North Fields

I make coffee and pick up where I left off reading 'The Te of Piglet', which I found in the desperate book collection up in the sleeping lofts, having forgotten to bring my new book of Robert Sundt poetry.  It is 7:40 when I notice that the sun has crested the ridge on the far side of the valley, burning through the bad mohawk of trees left by the lumberjacks...as if it is not a clear cut when you leave a couple stragglers.  It is breezy and it will be a sunny day.

The radio drones on, I'm always torn whether to use it or not...there is nothing there except stories about people who are caught on an inertial ride to one sort of collapse or another.  There is a noticable lack of creative...creative anything.  No creative solutions, not even a "thinking outside the box" (I hate that phrase) idea.  There is a bit about the retarded presidential candidate, Rick Perry (I know that retarded is offensive, but I know no better term for his ilk - he is offensively stupid, if you don;t mind me saying).  Maybe I should have left the radio off.  Creativity requires a dropping of the ego, an acknowledgement that one does not know everything, or much of anything for that matter.  Only then does the good stuff float to the surface.

I head up to the north meadows, stopping to cast a mule deer track along the way.  I can pick it up on the return when the plaster is well set.  I map north of my datum that I set yesterday.  I plot a wooly caterpillar, I note a snail and a line of deer tracks.   After a few hours of pacing back and forth, sighting, pacing more, sighting.... I start to make minor errors.  It is a sign that the days survey is near and end.

Returning, I find a research team working its way down the river measuring the depths of side channels.  I would normally badger them with questions, but I continue on...I'm tired.