Lost Forty
"If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you'll come to understand that you're connected with everything."
Alan Watts
The Lost Forty is one of the few remaining old-growth forests in the country. A surveying error in 1882 marked this area in northern Minnesota as wetland instead of harvestable woodland or workable farmland. The forest is made up of mostly white pines and red pines that are estimated to be 300-400 years old. They will live up to about 500 years (if we let them).
We're finding out that trees speak to each other through giant fungal networks - and the older the forest, the stronger the network. It's possible that, when I touch the bark of one tree, it is sending signals to the trees around it and eventually to the whole forest: Human. Red alert.
Maybe we only see magic where we decide to see magic ... but ... wandering through this forest, completely alone except for the big old trees, the red squirrels, and the white-tailed deer ... in the early morning ... in the rain ... with the changing leaves all around ... was pure magic.
Get Behind the Mule
Three things I'm working on:
#1 ALL OF THIS:
Build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don’t make compromises, don’t worry about making a bunch of money or being successful — be concerned with doing good work and make the right choices and protect your work. And if you build a good name, eventually, that name will be its own currency.
- Patti Smith
#2 DO WHAT YOU SAY YOU WILL DO
Our old CMO said he had "DO WHAT YOU SAY YOU WILL DO" painted on his wall at home. It was his family's motto. Or something. I can't remember the specifics. Anyway, it's eternally difficult albeit solid advice.
#3 GET BEHIND THE MULE
That Other Thing
“And I would tell him, so full of twentysomething wisdom, that life is almost never about choosing between one thing you really want and another thing you don't want at all. If you're lucky, and healthy, and live in a country where you have enough to eat and no fear that you're going to get shot when you walk out your door, life is an endless series of choosing between two things you want almost equally. And you have to evaluate and determine which awesome thing you want infinitesimally more, and then give up that other awesome thing you want almost exactly as much. You have to trade awesome for awesome. Everyone I knew, no matter what they chose, was at least a little in mourning for that other thing.”
Kristin Newman, What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding
Orchestra, she says
But she seems to know that positive energy has a habit of finding its way out into the wider world. One day, after we have toured the temple, she leads me down to a small bridge that crosses over a creek. We stand on the bridge and she touches her hand to her ear. She wants me to listen. So we listen: She and I simply stand there by the water for a couple of minutes, listening to the sound of the current. Then she smiles — it really is like a ray of light, this smile — and points to the creek and utters a single word in English, as she looks into my eyes.
‘‘Orchestra,’’ she says.