The Promise of Thimbleberry Jam...

Sometime back in late January – at least it seems like it was around that time – I made the announcement to my friend K. that this summer would be one of jams and jellies, that I would invest an unprecedented amount of time into foraging the local hills for blue elderberries, red and black huckleberries, service berries, purple salal berries, thimbleberries and wild alpine strawberries, that I would cultivate new expertise in the world of hot water baths, mason jars, brass lids and sweet preserves. In the downtime between chanterelles and morels, it seemed like such a hobby would be a great way to fill my free time. And yet – so far – I’ve not managed to make any progress toward the realization of those optimistic plans. Between my unending flow of real life responsibilities as a reluctant traveling professional, a recent pitched three week battle with poison oak rash, the rise to the forefront of many fishing related activities, an extended state of melancholy which preceded and followed the anniversary of Cesca’s death, and – of course – the ever rising cost of feeding the tank of the gas glutton which is my rusty orange Westfalia Camper – my wicker foraging basket hasn’t been filled in months.

Months ago, it felt as though there would be a great deal of time for all of the projects which imagination could conjure. And yet the brisk pace of time’s passage is now an issue for me. While time is distinctly on the side of traditional preserves once they’ve been sealed and placed away, time is most definitely not on the side of the distracted forager who struggles to get out into the wild and harvest the ripe fruit from which those preserves are made. Summer in the hills and mountains is a finite window and within that finite window is a brief stretch of time when the sunshine and the soil and the springs and the morning dew conspire to bring a teetering balance of sugar and acidity into the swollen juicy flesh of those Cascade berries whose current state is complete mystery to me. While I know that there were button-sized blossoms on the road cut strawberry runners just a few weeks ago and that the bland little salmon berries were beginning to ripen shortly after that, I have no clue as to what is ready to pick in the woods this afternoon.

Perhaps what I am experiencing right now – the core problem which is keeping my basket empty – is a mild case of contamination by one of modern humanity’s many flawed expectations, by the egocentric belief that the natural world orbits my species, that it will produce what I desire when it is desired, that existence is ordered around my schedule and my commitments and my workday concerns. I’ve not been vigilant enough and have been entertaining these expectations – to however small a degree – and may be missing opportunities to stock my pantry with the delicious bounty of the western forests as a result. This afternoon – locked down by a heartbreak of mundane errands – I can’t be in the places where the wild berries of my imagination straddle their highwire of ideal ripeness and burst with the flavors of their native terroir and beg me to listen carefully to what their schedules and their commitments and their concerns demand. Sometime soon, I’ll compose myself and renew my commitment to walking the arboreal paths I need to walk, to participating in activities which keep me in tune with the backwoods, to carving out at least some small chunk of solitary foraging time, to setting safely aside – with regularity – as many of the hollow promises of modern life as I can in an effort to keep alive and vital and unsevered the invisible umbilical cord which connects my body to the fertile rhythms of the green womb of Cascadia.

That and I’ll make thimbleberry jam…

Backyard Siestas & The Depths of Dream Life...

As I awoke into that captivating dream which was a life in itself, I found that I’d become a distinguished older man possessed of a large collection of colorful empty cookie and coffee tins which I used to store souvenirs from other dreams. Their illustrations were done in hues and tones as bright as dancing newspaper flames of jade green and cobalt blue and sanguine red and canary yellow. Each night in the dream – before drifting off into sleep – I would rattle the cans and listen to the sounds of the remnants and reminders of past fantasies clinking and clanking and making their own kind of music and after that music fell silent I would stack the cans neatly upon my parlor shelves and consider my experience of the dream which I did not yet know to be a dream.

But it was not just me and the tins passing time inside that dream. There was also a woman who was dear to me, an artist who looked like Frida Kahlo and who painted like Frida Kahlo and who was married to – but not in love with – a man who closely resembled Diego Rivera and who wore lovely flowing dresses and lumpy coral necklaces like Frida Kahlo might have and who was – despite all the superficial similarities – not Frida Kahlo. And without fail this woman would sit in the same shady spot out on my veranda during the long days of the summers of the dream and would sip a cup of mahogany tea with a terrier seated at her feet and she would hum a tune that would make me want to kiss the back of her neck and we would have wonderful garden parties in the evenings of the dream - languid and relaxed parties overflowing with intimate friends of all persuasions who would stand in small groups beneath a web of paper lanterns and share the stories of their own lives within dreams which they did not yet know to be dreams - and after the guests would leave or pass out or sneak off into the shadows, the me that was older and the she that was younger would retire upstairs to the mattress and we would move toward one another and our lovemaking would be slow and unhurried and considerate and emotional.

Each day of the long years preceding the sudden end of the dream, I would arise with the roosters of the yard and would bathe myself and would shave my chin and would part my hair with a comb and would dress in my double breasted suit with a folded handkerchief for the pocket and a flower from the peony bush pinned onto my lapel. I enjoyed the mornings of those years and as I awaited the sure arrival of the woman and her husband, I always filled a galvanized metal watering can and drenched the potted spider orchids which lined the front porch of the house which I called my home. And without fail that familiar couple would appear down the sidewalk at just before breakfast time – he with his cane and she with her cigar – and they would approach me – he with his knowing smile and she with hers – and shortly after they’d stepped through my doorway, I would steal away with the woman to the kitchen where she would rub my shoulders as I breaded and fried slices of fatback and - after a few minutes - her husband would join us and would peck her on the cheek and would wink quickly in my direction before strolling back home to take care of his own affairs.

Thus it went on for years until early this morning when I awoke and arose again within the dream and – ignorant of what was about to occur – passed one last time through it’s patterns, passed through one last day filled with the scent of white gardenias and the delicate songs of wrens and the soft sunshine of ceaseless summertime, passed through fantastic hours whose insubstantial memories disappeared – like those of so many others – into the cookie and coffee tins on my parlor shelves. Late morning found me laying within the embrace of the other man’s wife listening to stories of her childhood within a dream which she did not yet know to be a dream. During warmth of the early afternoon, I took a kind of siesta – just like always – and read my favorite periodical near the woman as she sipped her cup of mahogany tea with that same terrier seated at her feet and hummed the same sweet tune she’d always hummed. And then – unaccountably early – evening arrived just as I was dressing for our garden party and there came with it an unexpected knock at the door and I went to answer the door and I collapsed under a crushing weight and I could not find the breath beneath my ribs and I felt myself tumbling into the black and heard the pleas and sobs of the woman as through a heavy blanket and I fell through the darkness and emerged back into the light and into confusion.

Though dizzy and disoriented – after a second or two – that confusion passed and I managed to open my eyes and I saw the mature artichoke plants reaching toward the baby blue sky and I felt the hot July sun upon my bare chest and I heard the sound of an ambulance racing down the straight stretch of Pine Street and I realized that I was laying on a cotton quilt in the middle of the backyard of Mas des Rigolos. Suddenly my hand felt my beard and my eyesight lit upon the fine black hairs of my forearms and the unfinished tattoo on my left foot and I found my bearings and remembered where I was and where I’d returned from and that I was not yet old and that it was only a dream that had ended and nothing so substantial as myself and I recalled that barely a half-hour earlier – before the dream had come and gone – I’d agreed to take Pradeep fishing for bluegill at a pond outside of town. And just a moment later – as I turned to face the back door of the house – I noticed my young protégé standing behind me with his graphite rod and his spincasting reel and heard him state impatiently – “My dear friend, if your nap is nearly over, we certainly should be going about this fishing business…”

The Mas Des Rigolos Manifesto...

I followed a serpent through the garden this evening and watched with fascination as his shifting belly dance cut like flowing water through the tall golden oats. I take it as a positive sign – one of fertility and health – that this striped black Garter snake inhabits the vegetable beds and unkempt grassy tussocks which grow outback of my kitchen window. In an increasingly poisoned world where so many green gardens and deceptively fecund rural farmsteads bathe in a chemical soup which permits only the existence of the most limited and ordered and antiseptic forms of flora and fauna, I view the presence of the serpent as symbolic of the vigor and vibrancy of the small chunk of earth which it is my privilege to steward.

In a world which is increasingly bowed before toxic forms of sanitation and unnatural selection, I choose to celebrate the crawling things and the useless weeds and the forgotten fruit of my forebears. Tucked into a modest space between the larger fields of grass seed farmers and the manicured flower beds of average American families, the compact sprawl of my homestead is a barely cultivated riot of leaves and winding tendrils and lurid blossoms whose chaotic beauty is lost on many of the "normal" folk. Though I don't mind leaving the masses a bit confused, if I decide to give them the benefit of some clarification – as I've considered doing – I’ll have my friend artist friend Yogi gather his brushes and paint a wooden yard sign outlining the principal tenets of what I think of as the Mas des Rigolos Manifesto for all the sidewalkers to see.

And it would say something similar to:

Behind this fence there are blood-sucking mosquitoes and scurrying mice, looping sparrows and fragrant spearmint, finger-staining mulberries and rotting dinner scraps, starburst daisies and dried-up dogshit, untrained grapevines and twining chokeweed.

Behind this fence there are occasional gatherings of crazies who don’t believe in the gospel of chemistry, potlucks attended by godless pagans and natural Christian mystics, midnight bonfires where – unseen to your sleeping eyes – your neighbors dance naked and propitiate the spirit of Terra Madre and howl at the moon.

Behind this fence there are bushes and trees and vines which grow wildly through the imposition of gentle guidance without strict restraint, through a regimen of slow nourishment without the fast burn of pelletized fertilizer, through a deep and simple humility in the face of the right order of things.

Behind this fence there are no apologies for the disarray which arises from permitting nature to run its course, for letting the grass grow tall within sight of your lawn chairs, for the waves of white parachutes which float from our dandelion clocks into your all but barren rose gardens.

Behind this fence, your rules and right angles and preconceptions don’t apply…

The serpent stayed with me until I'd finished this thought and then – even as I watched his fluid progress – disappeared with a slither into the tall brush beside the battleship grey siding of the old shed. Though I parted the tangle with my hands, I could catch no second sight of his good presence. Perhaps he heard the appetizing heartbeat of a brown cricket drumming away in some hidden space beneath the blackberry leaves or caught some quick whiff of pooled water beneath the drip of the garden spigot. As a boy, I would’ve hunted that serpent until I captured him, would’ve dropped him into a blue Mason jar stuffed half-full of grass, would’ve held him captive behind glass until he danced no more. Now a full-grown man - granted a degree of compassion and insight by the intervening years – it is satisfaction enough to know he’s out there.