I can see the forest, but how 'bout them trees 🌳

I've lately been having a lot of visceral memories.

And it's probably because I'm doing so much making, a solitary existence. Occasionally I have on a podcast or audiobook, sometimes music, but I often prefer silence. External silence, that is, my brain is rarely at ease.

My most easily accessible recollection of being a kid is all the time I spent in the woods. There's so much of my childhood that I can’t recall or I've just stuffed into the back of my sock drawer, but the details of the woods that surrounded my house are brilliant.

Everyday after school, I'd let my brother and myself into our house, I'd change into something comfy and worn and head out the door to the thick woods across the street from our house. Sometimes I'd have a plan to meet my neighbor, Kim, sometimes not. I'd occasionally have on shoes, but often not. We'd worn a path in that was obvious to us but would go unnoticed to anyone over four feet tall. The barbwire fence even had a permanent bend from so many little bodies squeezing through. I'd enter that fence portal around 3pm and wouldn't exit until sundown.

My first destination was always the Slanted Tree. The Slanted Tree was an oak that must have blown sideways at some point but then just continued to grow that way. I was a skilled tree climber but this one you only needed to straddle like a horse and scoot yourself forward a few inches at a time, to take care not to scrape all the skin off your inside thighs. I usually stopped when I got to a certain knob in the tree that was proceeded by a break in the incline. 

I could hang in that straight spot on the otherwise Slanted Tree for hours. Sometimes I'd just lean forward, let my tummy and cheek hug the tree and take a nap. If I had to pee, I'd just wiggle my shorts down, let my fanny hang over the side and let gravity do the rest.

The Slanted Tree also acted as one wall of a clearing in a small thicket that was our agreed upon clubhouse. Kim and I spent lots of time in there scheming our next ambush on the boys, our brothers, or if it was just me, I'd dig a hole, arrange pine needles just so, follow a ladybug, study a spider's web. Each of those tasks might take minutes or hours, I didn't know and didn't have a watch that would insist that I care. Sun as the enforcer, when the light started to dim so that I could only make out the edges of things, it was time to return to homework and chores sometimes, but more often to parents that hated the sight of each other. 

All that time spent in the woods was a magical time, yes, but what feels more real is how untethered yet genuine, safe and protected I felt. In this season of making I'm in right now, I'm feeling the same sensations. I am in the forest, so untethered from things that only matter outside of the forest, like purpose and goals and to-do lists. And I'm more than okay.

Every day feels the same now. I get up early and do the tasks I must do: make coffee, empty the dishwasher, make sure everyone has clean underwear, awaken the kids and get them on task for the day. Then, I take off my shoes and enter the forest. I put my hands on something real, often fabric or a needle and thread, but sometimes it's a book or a pen to paper. It will surprise me how many minutes will have ticked by when I finally look at my phone. Lately I haven't been able to count on my appetite to give me structure, I even forget to brush my teeth some mornings. Every task is filling me with sublime wonder. It's been hard to leave the woods when the Sun reminds me it's time to pick up a kid and start the nightly routine.

As good as it is right now, I have to reconcile the forest with the real need to engage in capitalism. I cherish this time and what I'm creating and everything I'm doing to remind you that I have beautiful things for sale feels disingenuous. If I could set up a stand amidst the poppies in my front yard, I would! I'd make a sign that would say, "Come! Try this on! Or let's just talk about beauty and craft and have you ever stared into the center of a poppy?"

Lately, I've been making these silk scrap earrings. I just added five pair to my Marketplace. They will evolve, get a little more scrappy as you wear them, tiny threads floating down to the ground from which they came. Can you think of anything more wonderful?

xoxo