It has always been about home, home a function of love, love a marker for home. A goal here at Twelve Oaks is to learn some new things, eventually, hopefully. Thankful to have learned to linocut on Thursday, hopeful to grow this skill over the next year. Can’t believe i would ever be a live-oak-living-artist, but i believe i could grow to be a slash pine.
We are out in the woods every day. It has become familiar in the way a small trail will - the oaks cover and surround the house, it is always cool inside from their shadings. They shield and hug the house, they weave their leaves & tremendous arms together and it feels very safe. These trees are older than the house. They’ve seen it all before. They’ve sat and prayed during Sunday services, when the house was a church, they’ve heard the hearts of the congregation swell in praise and hymnals and gladfulness. Their roots are unfathomable underneath us all of the time. The trail opens up every day, i begin to name the trees, but they aren’t mine and they are beyond naming, any sort of conjuration here would be an insult.
We woke up this morning. It always begins with planning a dozen other routes to carry us to the day - walking, running, coffee, then to work. The woods always draw us in, winning out - checking the tide, hoping to see a waddling mammal of some kind, raccoon prints in the low-tide-side-mud. It is quiet out here with day-wildlife.
At night, a possum and raccoon and armadillo root and scrabble for bugs and things. The cat next door graces us with her presence. Moths dart in the light and fool me for car lights on a highway that isn’t there.
We walked our usual route, it must have rained last night but i have been sleeping so good i didn’t know. Wilbur is always crying up to the trees for squirrels, startling after so much silence. We go off the path sometimes, only because they are mistaken as part of the path. Finding the first gulf coast box turtle was just exactly like finding an opal. Yellow and brown like the pine, delicate & hand-painted-looking, nervous and bubbling at our approach. The lighter shell just the same as a butterfly wing pattern, but a whole home & not a cocoon. It was remarkable to find the next, darker, braver turtle. Their shells freshly washed and glimmering as the night sky, carrying everything across the universe with them, patiently, unhurried & unharried, too. His dinosaur eyes curious & unafraid at our approach.
Out of the corner of my eye i saw a woman in a white floral dress walk towards me. Out of the corner of my eye we walked within feet of a lazing slathering prickling alligator, but he was only a fallen worn out log.
Choosing our paths is bargaining and gambling, as though it will come up gone the next day.
A silent bald eagle glides over head. Everything is silent except us.
We ran our two miles and came home before the rain. A rainy obscuring end of the world erasive drive to the book store, and for coffee. Returning, the woods ushered us out, the trees promising it will be beautiful in the rain. They whisper that before long the snakes and bugs will be out. They’ve made this weather-blanket for us and we need to see it all. The tide has come back in and settled, collecting rain drops and we sit on our heels nearly into the mud and pine needles. Before this is all over i will put two feet into the bayou and tell it how much it means to me.