From a longer poem ...
Her Royal Highness:
“All this new stuff they call rock ’n’ roll, why, I’ve been playing that for years now…"
The Bravery, Even, Of the Lions
There is that great proverb—that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. That did not come to me until much later. Once I realized that, I had to be a writer. I had to be that historian. It’s not one man’s job. It’s not one person’s job. But it is something we have to do, so that the story of the hunt will also reflect the agony, the travail—the bravery, even, of the lions.
Chinua Achebe
The Paris Review, 1994
Anti Plan
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.
