On the cover: Donna Vitucci, Groundswell, acrylic and mixed media – private collection
I jogged into the plains’ nature preserve, which, if not preserved, would have long ago become a collection of luxury homes. Knowing that the preserve, under another set of circumstances, wouldn’t exist gave me a deeper appreciation of the preserve and the experiences I had in there.
The first step onto the damp, dark soils of the preserve trail instantly changed everything. Prior patterns and associations of thoughts and feelings were abruptly severed; new ones sprung up. I felt like an assassin. The soils welcomed me with songs of maternal fecundity, comfort, and protection. Everywhere I looked was the fruit of the mother. There were giant pine trees, bursting in all their greenness in the heart of winter, next to all the bony scrub oaks having lost their leaves months ago, becoming skeleton dancers. In them was a secret life, waiting to resurrect the bony dancers once more, when the trials from life to death to life again were celebrated along with the life-giver, the soils, and the mother of the fruits.
The air along the narrow, well-worn trail was cold, damp, and fragrant. I felt the coldness in my mouth, in my nostrils, at the start of my throat, and found it invigorating, refreshing. The dampness was enticing, driving me to breathe in deeper to receive more of the air’s qualities. The fragrance in the air was developed by the rain that had fallen the other day, its presence still everywhere. The soil itself was saturated by the rain, which darkened its colour, and the moisture freed the odours of the fallen brown leaves and orange pine needles, as well as the variegated minerals. The bony tree bark remained wet, smelling of wood. The low-lying vegetation glistened and emitted a bitter scent. All of the aromas mixed together into one fragrance that enticed me to breathe it all into myself; in doing so, I became more attuned to the woods of the preserve. I was breathing in the same air the scrub oak was breathing in and out, the same air the pine was breathing in and out, the same air the towhee was breathing in and out, the same air the squirrel was breathing in and out. Somewhere, a deer was breathing in and out the same air too, and a rabbit. I couldn’t enter the woods without becoming the woods.
When I jogged along the narrow trail, I always observed the specific collection of thoughts I was having. They were the woods’ thoughts. They were always a different collection. So different, in fact, that I had to wonder what led to the unique thoughts each time. I would pass judgment upon the collections. Some were much better than others. Some caused me to look down upon myself. But I wanted only the supreme collections that would buoy my spirits.
I learned quickly that the thoughts had a way of their own. I couldn’t prevent them from arising, whatever they were. The only way to alter the thoughts was to alter myself ahead of time by performing any number of activities, which forced me to contend with a whole series of thoughts just to accomplish that. The struggle started daily upon waking. If carried through properly, the rewards were inestimable. If there were failures, the woods’ thoughts were devastating. But there were occasions when there were shortcomings and the woods’ thoughts were not as devastating as I would have thought they would have been, certainly not as devastating as they could have been. And sometimes there were even collections of thoughts that were as miraculous as if I had accomplished all of the day’s activities perfectly, which I never could have. Such collections proved to me that there was a greater force than myself alive and well in the preserve. The reverse had happened from time to time, when I had accomplished all of the day’s activities close to perfect, only to find disappointment in the lack of quality of the thoughts in the woods.
But on the whole, when I performed the day’s activities well, the woods’ thoughts were of a fine quality, and when I failed in the day’s activities in whatever way, the woods’ thoughts were of a poor quality. There were great heights achieved. Sometimes I had tears of joy streaming down my face. Other times, tears of agony. I was addicted to the experience.
Dec. 17, 2022. Kat. 11:09 pm:
Windy, 48 degrees, clear sky, Perseus bright, Sirius rising in the southeast, Jupiter and Mars clearly spotted, Big Dipper hanging in the east, moon new, Cassiopeia overhead in the Milky Way, the Twins southeast.
Took a walk on the southern shoreline today. In the distance, on my return just out of reach of the gentle wave breaks, the sand packed tightly and smooth from days of winds and high and low tides, along with nearly no other footsteps, I observed a man crouched over, occupied in a task. When I arrived where he was, after I walked east along the southern shoreline, the sun nearing the ocean horizon in the late afternoon, he was gone. But I saw he had written the name Dyana in the sand and drawn the image of a heart next to it. Each letter was carefully made in the sands; a lot of thought went into forming them. I was curious who this Dyana was and his intention for writing her name there, when the sea would take it away later in the day, after sunset, when the high tide rolled in.
On the beach walk, I picked up a white brick with three holes in the centre, made, the markings on it revealed, in Canton, Ohio. I don’t know how the brick ended up in the sea and washed up, but I carried it back home with me for some future yet-known use.
Later in the day, near sunset, I went for a jog. As soon as I turned into the nature preserve, I had recurring thoughts building toward a denouement that never came. The thoughts brought me to the point of death. I kept accepting I would die in the preserve on the jog, through a heart attack or some other means, and I was OK with it; I accepted this outcome without resistance, welcomed it in fact. The welcoming helped me jog harder, as if with the next step of the jog I’d collapse and bid farewell to the world. There was a sweet peace in this collection of thoughts, a great liberation.
I don’t think I ever felt that free of attachments before. There was no thought of an egotistical self-sacrifice, no thought of anything left behind, no thought of any outside recognition of my death at all. There was only the immediate bliss of the end of the physical self. Any concern a person could have in the world could find no place in me with my death thoughts. This collection was an important breakthrough in my development and continued long after to have an impact on me.
The contents of my journal included another entry about a specific thought collection in those woods:
January 10, 2023. Kat. 9:03 pm:
Calm, warm, clouds, moon illumination, enchantment, blue phosphorescence.
Yoga = Yoking.
During my jog through the preserve today, I, for the first time, reached out with my hand and touched the bark of the beautiful trees on either side of the trail along my way. The touch infused me with joy and heartfelt tears fell from my eyes. I truly loved the trees I touched and felt their love for me. We had built up a relationship over the past year, and the touch was a celebration and a recognition and a confirmation and a consummation of all those times when I jogged through, all those series of thoughts, the great collection of thoughts. Who takes the time to know themselves anymore?
Before I go, I’ll tell you another secret of the great plains:
One spring day, I walked along the roadside bike path to the southern shore. There was the grass airfield to the left the entire way, until there was the Herring Creek, which ran parallel to a beachside road intersecting with the one I was walking on that ultimately vanished into the blonde sands. The approximately mile-long creek connected a bay in the east to a pond in the west, running underneath two roadways, including the one I was on, and some footbridges. To the west of where I was walking, there were a series of homes set back from the bike path and, in the space between, a rich diversity of plant, insect, and wildlife. Ahead, the same stretch of land to the west was cut through by an east–west road; to the south of the cut-through, more of the plains’ natural habitat was springing up, and there was a farm further in the west. I heard a rooster’s call in observance of the sun, Apollo, Asclepius.
A bee flew by me on its way to dance with the violet wildflowers growing just to my right, beyond a border of daisies. There was an endless variety of wildflowers in patches across the low-lying plains, a rainbow of intoxicating colours set within gold, brown, and green vegetation, tenderly embracing the blooms. A southwest breeze gathered all the fragrances of the plains into one mixture and brought it to my nose, which drew in the scent as if it were the familiar, yet dynamic scent of a love eternally impressed within my heart.
The trees across the plains were of mostly two varieties, scrub oaks and pines. The scrub oaks stood strong in their individual spots, bursting forth their catkins to father progeny, partaking in the spring festival of the great plains along with the wildflowers.
As I became intoxicated by the fragrance, as I felt the winds sweep across the plains and caress my face, as I observed all the wild colours and the pines and scrub oaks, the entire landscape came alive and spoke of what paradise on earth was once like – the Garden of Eden, here before my very eyes. The experience was the confirmation of all I had read about, heard about, seen about – paradise. So there was paradise upon earth, I said to myself, and it was like this, or it was this, or it is this, and I can live in it by saturating myself with the great plains.
Farewell.
