QUEST IN THE WET.

On Wednesday, November 13, 2013, Martin Law <martin.rainbowmaker@gmail.com> wrote: 

Been a while since i walked in the woods, until recently. No need to prefix that with 'it's'. The word 'it',is a linguistic phantom, totally superfluous.

Show me the 'it', in, 'it is raining'. There isn't one. Nothing but rain. All afternoon.

There are no words for any of this. Which is why i needed some good photos to illustrate the words i haven't written yet. A short bus ride to the nearest woodland. I'm always glad to get off a bus.

Walk a winding trail along the river under tall oaks. The river swollen and swift, swirling in shallows. Brown leaves on the dark current.

Rain falling into rain.

I could stay content by the glowing fire, but i needed to walk away from infrastructure. The leaves are turning into antique harmonies and clustering in gutters and hollows.

So it's a quest in the wet. More than just a walk in a forest park. Crossing over dark, soaked wooden bridges. Footfalls on a forest path toward the big meadow, and beyond.

It's best to forget where you think you are, and mindful enough not to think about it. Walking at leisure moment by moment. There is only this moment and it's always here, with nowhere else to be.

The real wonder is, walking on the earth. While the planet spins a thousand miles per hour on it's axis. Orbits at sixty-seven thousand miles per hour round the sun. 4.883000 miles per hour round the galactic centre.

Even as i pause and stand in soft Munster rain, we are hurtling into uncharted space.

Here i branch off and hop a beech leaf bedded rivulet, wrinkled with concentric ripple droplets. Meander with stealth the mulch cushioned incline. With gripless shoes where brittle sticks crack.

Black tree trunks, wet and moss clad tower in tiers to the canopy above. Cascading in yellowing vivid sprays. Slender branches lightly shudder letting small drops fall.

Into the thicket on the summit of a rise, my intended destination, falls sheer down to oak gnarled gully below. Overhung with misty drizzle like a serene Sung Dynasty scroll.

Richness underfoot, and how to step without a twig crack ? Where rain drips down perpetual into moss, patters leaves and vivid fungal growth pristine and undisturbed. Pointilist patterns of soft sound in an even absence of birdsong.

Immersed without need to think, but look and listen in visible rain, embedded in organic weave of wild self seeding fertility in perpetuity. Ripe red scatterings, holly berries festive among laced moss tufts and detritus, each in its perfect place.

All this leaf fall is a beech brown carpet of ferment and mulch. Steadies my steps to squelch lest i slip descending. Go down sideways step by step crablike lacking better grips without grasping for rotted stumps that snap or crumble.

But got lots of shots, forty two in total. Lifetime of crap cameras and questing in vain.

Now, most all i click turns to gold and original vision sustains enhanced.

On a copper bronze strewn pitted path passing by a small wrinkling grey lake fringed with crusted pine. Outcrop islands overgrown by burgeoning birch and conifer saplings, thick auburn bracken strands and grass bowed down

colours enriched by rain.

A heron. Grey, erect and motionless, rainproof on a rock at the lake's edge. Just out of range of my zoom.

I just watch. Both silent, both aware in our own peculiar way.

But what an ancient glimpse. Grey heron in rain with lakeside pine. Primal. The Tao. There are no words for all this.

Till the wet evening darkens, and drifting mist turns distant peaks to grey phantoms.

Home to the hearth, to eat and dry by heat of fire.

Some days later, a neighbour remarked, "Twas shocking weather we had on Sunday."

"Mmm," i mused, "Well i enjoyed it."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Rainbowmaker~

Photoshoot:
          QUEST IN THE WET, martin law