December 17th 2024 3:30 p.m. Banks of the West Chickamauga, Spirit Tree Farms, NW Georgia
How much did Thoreau write? Did he take his pencil and paper out with him when he sat by the pond? Did he draw? Scratch a few notes and then expand them later on by the fireplace?
It had been my objective to keep a copious record ever since I came here in 2017 (or was it 18?) To take daily notes, to see what I’ve observed and write about them. But those objectives now seem to have floated past like the dead leaves swirling in the high-rising water of the creek after rain.
I can sit here and drone on and on, as I watched the currents bubbling and surging, as I hear the water splashing against the fallen tree downstream and wonder if negative ions are more powerful upstream or downstream? Or does it matter? I can look at the singular white sapling’s reflection in the creek, steady and constant as everything else flows by. I can wonder why this creek, now at least 15 ft deep and 50 ft wide, is called a creek when so many rivers out west are so much smaller?
I listen to the gurgle of my stomach and wonder what I ate that made me so gassy and bloated and if I have diarrhea, then why isn’t my condition diuretic?
I don’t realize how still it is here until a jet from an airport 20 miles away flies overhead on its way to Dallas or Birmingham or Orlando or Atlanta. But soon the roar of its engines fade and then I’m left to listen to the squawking of the woodpeckers and the chirping of the wrens and the cardinals.
A beer can catches my attention. Three-fourths submerged, it flows slower than the rest of the flotsam and jetsam and spins in Long slow circles as if captured in its own dance, its own rhythm. For a moment, I forget that it’s trash, and it becomes some sort of found art object. Then, as it fades downstream into the distance, I notice that it’s slowly sinking and soon will be out of sight not only to me, but to everybody else, until the next drought and covers it embedded on the creek bank somewhere farther down.
Outoor Writers Bathroom Breaks
I have to go to the bathroom. Did Thoreau or Longfellow or Whitman or Muir ever write about such problems or concerns? Or did they simply drop trou in the woods and let fly. I wonder if they ever worried about getting any on their pants, or were they so adept at positioning themselves that it always went where it should and never where it shouldn’t (or is that shitant?
I wish I could relieve myself, but the corn husks and corn cobs and oak leaves are all wet and brittle. S***. Literally. This is uncomfortable.
I make it about 50 yards. The red Harbor Freight bucket beckons, and although I discover too late it is perilously close to a wild blackberry stick, and its edges will probably put permanent creases in my buttocks and thighs, the cool plastic provides unexpected yet welcome relief.
Again the question comes up: What am I eating that is so stomach sickening? Or was it the drink I took out of the puddled rainwater when maybe a deer or raccoon or Beaver or possum had previously stuck their head? Or the chunk of rainwater ice I sucked on? Or was it the cheese? Certainly not… the salmon mousse.
The other question arises: How long can I sit here with this hard plastic pressing into my flesh? And is it possible, because there was already 6 in of rainwater in the bottom of the bucket, to fill up the pail? It certainly feels like it could.
While I’m sitting here and doing something that rhymes with sitting, I look around at the pawpaw saplings that I have carefully placed six to eight feet apart in a row next to the shadows edge where, in three to five years they could be six to eight feet tall and producing wild pawpaw. Or will this just be another failed attempt of mine to force a man’s ideas nature instead of just letting it go? But I want more pawpaw, and more blueberries, and more beauty berries and more wildflowers. And when things to grow and flourish. I want to heal the land.
I think my neighbors are coming out to their hunting blind. I will soon see them if they are.
Crap.