiliency, and beauty, especially amidst hardship and grief. Dance, song, creating—expressions of our hands and bodies, and what we can do as humans. The modern craft movement is reweaving the tapestry of our culture—towards something that is functional and healthy, through our own hands and bodies.

Mo Hohmann first learned to grow and weave willow in the mountains of Oregon from Peg Matthewson. A craft older than pottery, weaving comes from our ancestral past. Nowadays it's being brought into the light of the present by courageous and inspired makers like Mo and Peg.

"It's an innate human experience to be drawn by beauty. And beauty is pretty subjective. But it's my experience with the baskets that there is this gravitational pull towards what is beautiful. Because it feeds this deep need as human beings. It's a soul food right? It's something that brings a sense of belonging."

Check Mo’s work on her Instagram and website: https://woventhresholds.com. Also, Mo offers online classes through Coyote Willow Schoolhouse, and plans to offer in person classes soon.

https://linktr.ee/woventhresholds

2025.03.08 Update: In the podcast, Mo discusses watertight baskets and her teacher Peg. However, Peg did not teach her about them, which may have been unclear in the original episode

There's a moment in most of Miyazakis films, when the dialogue and often the music cuts, and a single character (usually the protagonist) is left alone in the raw and open experience of something. It takes mastery to convey a moment such as this, a moment of space and presence.

This is the kind of moment I can relate to, when I know that I am who I am, when everything makes sense, when I know right from wrong, when there is magic in the landscape around me. But this type of moment is under relentless assault. https://www.walkaround.run/p/ma