June 27, 2019

Another woodchuck moved in. I thought it was the same one, but the exterminator assured me that the first one “will not come back from where I put him.” Five years with no such visitor, then two in a week

Jack took me to see Presiding Bishop Curry at Trinity last night. Packed house, the people you’d expect, the message you’d expect, though sometimes it’s good to hear it again.  How to fight evil in the world? The lesson of fighting evil with love is hard to hear, going as it does against the grain. Should evil not be stamped out? Parried wherever it shows its head? I hear Jesus saying, “Can you do that?” The evidence of recent years is, “clearly not.” Capella in the sky afterward. Ran into Richmond with his buck-in-the-forest eyes.

After coffee at High 5 I drove to the Parkway, as I have not done for years, pulled over at Sleep Gap, and hiked. The woods embraced me. I felt like a dry plain whose runnels and ditches ran with moisture again, absorbing, swelling. The wood spirits recognized me, or perhaps do not differentiate among humans, and flow into all who open the gates.  I stopped and looked into the depths of the forest. I stopped and listened. I stopped and peered down at the pathside emerald and ochre jungles. Tried naming the names of the thousand. Encountered a jogger whose beautiful white body was spoiled with tattoos, an old man and his well-behaved husky. A pileated drummed high in the trees. Where we walk is essentially a desert, at the top of a ridge, no water, no food, the rich valley and creekbed lying below. But it is right for contemplation. The time I spent hiking was given over to painting long ago. Maybe time to readjust.