A dear friend sent pictures of this ... ruin? ... when he visited India. Something about it gives me the shivers.
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What I do in a day is linked, in my mind, to everything else I do. That's how brains work I guess. Female ones at least–male brains apparently are more compartmentalized. Back in the mists of time, I used to read aloud to my kids from Terry Pratchett, the Narnia books, the Redwall books, and others, while spinning wool or knitting it up into hats to sell. For years, I'd be doing errands in Friday Harbor and suddenly, vividly, remember a passage from Thud, or Through the Looking Glass. Then I'd realize that some stranger wearing one of my hats was passing by, and that I must have knit it while reading aloud from that particular passage.
Well, while painting "Mossy Tree," I was listening to Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead. I guess I'll never forget that book, as long as the painting is in my possession. A wolf tree is one that spent its beginnings in an open field, growing branches close to the ground as well as up in the canopy. Later, when a forest grows up around it, if it's a Douglas-fir, the lower branches die. Eventually they fall off but that might take a century to do.
In these dark days of winter I am kind of frantic for outdoor activities. I've been taking the dogs on a lot of walks in our local parks.
Since retiring, I've been working for my arborist son-in-law, having a great time learning to use a chainsaw, and rummaging around in all kinds of ecosystems on the island. This winter we've been deadwooding trees on 30 acres of mostly doug-fir, but there's a damp north-facing spot where alders grow in profusion. I was especially taken with their conversational attitudes.
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