Category Archives: forest

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Maybe

Maybe
You could be a cat
Independent
A bit snotty
Refusing to share your thoughts
Keeping your secrets
Enjoying refusing to answer questions
Macavity the mystery cat
when something happens
He’s never there

You could be an elk
Guarding the herd
While the elder ladies
Lead it through the woods
At certain times of year
You bugle
And want them
And they/we/I mew
And you find me
And we both enjoy it
Very much

I am a cat too
independent
I will travel alone
If you won’t travel with me
I will find other music
If you won’t play with me
I enjoy it when you come round
Very much
I keep my claws sharp
Just in case I need them
If I long for cuddles and purring
That is my problem

I am a lady elk
Confident in the woods
I let you do the guarding and bugling
While I lead the herd
Up and over the ridges
The spine of the mountain
The spines of the dragons
Elwha and Sol Duc
I know them well
I hear you bugle
And think about whether this time
I will mew
Or not
I have found new forage
And the loggers are changing the forest
You bugle anyhow
Even if I am distracted
I like to work
But I like to mew too

Maybe we will come together
Now and then
Cats
or elks
or humans
Maybe.

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My father read me T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats when I was little. He loved Macavity the mystery cat, called the Hidden Paw. And my goodness, the cat outfits in this show are quite something!

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The AntiDating Patch II

Gosh, again? Once again I am giving up on dating, because, well…. I just cannot even IMAGINE beginning to share my past life. Heh. I suppose I could do one of those “We never talk about the past” relationships, but BLEAGH. Sorry, boring.

So, I quit. As I wrote in The AntiDating Patch, people are contrary beasts and nothing makes them more interested then being engaged/and/or/quitting dating. How do I get around this? Wearing the PATCH(Tm) is not enough. (I chose itsy bitsy country of origin of my choice, just FYI, not the boxers and ick, not the speedo).

Quitting won’t work. I will be hounded. My microbiome will start howling and send out pheromones to the other microbiomes and people will gather round. No! I say, No!

Better to date. Hmmm. I think I will date the birds in my yard. The male deer are a bit spiky for my taste, a little scary to get close to. I like the raccoons, they are VERY good at growling and protect their young. The coyotes are shy but I’ve seen them within a block and by my former clinic. Also one on three legs by the hospital. I wonder if he was considering the ER? I find great blue herons fascinating and wish that I could fly and land in trees. I could date a tree, right? Be anything you want to be? At one point I was so fed up with people that I decided to be a tree.

There. I will peel the AntiDating Patch off in a week and date the local flora and fauna. A week of the patch will reinforce my resolve and then I can go moon at trees, or a blue heron, or a coyote.

Phew, problem solved and plan laid. I won’t have to explain my life at all, at least not in English. I have had a blue heron circle back to land in a tree when I was trying to talk blue heron. The heron looked pretty fierce, I am afraid that what I am saying is probably an insult. It’s easy to pick up the nasty slang in another language. Maybe they will teach me if they sense my deep and positive intentions. I hope so, don’t you?

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Take down

This is a beautiful living cedar.

Unfortunately, the trunk, twenty feet high, had split in half in high winds. So now it was a very dangerous very tall living cedar that is going to come down and is right next to a house.

An expert was consulted. He said the tree could not be taken down intact. Each of the four tall trunks would have to come down individually. This is terribly dangerous, because felling trees is dangerous enough, but when you are up IN the tree, it is worse.

Gear for the take down.

There are four men and me. I am there with a camera. I do not help at all, I just try to stay well out of the way.

I am filming with a zoom lens from a nearby hill. They are trying to control the direction of the fall. Not on me or the house or any of them.
One down, three to go. When the top starts falling, it accelerates very quickly and crashes. He is trying to stay out of the way.
Going up to attach the cable high up to guide the fall direction.
Way up.
The falls take out smaller trees, but are controlled. It is raining.
Two trunks left.
Studying trunk three.
One left.
The last one is down. The trunk is still alive, with the split.
A closer view of the split trunk.

When the last trunk fell, it swung towards me and they shouted “Run!” It had slipped of the trunk and can’t be controlled as well even though there was a cable and a machine pulling in the desired direction. I ran and I am still here, thankfully.

Clean up on another day and the cedar goes to the sawmill.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: WAR. I wish we were all just working and there was no war.

No names or faces, because you know, those loggers are shy and wild, right?