Cookies, tea, and steel ;-9

 A shitty day at work. An extremely shitty day at work. One of these days when you start to believe what your "fellow humans" tell you that you are. So, what to do? Off with me to the bus that´s bound for the countryside, bound for the woods. Walking through the green, feeling the earth underneath my feet, my disgust was immediately replaced by a sense of puzzlement. What the f*** do we think we are up to? What is it that is truly better than nature? Why do we still assume we are the crown of creation? Everything was like it always were, but there, in the ground, I immediately found this heart-shaped piece of bloomery steel that had waited there for hundreds of years, weathered and worn by the soil, rusted, pitted and torn. It told a tale to me.

 It was sometimes raining, sometimes the sun came out... but in the halls of the forest it mattered little. There was a serenity again under the stems and trunks of trees, that simply soothed my soul. Then it is that thought subsides; then it is my soul is soothed.

Vibrant was the light that fell through leaves still green; still it is summer, but all too soon it will all be gone. The season is rising in the heart of the soul. Not the season we mark in a calendar, a season well marked out and calculated, but something deeper and wilder than thought, something that is rising now with the mist, silently, and somewhat eerily. It is autumn, and it flourishes and blooms in the mycel of mushrooms and the reddening of leaves.

 It prospers in a quality of light and a musky scent...

 It moves like the ripples in a root; like the grain in the wood. Damascus steel knows it; it sings of autumn.

 Silence; solitude...

There it is I grow. There it is I must not grow.

 ...

 Over old hills the clouds drove by like flocks of wicked dragons; wind was singing loudly in the treetops.

 And layer upon layer of the world of man was peeled off of my soul revealing that, what I really am and always will be.

 Not the mushroom, rotting and pitted...

 Not even the path through the woods.

 But all and everything.

 More profanely spoken, I got myself some ´shrooms for stew.

 And then, by an old cabin, I sat down and had a cuppa tea and a coconut cookie. It was a feast all for myself, in the silence and the solitude of my beloved woods, cradled by the song of the wind and the water.

 Sometimes I find it hard to tell, and feel like I would not care to bother anymore; the wind has no words, but tells every secret there is. The water murmurs in the stream and sings all the songs one could dream up. Why then should I still talk to humans? Even friends and lovers cannot understand me. Noone can, but still I keep talking gibberish that does not fill the bill, does not hit the mark, as one might want to say - but still I keep talking. I sometimes ask myself if this is depression... but on the other hand, I sleep most sound and well, and I do not feel sad apart from the usual sadness everyone has. As long as I am in the woods, I am even happy as one can possibly be. It is not that, it is something else. It is at the same time far more complicated and far more simple than we humans think. Our human world is a laughing matter for it. We are definitely not the crown of creation, we are weird, a shaved ape playing at being god. But I do not want to evangelize anyone. I would not bother. No human being, including myself, is worth a fuss.  

 For words like value and worth are just that: Words. It is not what there really is. There is a language behind any language, a language without words. The trees know it, the sun, the wind, the rain. The squirrell, the hare, the fox and the wolf. All of them still know it.

 I followed the whispers through the thicket, along trails seldom trodden....

 Over hill and dale I walked.

 And found some spring steel, lying ancient and forgotten in the soil.

Yeah, it is junk lying in the forest, but to me it conveys meaning. Sometimes, when I read "Game of Thrones" and the author talks about "valyrian steel" or "dragon glass" someone finds in the woods I am absolutely laughing my head off. For things like these happen to me in actual. The average reader of this novel would not even be able to recognize it. It´s junk to them. It does not convey meaning to them. They buy pink fluffy unicorns and GoT merchandise in order to compensate for their loss; the loss of magic and meaning and a connection to the world. But without the loss of words you cannot feel the magic... without magic, steel or even tea and cookies in the woods will not convey meaning to anyone.

Without meaning, our world will die.

A recent ride... much needed again...

 Sometimes it is outright disturbing... there´s so much going on and on, and work to do in a shitty job and messy voluntary work and stuff and a bike that keeps constantly falling apart that I just seem to be unable to get a regular ride in. But the other day I had fixed the old steed so that it worked quite sweetly and I rode to work and back on a detour.

 And as always, the soothing effect of the forest happened in an instant. That moment I left the road and set my tires in the dirt. That moment when the noise and ruckus subsides. That moment, when the singing of the songbirds and the croaking of crow and raven, and the eerie, faraway cry of the buzzard fills the air... That moment when all your fears of foul weather and the petty sorrows that ride high upon our backs simply dissolve into nothing. That moment when you realize that life is all the more complicated and all the more simple than you could ever know, and that it´s simply right that way, or rather, it is neither right or wrong, but simply is. That moment when you could laugh your head off when you look at yourself and all your little distractions that you deemed so important.

 That moment, when you look over darkening hills in not exactly nice weather, and you feel cozy despite the fact that you´re soaked through. And you sit on a stump, and you rode down a trail, and that is all that matters.

 Yes, I rode some gnarly trails through the thicket, over hill and dale, and it all passed as if in a frenzy.

 As if in a fancy, in a dream, I sat down in the underbrush, stashing my bike away, and just breathed for a while.

Then I got back on the trail and rode over the heath...

 To that oak that had welcomed me ever since I was a child and still offers me its serene hospitality...

 I sat down there and had a flask of tea and played around a bit with my new #Iämpedahler waldmetz.

 ...in my true living room...

What more do I need? Time is running short for man. I´d rather spend it with things that matter, at least for me...

Twilight treasures

 

 

After work again, and off I was to hitch the bus and drive out. Out into the rolling hills. Out into the twilight of the forest, away from the frantic ratrace and the heat of summer. Into another form of existence...

 

 As the adder sheds its skin, with a look back from the cool shadows, a look with a smile.

 Into a hall where wooden pillars bear a sky of green.

 Twilight is where my name was born, twilight reigns where few men tread, and twilight is the balm that soothes my soul.

 From the deep, deep, dark, rich soil there sprouts a crystal, quartz unfolds its blossoms over the aeons, growing steadily, stealthily in the dark, through veins of rock and subtle life that is thus alien to life it can´t be called.

 Under root and gnarled wood and rock-hard oaken portal it sprouts into the world.

 Beside the trail of deer and mouflon, of hare and fox and snake and lizard, where the tiny mouse fight their fights and survive their adventures, under a sky pierced with the song of the hunting buzzard...

 ...the gold of fae and treasures of the dirt...

 ...connect to each other like a link to link of an iron chain. And as rune to rune the spell of twilight sings into my soul...

 I see unfolded secrets from the deep, I feel unfolded from my debth myself.

 And thus I grow, grow like the oak, the mighty keeper of the gates...

 And thus I fall, like death in life and life in death.

 And so I walked in enchantment of this runic song, walked the hours away until I reached the shed in the woods  where I often sit and sip my tea and contemplate.

And smiled into my wooden cup of forest.

After work bimble through the woods

 My work is constantly stressing me out, and thusly I am always grateful for the ability to just hitch the bus afterwards and just disappear into the thicket. The woods keep me sane, even if a passers- by would maybe not exactly agree;-). I just took my pack, and, taking off the shirt and the tie, taking off my shoes to feel the earth, I ventured into a valley that has a rare quality: It is a deep crevice in the ground, crossed by few hiking paths, and silent and solitary. Seldom do I meet Humans there, and if this is the case, those few are of a better quality. It is a realm where the fairy tales still thrive and prosper apart from the mayhem that is our so - called everyday life.

 The woods are full of roe and sika deer, wild rams, wild pigs, owls, buzzards, of hare and fox and predators. Their tracks are everywhere, and I tread carefully and respectfully when I cross them.

 Those are the halls most beloved to my heart, better than a king´s palace are the pillars of the trees, vibrant with bird songs and the breeze in the soft treetops.

 Over wood and stone and yonder hill I tread and listen to the maagical song of the water.

 Got resin? I took some home for concoctions, for treating wood and illness alike.

 Across the runes written by the tracks of deer and ram, of hare and fox, that tell wild and wayward stories of the hunt and the feast.

 The sun was shining, and in the distance I heard some rustling noises, and, carefully not to make too much noise myself, I threaded along the creek.

Under those green, green leaves I walked, breathing the balsamic air.

 Everywhere where the unmistakable signs of wildlife.

 Everywhere there were the sounds of a life alien  to modern man, a life that is great enough for me to be a part of, a thread in a web weaved by  a gentle hand that needs no names and no agnition, but mere existence.

 Into the hazel grove I went...

 ...drew out a circle, and had a cuppa woods;-).

 Yummy...

 All too soon the hours had passed.

 Across paths seldom trodden that felt like I trod the stairs of time I went back into the world.

And at the frontier... where the veil is thinner...


colour.