Tortoise Forgets Its Shell

 Only the other day I was musing how snugly my rucksack now fit me. A decade of wearing it almost every day, in every weather condition, has caused it to assume the form of my back. Indeed, one might say that it is part of my new back. And so, this morning, upon reaching the little burn in the hills above Paisley and realising my back was only half there I was genuinely shocked. Shocked in the same way that a mother might be shocked at discovering the child she put in her car this morning was no longer in the car. I thought it impossible to leave a limb without noticing it. It was as if my left hand had fallen off and I hadn't noticed, or, I had noticed but only after several minutes. I suppose it confirms what I already knew, that I travel lightly and my rucksack is not as feel-able as a heavy one might be. And I was distracted by a walker in his fluourescent orange jumpsuit. Which is why I always say, when you're in the hills, respect the hills. You don't dive into a swimming pool fully clothed.

The Joy of Going Out Into the Rain

The joy of going out into the rain is not just knowing that there are no people about, no dog-walkers with their five metre nooses, no phone-starers with their five metre absences, no-one period. As a cyclist whose three main enemies are cars, dog-walkers, and phone-starers, this is bliss. Two out of three ain't bad. But that's not all. The joy of going out into the rain is also the misery of getting drenched and soaked and cold, so that the next time you go out and it's not raining...

Now, Forager: The Hunt For Gold October

Now, voyager, sail thou forth to seek and find.

Walt Whitman

Yep, it's that time of year again: the 'golden time' when leaves turn yellow, when the sun shines golden, and little magical mushrooms sprout forth from the belly of the cool breath'd Earth. Not all of these little magical mushrooms are magic though. Some of them are distinctly un-magic as in poisonous and lethal. Up here, in my secret field to the south of Glasgow, the fields are covered in all types of mushrooms from fly agaric to your common toadstool and inkcap. But it's the little liberty caps I'm after, and this golf course (with no golfers) is prime territory.

I pity people who do not know 'the hunt' and how to forage for food. It's a joyful thing to forage and get to know your health-giving territory. Yet, it's also hard, which is why people no longer do it, because it's much easier to pop into the Co-op with your big SUV and your even bigger belly. Joy however is borne on the back of hardship and the hunt/forage gives you that hardship through bodying forth into the land, braving the elements, and engaging your own locomotive and locating powers. (Moreover, I don't think the Co-op do magic mushrooms).  All this natural being confers not just a sense of wildness upon the creature (that has been hitherto over-domesticated to the point of poodle-hood) but a sense of overall Health and Wholeness. This health and wholeness is as much about the psyche as it is about the body, and so these mind-altering mushrooms offer to the mind what vitamins offer to the body. This is what you are after all: a 'body-mind-earth-system' who navigates the land and animates itself through galvanizing its own sensing body. Now, forager, go forth to seek and find...

The Dancing Rope

 

The Box

The box of course is Pandora's box from Greek mythology which wasn't Pandora's box at all but her husband's which she opened (think 'reading your lover's diary') in his absence thus releasing all manner of emotional and physical curses upon the Earth. Today, the 'box' takes many forms: smartphone, car, office, apartment, the room... but it could also be your toilet...

So, next time you go to the toilet, be careful, because Brad or indeed Kevin may be hiding in there.