Beneath the Cottonwood 2
~thebogboys
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##BENEATH THE COTTONWOOD 2

> Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe
air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism
vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all;
the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part
or particle of God.

R.W. Emerson exposed a tender core of my being with these words.
All of the greatest walks in my life were either in total solitude,
or they were in the company of those I felt enough trust towards to
be able to become that eye-ball with, and in my life I've only ever
accompanied one man with such a perspective. It is perhaps one of
the rarest and yet most valuable insights to be able to shed one's
ego and to disappear into the environment one occupies. It is the
sensation of becoming a dumb animal again, to put down language,
and society, and rules of engagement; it is to take out the
middleman of process that creates a barrier between the soul (if
such a thing exists) and reality. We all have biases, and most of
us are not blessed enough to be aware of them, and thus they mutely
meddle and influence our thoughts, emotions, desires; it is as if
we are all mere puppets, slaves to our so-called "natures" (the
culmination of experience and genetics that creates the civil man)
and incapable of connecting with the heart of our true NATURE (the
animalistic core of our being).

I made it to camp. After setting up my hammock beneath two shingle
oaks, I assess my surroundings. A massive pile of dead honeysuckle
bushes sits to the east of my hammock, created by my friend and I
over several visits to this land. We had to fight for every foot of
walkable earth that stretches around me. A drunken path ambles
north to the waterline, then cuts east to a destination I had set
when I first laid eyes upon this then-future campsite. Countless
plants greet me here, neighbors and close friends, fellow beings in
their own right. Horse-gentian, Allegheny blackberry, Canada
clearweed, swamp and multiflora rose, germander, pokeweed. The
great woody plants, too, join in the festivities: oaks and maples,
sassafras, hickories, ashes all fill in the space above me, and
their bark is also colored in with the foliage of the graceful
greenbriers and carrionflowers, the poison ivies and the
virgincreepers.

I remove my boots and my socks. I place my bare soles tenderly upon
the earth. The ground is temperate in the cool early-fall air. The
sand is mildly damp from the water table seeping up. The floor of
that lazy northerly path is carpeted in dewberry, almost too thick
to see the sandy bottom. The dewberry itself is a valuable
pioneering species in this forest, quickly overtaking the bare
earth exposed by our excavation of the invasive honeysuckle,
protecting the soil from rapid erosion and providing a place for
successional species to germinate over the coming years. When one
looks at dewberry canes up close, the tiny, filamenterous brambles
can be seen and felt with the fingers, and yet when the plants grow
in abundance, the feet do not feel these needles. It is as if the
forest is thanking me for my service. I look westward and see a
tall white oak, standing guard over the perimeter of the wetland,
and I make plans to clear a path to it.

=> https://midnight.pub/posts/2358 Part 1
=> https://midnight.pub/posts/2368 Part 3

-=-.o._.o.-=-‾-=-.o._.o.-=-
evan@thebogboys.space