Come, let’s go for a walk in the timber.

We’ll collect rose hips for hot tea later this evening when the wind begins to sweep up the valley and the chill deepens.

I’ve got a similar line drawing,

in dark, permanent ink, directly over my heart.

Forever North.

Be careful of where you step. Tread lightly. We’re under the surveillance of populus tremula.

Farley and RW will harvest our dinner. That’s a beautiful, organic and wild ruffed grouse the bird dog has brought to our hands. By the end of the day, he’ll have helped us find three more.

Splendid plumage, indeed.

I’ll spend a little bit of time rooting through the leaves, that’s where I find the best ideas. You should look too, there are handfuls of interesting detritus, bugs and bones down there beneath a thin shroud of autumn. Today I’ll take home a fascinating little gall, two small bones and a pocket full of rose hips. Who knows what you’ve found, but your pockets are bulging and your hands are full.

We’ll grasp onto handfuls of the last yellow. The wild roses like to hang on to their colors until the bitter icy end. It’s a fortitude they come by honestly and naturally. They’re afraid we’ll forget the sweetness of their pale pink blooms forever should they fade to thin naked sticks laced with razor sharp prickles too soon. I won’t forget but they’ll still burst into a hurried pink in June, like a pretty rash on the hillsides.

We’ll delight in the oddness of nature; smooth shapes wrapped around sharp blades, the curvature of the the earth, the rotund nature of stumps on the forest floor and the ubiquitous, dark canopy of boreal forest blended with trembling aspen on the sides of the mountains.

The creative pulse beneath our skin will swell and sing and our ideas will sprout in all directions.

And still we’ll walk further into the deep dark woods