the wild lands

(this is a companion piece to Allowed and In Betweens)

The wild lands were not what we expected, there, as we came out of the forest under a crescent moon, into a landscape white with snow, so carefully curated that each and every tree seemed hand-placed, pruned into shape. We had wandered in the in between lands of the woods for weeks, or for years, it was hard to tell which, for certain, when one is not yet to the wild lands but is well beyond the borders of civilization. When the woods had begun to thin, it was not certain if the instructions had been accurate, the wild lands were not so very different from home at first glance. The differences were slow to appear, then gathered momentum, until a Welcome to the Wild Lands sign would have been wholly redundant.

The crescent moon hung low in the sky, the terracotta of Mediterranean vases, and it stayed, hovering over the horizon, all night long. The next night it neither advanced nor retreated, but kept its exquisite delicate hook, skimming the sky just at the edge of the clouds. And the next night, and the next, until after seven or fourteen such nights, when it remained the most delicate crescent in the heavens, and we realized that the ocher color had gradually shifted through the spectrum, from yellow to green until now it hung, a vibrant turquoise blue, glittering among the silver stars. And the stars were silver, not a twinkling atmospheric trick of white light, but a glowing, dancing, vibrant metallic, that emitted a light as strong as any full moon, so the snow covered hills were illuminated even under a crescent moon which neither waxed nor waned nor rose nor set, just shifted through the color spectrum.

We walked the first day without seeing any inhabitants of the wild lands, but, somehow, our numbers kept increasing. When I had been in the intermediary territories of the woods, I had been certain that I had been alone; yet as the woods thinned, companions had slowly materialized, never as strangers on the path, but simply, suddenly, being there, without explanation, introduction, surprise, or fear. It was not that I went from being alone to having acolytes, but as if components of an entire contingency of pilgrims were suddenly revealed, but as pieces that were unquestionably a part of the whole. We did not speak, or interact, and there was no sense of a leader; we were all wandering, if not aimlessly, then without purpose, but in a definite, and shared, direction.

 I could no longer recall what clothing I had been wearing while wandering through the dense undergrowth of the woods, but, without ever changing, I and all of the others wore the black robes of medieval travelers, seeking the sites of miracles. We were not Death; we were not invaders; we were not tourists; and somehow we were not outsiders, even though I did not come from the wild lands, I had become a native, and I recognized my fellow companions as the same.

As the moon cycled through its colors we began to see signs of other life, trails and track marks that had never been identified in the mountain guides of my homeland. Not a dog, not a cat, not a raccoon, fox, or cheetah: but somehow -- there -- finally spotted on the hillside just before dawn, a lion, shaggy brown, the color of autumn, the size of a cocker spaniel, alert and poised for the hunt. We had camped, our tents in a clearing at the base of a hill, and while I do not know where my tent came from, there we were, together, and I was stoking the fire and watching the slow rise of the sun. The lion moved quickly over the crest of the hill and out of sight, pursued by some other animal that moved too quickly for me to see in the weak light, but that day we began to speak as we walked.

There were stories of the spotted fish of the wild lands, brilliant orange creatures who feed on the dreams of their prey, and whose roe are sought after delicacies by the Black Queen. It was said that eating the roe of the dream fish extended the working hours of the night, the Black Queen's domain, and that she feasted heavily on the embryo dreams of her subjects to supply her powers for the solstice. The lions hunted the dream fish not only for their meat, the smokey tang of cured salmon roasted over a pit of eucalyptus leaves, but also to present to the Black Queen as tribute for their home in her lands.

The dream fish, angered at losing their unborn young, resentful at the loss of their fully grown members, were engaged in an eternal embattled war with the Queen's lions, and whether it was the dark, dreamless sleep of midwinter or the brief, disturbed dreams of midsummer reflected the status of the war. The fish knew no ruler, they were the night-time emissaries of the sun itself, who may have been a god or a king or just a glowing rock in the sky, for the dream fish were not believers and acknowledged no mystics. I had awaken in the night to stoke my campfire because a dream fish had gathered the dreams out of my sleep: I had woken in the sudden silence of a confused consciousness, and other pilgrims were only able to continue sleeping as the raids of the lions distracted the dream fish from our seething sleeping minds.

As our journey through the wild lands continued, our numbers grew, our sightings of the dream fish and the lions grew more frequent, and we watched the days shorten and the creatures of the night and the early dawn appear in greater numbers. There were the tiny white owls, hooting so serenely and softly that their calls were masked by the falling snow. There were bears whose fur was not black but the midnight blue of  the long, lingering twilight, bears who traveled in groups of pilgrims much like our own, but instead of tents, they had collections of rugs and blankets that they spread under trees at the ridges of mountains. There were red foxes, crimson red, with bushy tails longer than their bodies and bright, inquiring eyes. I did not know what the intentions of the foxes were, but I feared them. And there were deer, always solitary, always large, much larger than any deer I had ever seen before, deer who were able to cause us to halt mid-step, to freeze as they looked deeply into our eyes and read our souls, transcribing our dreams and our intentions into the mind of the Black Queen.

The Black Queen, the night, was the destination of our pilgrimage, and we sought an audience with her in celebration of the winter solstice. Somehow we knew we would meet her on the solstice, or the solstice would happen when we met her, whether one caused the other or the two could only exist as simultaneous events was vague, an explained element of our mythology. The culmination of our pilgrimage was clear, though, that the Black Queen, in grateful acknowledgement of our affections and in return for the efforts of our pilgrimage, would remove her veil and display all of the midnight colors of the crescent moon at once, in the fireworks of the aurora borealis, to light the long nights that marked the reign of the Black Queen.

Whether we to remain as her subjects, were to to work, or worship, or were we to return home, emissaries for the Black Queen to our home lands, was unclear. Perhaps we were to have a choice, to enter a convent or a village or become wandering hermits or adopt a new calling as yet undefined and undetermined. Or perhaps we would be transformed by the Black Queen into her beings, into the lions that gathered the roe of the dream fish for her, or into the flickering white birds whose numbers in her aviaries were as numerous as the stars in the night sky, signing in the pitches of ice forming and floating over a brook, the creaks, cracks, and clarion calls echoing against the smooth bare branches of the frozen trees.

Any of these solutions; all of these solutions; none of these solutions: it was all the same to us; we sought only to serve, to worship, to adore the Black Queen.


reading
1493 : uncovering the new world Columbus created / Charles C. Mann. 

weather
autumn, Indian summer monsoons

day-trips

a trip to the country

grotesques

I long to hear the cathedral organ playing: deep and hopeful. But it has been many years, so very many years, since those echoing sounds filled these cavernous rooms. When they first closed down the Cathedral, the silence was overbearing, overwhelming, but a beadle was still kept on staff, sweeping the cobwebs from the altar, opening the Chapel to inquiring visitors and scholars. It is true that even in those forlorn early years the silences were greater than the many small noises of the faithful, it is true that the vast majority of the building was closed up, undisturbed. Still, the appearances of these sporadic visitors, the desultory attentions of the beadle, kept alive the belief that one day the vast eerie silence would be filled with the petitions of the devout, the reedy voices of the boy's choir, the impatient shuffles of children ready to resume their daily life outside the confines of the Holy Ghost.

And so, for those first years, we waited, my companions on the parapet and I, keeping the watch over the grounds until they would once more be consecrated and defined through the meaning of use and prayer. Our duty as sentinels was to maintain the vigilant presence when the faith of the parishioners wavered, faltered; to keep a steady eye against the approach of evil and to warn against ill intention. The beadle, our caretaker, grew older, and age was accompanied by arthritis and a growing taste for red wine, and with these things was a corresponding lapse in the number of casual visitors, and a slackness with regards to cobwebs and field mice. The beadle was finally taken away from us, our one remaining human intercessor, whether by relocation to a hospice or to an afterlife, the long-term destination unchanged, dust to dust.

He was not replaced. Canvas wraps were draped hurriedly over what seemed most necessary to protect, and in the remaining naves and chapels of the Cathedral were only the worshipers from nature, as Saint Francis of Assisi claimed, or the naively opportunistic rodents, as Rousseau would have argued. When boys acting under the influence of cheap beer and bad company cracked some of the windows with pieces of the old stone wall, we, the only protectors of the building, let out the only warning of the wrath of the heavens we could summon: we wailed and screamed from our perch on high. They took fright and ran, remembering the stories of their grandmothers, women who had last been in the Cathedral a lifetime ago, as small girls in white dresses taking communion. Even though over sixty years had past, they still shared the warnings and the petitions with their grandchildren, still lit a candle under the Crucifix and made the sign of the Cross at home. Their belief would die with them and not pass on to their grandchildren, on whose behalf they offered intercessions.

When the rocks shattered the stained glass they not only broke the depiction of the disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane, but they also opened a door to the wind. The building had been constructed well and true, over three hundred years of builders and artisans laboring to realize a footprint of heaven on earth: until the window was breached the Cathedral had remained impervious to rain, wind, and ice, succumbing only to the venial sins of trespassing by squirrel, mouse, and spider. The  wind found the opening in the window and entered, bringing with it the unholy air of progress, unsanctified pollution, disturbing the residual dust of the memories of the presence of the faithful.

The wind found the altar, the chapels; it swept down the flagged walkways and around the columns. It was not strong enough to disturb the canvas drapes or the spider webs, but the wind tasted the vast, empty, undisturbed space of the Cathedral and began to effect changes in the room: minor, at first, then growing, exponentially, with each small movement and alteration. The window, once loosened, began to splinter, entire colored panes giving way under the assault of the wind, and as other windows now felt the affects of weather on both sides, they, too, began to weaken in their vigilance.

We, the sentries, were powerless against the forces of nature; we were endowed with the powers to battle the evil which lurks in the hearts of man and those demons who were disembodied, had not taken up residence in man or beast. But nature was no man, nor any beast, nor a demon, nor an incarnation of evil. The wind could not feel our protection of the Cathedral, for the wind had existed before the fall of man, and predated both good and evil. The wind just was, a pure being. And as the wind entered and discovered the space that man had abandoned, it brought with it rain and ice and damp. The deep stone walls began to incrementally be transformed back into the dirt from which they were composed, broken down into crumbling silt by mildew and moss. There was a skeleton of carved woodwork forming the infrastructure, the pews, the Bishop's throne, the choir bays; all reacted to the change from still, dry air to the damp air that altered from season to season, shrinking and swelling as the weather arrived inside the building.

We kept to our duties as best we could, in light of the conditions, but none of us were immune to the indignities of the weather, and we all longed for the loving caress of a stone mason to replace missing noses, talons, beards, wings. As sentinels we were being crippled beyond recognition, and our strength against evil spirits and demons was lessened as our features washed away with the years. Inside, the bats, squirrels, mice grew into ever larger colonies, and the canvas sheets wore completely away, broken down at the end of a lifetime battling nature. The statues stained from the damp; the frescoes rotted from their foundations; and even the consecrated bones of the founding saint, which had still retained the sweetness and fluidity of life a hundred years after death, began to succumb to the decay of abandonment.

The city, who had abandoned its Cathedral, was in turn abandoned by the fickle strumpet of progress, and the empty footfalls of the homeless and dispossessed could be heard in the alleys at night. It was not so very long before the vagrants, the forgotten people, discovered the forgotten Cathedral, and even if we had fought to keep them away, we were so weakened as to possess none of our previous powers to protect the consecration of the space. Yet I was not certain that the new residents were evil, that they they had any ill or bad intentions. They were not placing false sacrifices on the altar, or worshiping a dark incarnation of a fallen angel; rather, they were more like the mice and bats, God's forgotten creatures, living as best they could in God's forgotten temple. My ears are almost worn away, a smooth skull taking their place, but at night, when the wind picks up and howls through the broken glass of the windows, it sometimes blows through the bellows and pipes of the organ, playing a mournful echoing shadow of the deep and hopeful melody which once filled this space.

reading
Stories for Nighttime and some for the day / Ben Loory (splendid book!)

weather
countdown to the first day of autumn, red leaves floating on the pond

ALLOWED as DEFINED

We had been walking in the forest all day. At first there had been a path, wide, free of tree branches and invasive growth, a blue and yellow blaze painted on the trees. When the blue blaze path split from the yellow blaze path, we sat on a log near the fork and ate our apples, content that the better choice would make it self known.

I threw my apple core into the undergrowth, resigned that no signs had appeared indicating the distinction between options: no large shaggy dogs bounding down the trail; no suddenly appearing notice boards referring to natural springs or unusual rock formations; no discovered footprints which were of an unusual and mysterious dimension. There was not even the Robert Frost path-not-taken option; both were of equal gradient, equal geology, equal vegetation.

So we went left, giving a shrug of indifference, for we were in the woods not with any intention of bird watching or going for a swim or finding a rare flower, but just because I had awoken that morning, and realized that even after ten years in this place, I had never entered the forest. When one lives surrounded by trees, it is easy to forget that there are people who drive hours to experience what I effectively ignored for years. Neither of us were experienced hikers, but apples and granola bars and turkey sandwiches from the deli and bottles of lemonade were our sustenance, and we were pleasantly surprised by how accessible, how human scale, the woods were, with their dappled light and smells of mulch and random twitterings of birds and the crunchiness of pine needles beneath our feet.

The left path was not so different than that we had been walking along, and we strolled and exulted at the presence of chipmunks and frogs and tiny bright red mushrooms growing underfoot, until very slowly we realized that we were having to strain to identify the next emblazoned tree, that the path was becoming rougher and less well-groomed. We weren't worried: the sun was high, the forest was open and friendly and smelled of the freshness of new growth, and we could still make out the train in front of and behind us. When we stopped for the turkey sandwiches I realized that there was not a blaze anywhere to be seen, even though the path was still clear; when we later stopped to munch on granola bars, though, the path in either direction had become indistinct from the forest.

We didn't panic. We knew not to panic. We weren't that far from civilization, after all; this wasn't old growth forest in deepest Africa, but had been carefully manicured farmland only a few generations ago. There was sure to be a road, the sound of traffic, a stream we could follow, something, easily located as long as we kept walking and stayed calm.

It is true that it was not my natural inclination to remain calm. It is true that it is my natural inclination to fuss and lose my temper and blame the incompetence of my companion, the government, and god. I knew this as well as my companion did, for when I started to agitate about general inabilities of the wider population, I was treated to the dreariest possible lecture on becoming lost in the woods as a meditation exercise about letting go of the need to control destination, the entirety delivered in a faux-relaxation yoga voice specially calibrated to appeal to my sense of outrage. And thus we kept walking, me grumbling about the inanity of being in the woods in the first place, my companion dropping in nuggets about the ephemeral nature of human existence and how artificial the construct of the self really is, until I became so annoyed with the philosophical bullshit that I forgot to panic about being lost in the woods with a granola bar and an apple remaining as my sole future sustenance.

The afternoon grew longer, and we walked in what we hoped was a straight line, although the sun wasn't visible enough to offer direction and our eye for details of the natural terrain was not well-honed enough to provide clues against traveling in circles or away from sources of water or movement deeper into the woods, so we may have been doing all three of these things in honest ignorance. When it began to become apparent that the evening would soon arrive and we still didn't have any sense of where we were, it grew harder to remain calm, and I looked to my companion for a well-placed comment on the nature of the space time continuum, something along the lines of movement through space affecting the actual experience of time, which would prove it was really still morning and we were drinking strong coffee before going for a hike.

The problem was that my companion wasn't there. Somehow the moment of me walking in the woods with a friend had become a moment of me walking in the woods alone, without myself ever being consciously aware of this significant change of state. I tried to remind myself that someone of some renown had written something along the lines of matter not being able to be created or destroyed, but I wasn't particularly happy with how that left my options. Either there had been an alien abduction, of which my memories had been wiped clean; or perhaps I had been suddenly, remorselessly abandoned in the woods; or perhaps matter had been transmuted into energy as we had walked through a miniature black hole created as a freak side effect of the large Hadron collider.

None of these possibilities appealed to me, nor, in all honesty, was I likely to believe any of them: they were perfectly irrational and absurd to even consider, and the net result was the same. I was alone, in the woods; it was getting dark; I had no intention of remaining calm. Soon there would be mosquitoes and raccoons and bears and mountain lions and escaped crazy lunatic convicted criminals and I couldn't identify poison ivy in daylight much less in the light of a waning moon. I was hungry and I wanted a stiff drink and a taxi and a hot shower and a novel by one of those British writers who goes off to have adventures with a full retinue of staff and native guides and at least two sets of evening wear. I had none of these things.

If I hadn't been so worried about the poison ivy and the potential creepy crawly population I would have settled onto a large rock to have a good think, but even then I recognized that the likelihood of the good think resulting in a reasonable course of action was extremely low, and the likelihood of unfortunate side effects was significantly higher. I cursed, loudly, then worried that my loud cursing would attract whatever predators had somehow remained ignorant of my scent or the hesitancy of my footfalls, then cursed again, under my breath.

So far my entire plan of action consisted of curling up in a ball just exactly where I stood and hope to survive until daybreak, when up ahead there appeared to be some type of lantern hanging in a tree, and an owl hooted. Maybe college kids or hippies were throwing a solstice party in the woods; regardless, a lantern in a tree meant people, and somewhat organized people at that, and perhaps even a road and a ride back to town. It was a perfectly rational assumption, and I started to make my way towards the lantern. It wasn't so much receding from me as further away than I had first thought; but distances are harder to judge at night, and I was walking slowly, carefully feeling out my next steps.

Just when the lantern grew close enough that I expected to see people, I was startled to see that what there was instead was another lantern, further on. So I continued walking, following the lanterns into the forest, another appearing in the distance just as I approached that closest to me. It made no sense, all of these random lanterns lining up in the forest, until I suddenly became aware that my footsteps were not quite so hesitant and careful, for I was actually following a path in the woods. It was not a well maintained trail, more of a track of the sort left by a herd of deer or other regularly moving animal, but it added an element of order to the disorder of the trees at night.

A lit trail in the forest was not an unfamiliar landscape, and I kept walking, looking for evidence of the people responsible for the trail, curious if I was on a town path or some woodland walk in the park. Up ahead, a string quartet was playing, but the music was like no other music I had ever heard, the tuning was off pitch and the tempo felt like a calliope that kept slowing down and speeding up; there was a tinny undertone to the sound. As I drew closer, I realized that the instruments were playing themselves, though there was no visible sign of mechanics or electricity. I wondered what was happening, where I was, if I was awake or asleep; but the one thing I forgot to wonder was if I would ever reach home again, as I was drawn ever more closely into the strains of the music.

reading
thanks to The Ampersand for a shout-out to the Ligature Project!
http://ampersand.gosedesign.net/


weather
join us next June! Gibbs2012 : Dia Lightning Fields, New Mexico

Aerial Theosophy

Further work on the cosmology project, which even has an official title (see above):

The full-page-spread of the parallel texts can be downloaded
as a gigantic pdf file in ZIP form.
The full suite of accompanying cosmology prints can be downloaded
as an even bigger file.

Final sizes on all of this is about 8"x10". The edition of books (two volumes, 4 inches square) has been fully typeset, and is almost ready for printing.

in the studio

Summer studio projects: started with a commission for a book on local paste paper makers, then got a little out of hand. By the time the better part of an encyclopedia was sacrificed to the cause (not to mention a healthy portion of an appropriated ledger), it wasn't just a contribution to a portfolio of prints.

Artist's book specs:
-- texts : Beyond | How to do the impossible
-- (set A) : matted 8"x10" distressed Encyclopedia pages, with text printed onto onion skin paper (thank you, Warwick Press). Total set probably equals five prints and five pages of text.
-- (set B) : two volume set of 4" square books. Constructed using Timothy Ely's drum-leaf method, which allows full page spreads to be displayed, with no loss to the gutter or to sewing, and no need to worry about the verso of the page (basically, a Japanese binding, inside out). Alternating pages of prints with a page of text, in a 3.5" square. Maybe fifteen to twenty in total, or until paper or patience runs thin. Text printed onto off-white paper-vellum (translucent and crinkly).

What there is now: lots of prints. A basic design layout. Many, many paper samples for printing the text, following three months of looking for paper. Several marked-up edited copies of the texts (thanks GofR!).

What needs to happen: the texts need to be reconciled with one another, and imported into a page layout. A font needs to be determined (keening towards Bodoni). Oh, and they need to be constructed.


Does it need to be mentioned? The pastepapers are constructed using:
1969 Encyclopedia Britannica, volume C
an old ledger
very, very strong tea for pre-staining the papers
lots-o-paste
mica powder
black sumi ink
turquoise, brown, and burnt umber Windsor and Newton drawing inks
there's something blue in there somewhere
crystal salt

They were inspired by mildew and mold. It's been a rainy summer.

convocation

We had gathered there, all together, even though the weather was no longer warm and the sun refused to break through the clouds. I huddled in my yellow raincoat with the brass clasps and the matching boots, watched big brothers of all of us walk proudly by in pressed wool suits, wondered if we would have hot cocoa when everything was over for the day or if hot cocoa was too special, and if this wasn't that special an occasion.

It felt like a special occasion. We had gotten up early early early, when the air was still cold and damp and before the sun appeared through the nursery window, tracing outlines around the curtains. The moment of awakening, of entering the cold, dark house, having a hurried boiled egg for breakfast, then being wrapped in my raincoat while Mama fussed with the picnic hamper and Papa checked his watch, checked his papers, checked his watch again. The rush out of the house to catch the early train, arriving at the station just as the day was really properly starting. There were already people waiting on the platform, men in dark suits with trimmed whiskers and the morning newspapers, a harried, resolute look on their faces. Some women with too many children, the children sleepy and fussy.

I knew not to be fussy; Mama had explained it all to me the day before, how we would wake up so very early and travel on the train with Papa, how we were going to visit my big brother and we might not see him again for a long time. I wondered why not, why we were traveling all three of us when it was always big brother who would take the train home on vacations and holidays, where we would play in the lawns beside the house or on cold days in front of the fire place, games of cards or story games or sometimes catch or hide and seek. But before I could ask why  or how things were different Mama had already left my room and was off doing something else, something very important, and I had never been able to ask.

It was not at all a nice day for being out, and my yellow raincoat caused a line of water to form at the hem of the coat, where the raindrops all gathered together and dropped onto my clothes. My rain boots weren't the right size, they had been too big the summer before and even though they should now have been just right because I hadn't grown, not really, the boots never were just right, they went from being too big to being too small and crowding all of my toes together.

Papa had only been home for a few days, three days, he had been somewhere in the East, Mama had said, working, and when he came home it would be Christmas and everyone would light candles and big brother and my matching aunts and my cousins would all visit. But it wasn't Christmas, Christmas was still a long time away, and even though I was happy to have Papa home, he didn't seem like Papa, he had a wrinkled forehead and would forget the stories he was telling me right in the middle and when I would ask what happened next he would shake his head and look at me like I was someone he had never seen before, and finish the story the wrong way, with a different story, not with the right ending at all.

The train didn't have the heaters turned on, and we three gathered, Papa facing backwards, me near the window, where the air whistled through the crack where the window didn't close and I couldn't talk to any of the people on the train, I could only look out the window at all the houses that weren't awake yet. We finally arrived where big brother was at lunch time, or it felt like lunch time, a boiled egg before the sun rises isn't any type of breakfast. I wanted toasted cheese and warm milk and a big bowl of noodle soup, but Mama had brought her picnic basket.

There were lots of other families there, wearing macintoshes and carrying umbrellas and picnics of their own, even though we all would have been happier inside. No one looked like they were having a nice time, even big brother wasn't excited to see us at the train station when we arrived. I wanted to ask him about the train, about how they worked and where they went, because big brother was going to be an engineer, and build engines for all sorts of things, and he would explain it to me, since Papa never cared about those types of things, and all of Papa's stories were messed up, anyway. But even when we spread out our wool blanket, the big grey one with the blue and red stripes, and were all going to sit together, I couldn't ask big brother about the trains, for he and Papa went off just the two of them, leaving me with Mama.

Mama sat on the blanket, unwrapped a sandwich for me, and wouldn't answer any of my questions, just watched through the rain towards the pond; she seemed to be looking for someone, even though she wasn't watching the direction that Papa and big brother had gone. Lots of people walked past, some with picnics of their own, all with raincoats. Some nodded towards us, some barely looked at us. A few women stopped to talk to Mama, but either they talked too quietly or they had a special code language that only grown-ups speak, because nothing they said made sense. None of the men spoke to Mama, even though she seemed to recognize some of them, for they waved or bowed in our direction without coming nearby. There were not really any other children, and I did not know if children were not supposed to be here and I was breaking a rule or if none of these people had children or if the rain was too much for them all. Some families had older children, children who dressed almost like their parents and looked like they were in school like big brother, but there were no children my age that I could talk to or make friends with.

After eating my sandwich I asked if I could go exploring; Mama didn't hear me the first time I asked, and when I asked again, she said I could only go as far as the big oak tree, and that I mustn't bother anybody. There wasn't anyone to bother; all of the grown-ups were talking to each other and all of the children were pretending to be grown-ups and not talking or telling stories or playing games, but the big oak tree looked like it had been struck by lightening a long time ago and that it had been alive longer than everyone here, and sometimes oak trees have stories to tell. Sometimes oak trees are full of families of gnomes or flying squirrels. Sometimes oak trees have wooden doors in them with brass doorknobs. I didn't think Mama remembered any of these things, since it had been so long since she was a child and most grown-ups think that oak trees are just like pieces of furniture, not like people or entire towns, but I wanted to go exploring and didn't remind her of any of this.

More and more people had been arriving, and because I had to stay out of their way, it took me a long time to get to the oak tree, with my too tight boots and the damp places on my clothes where the rain coat dripped. When I finally reached the tree, Mama was still looking towards the pond, and neither Papa nor big brother had returned to the striped blanket and picnic hamper. The rain started coming down harder and harder, causing everyone to put up their umbrellas, but no one went way, or went inside. They were all waiting for something, something I didn't know if was exciting or scary or good or bad, and I moved closer to the tree to stay out of the rain.

There was a man under the tree, a funny little man not very much taller than I was, wearing a green striped jacket and shiny gold boots, and I didn't remember seeing the man as I had been walking towards the tree, trying not to run into any of the grown-ups. Maybe I had been looking in the wrong direction. He didn't say anything to me at first, just smiled a funny little smile and took out a yo-yo and began to do tricks with it. I could do a few yo-yo tricks, too, that my brother had taught me, and so then I showed them to the funny little man. Soon a woman joined us, and even though she was also a grown-up she also wasn't any taller than me or the little man, she had grey hair all tied up in a bun, and came up to us out of breath. We had to be somewhere else, we were expected, we were late, and even though I knew I had promised to stay by the old oak tree, the little woman was pulling me by the hand, seemed to expect me to know to come with them. So I did, they were the only grown-ups who seemed to see me, and I knew how to find my way back to the grey blanket, there on that rainy day.

---

listening to Johnny Cash and the rain rain rain

returning to the story

Police line: do not cross. Walk | Don't Walk. No trespassing. Barbed wire, chain link, padlock, bicycle lock.

Lost key, wrong address, mistranscription of a phone number.

A map for the wrong township, a missing sign post, lost luggage, dead battery.

There are so many ways that the trip can be derailed, that admittance can be barred, that itineraries can go off plan, that, in the end, it is a miracle that we ever end up anywhere at all, for all the detours along the way. The detour down the old state highway, past the forgotten cemetery and the site where an elm once stood where a treaty was signed, even though no one is quite sure who signed the treaty and which side they were on and what all the fuss was about, and even the old elm has been a cultural memory for far longer than the lifespan of anyone who would have known it as a tree, here in the fields that are now new growth forest. The detour through a one-time military base, chain link intact, Property Of signs prominent, grass growing in abundance where once was asphalt so groomed and smooth that uniforms reflected from the crisp black surface on clear days.

There is the detour that brought me here, for this was never my destination, this was not even a stop on my journey, did not so much as appear on my map, yet here I am in spite of myself, held in place by winds and roads that permit no exit, but always return me back to where I am. The ice melted and the rivers ran high and the bridges consolidated traffic to one or two streams of movement; I was packed and on the road like everyone else, had no reason not to follow the path so marked by the rushing waters and the opened roads.

Things were just as expected for the first weeks of the exodus, the roads took me through landscapes that resembled my homeland, travelers began recognizing fellow migrants, small barter systems established for food, water, clean socks, where the gold standard was reliable information and gossip was pyrite, there to trip up the ignorant and gullible. Soon enough a vetting system arose to evaluate the information, based on the trustworthiness of the teller, but in truth we could only go on instinct, heavily influenced by what we wanted to believe. I traveled light, brought only what I thought essential, left behind the spy glasses and compasses and sea charts of my childhood, brought a pencil, a star chart, a copper pan, a dowsing rod. Left at what once was my home were all the memories of childhood and ambitions of adulthood, distilled into the fog that was overtaking the land.

Others traveled by car, by horse; the unfortunate traveled by foot; those who had boats strong enough to fight the rising waters navigated up and downstream into new lands. For a time trains were running, old freight cargo lines recommissioned to move people away as quickly as possible, families trying to remain together among the commotion and confusion. No one knew exactly who was running the trains, what their actual destinations were, but we knew that away was safer than staying, and all options were valid. I did not have the funds for the trains, and did not have a car to abandon once petrol supplies ran out. They were left by the roadside in the thousands, filled with the valuables of departing families, impossible to refill once fuel ran dry, looted after the families were forced to travel by foot after a day or two driving. Instead, I loaded my bicycle, took only what would survive exposure to the elements, trusted in the mechanics of the road, and journeyed away by my own powers.

Those first days there were no options for routes, the waters had arrived so quickly that we could only stay on high ground, and once a safe path was established between two destinations, very few ventured into unknown byways: the chances that the road would end abruptly by the sea were too great, the risk of dying from exposure or at the hands of vagrants too real. My bicycle began to pass the carcasses of cars on the third day; by the end of the first week bicycles became such a valued commodity that those of us navigating our way on them began to coalesce into groups for self protection.

After ten days of traveling, we started to question where we were going, food became more scarce, the countryside ravished for edibles, although water -- water still on all sides, this narrow land bridge leading away and hopefully to better lands. The close of the second week saw the first real option: enough dry land for a fork in the road, an emergency shelter with rice and basic medical supplies. There were tales of gangs of bicycle thieves operating at the supply station, warnings of the dangers of straying too far from the protected zone. We had to continue onward, could not use this outpost as a destination, as new refugees were arriving hourly.

One of the paths stayed near the rail lines; hobos would hop onto the cars, ride until they were ejected, repeat the process on the next train, bruised, sprained, but spirits intact. The other path was used by government supply trucks, to supplement the helicopter airlifts, and as to whether the freight trains or the government was less menacing was a coin toss to decide. This was when I began navigating the forgotten, overgrown roads, which criss-crossed between the two main routes, veered unpredictably towards the water in first one direction, then another. The information was that these paths were patrolled by vandals and vigilantes and men who knew neither law nor respect for their fellow man, but I trusted the ability to stay safe in forgotten roads better than the constant danger of the crowds in the open.

These roads were part of the stories my grandfather had told, when he was teaching me how to navigate by Orion and the big dipper so many years ago. He would tell of the marsh lights and the wood nymphs and the forgotten women who wandered the old roads after their fickle lovers had abandoned them, stories of the roads becoming pathways to other times and other places on the nights of the full moon. His stories were peopled by gallant men on horseback speaking in forgotten languages on quests no one could remember, by tricksters and shape shifters and goblins and sometimes by people who told the truth, only the truth that had not yet happened. My grandfather told of the elm tree that had stood at the cross roads in his grandfather's time, and how his grandfather's grandfather knew a story about the treaty that was signed at that very location, that sealed the fate of nations.

The old roads meandered, ended abruptly where storms or growth altered the landscape, offered hints of buildings, farms, barns, hotels, shopping malls, that had once filled this forgotten land with people. I had been cycling for over a month since leaving the emergency aid station, in that time carefully skirting shadows that held the shapes of other evacuees, and began to notice the tides of the rising water shifting with the approach of the full moon, began to wonder if that part of my grandfather's stories was fable or rooted in fact, and then it happened.

I was on an old county road which led between the concrete husks of hotels and grocery stores, overtaken by moss, kudzu, sugar maples, pine trees, when the road became smooth, the forest receded, clipped shrubs and maintained lawns alternated with planted fields and signs of caretaking. The landscape was inconsistent, ploughed fields in what were the frames of parking lots, kudzu trained to grow in profusion and create gazebos, even entire structures repurposed from the original architectural intentions. It was irregular enough that I could not tell if it was an outpost from civilization, developing along, isolated along byways that officially no longer existed, or if it was the trick of the full moon, opening pathways into times that once were or were still to come.

It didn't matter, though; for when the moon began to wane once again, I had already partaken of their food, drunken their water, and I could no more continue on my exodus than the kudzu could uproot and move on. It didn't bother me, not too much, having been traveling down marked and unmarked roads for over six weeks, past gangs of dubious intent and government signs even more questionable. I was willing to place my fate in the outcome of my grandfather's fable, and to stay here, in the unmarked town on the unmarked road, driven by a detour to place my faith in the powers of story.

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reading
decomposed Britannica pages

weather
we were left with two bushels of apples and twenty pounds of peaches, our haul for the season