I recently came across a quotation, which may be familiar to everybody else but it’s new to me, from John Burroughs’ Signs and Seasons: ‘The place to observe nature is where you are; the walk to take today is the walk you took yesterday. You will not find just the same things: both the observed and the observer have changed.’
This seems to be the equivalent of saying you can’t walk on the same water twice, and I absolutely agree with that.
Above is a path, perhaps a gennell, perhaps a snickett, depending on which bit of England you come from, and I walk down it pretty much every day. As far as I can tell it doesn’t have a name.
I always see a few pigeons perching on the fences beside the path, and sometimes I see a skulking cat or two, and sometimes I see evidence that a cat got among the pigeons. Nature, don’t you love it? I suppose I’d feel better if the cats actually ate the pigeons as opposed to just killing them, but cats, I know, don't care about my feelings,
On the path I encounter people once in a while and words are occasionally exchanged but mostly we don’t make eye contact and keep silent, which seems to suit everybody.
The other day I was walking up the slope and a young couple were walking behind me and arguing, and I heard him say, 'So it’s ok for you to talk to me like that but I can’t talk to you like that, is that right?’
The other day I was walking up the slope and a young couple were walking behind me and arguing, and I heard him say, 'So it’s ok for you to talk to me like that but I can’t talk to you like that, is that right?’
And the girl said, ‘I wasn’t talking to you like anything.’
This seemed a moment of transcendent Zen.
This seemed a moment of transcendent Zen.
Sometimes there are big mushrooms growing in the grass alongside the path:
And sometimes there are fungi that are not just big but monstrous (that ruler’s 15 inches long).
I wish I had the wisdom to know whether or not they’re edible, which may be just another way of saying I wish I was John Cage.
