Almost Home

On the final few days of the vacation to Oregon, and feeling a bit refreshed and almost ready to get back to work ~ ha! ~ loaded with new ideas and practices. While here I wondered why I never sought a career in botany, as the plant life here is lush and green, varied and abundant, and it may partly be because I had, all my life, convinced myself I was interested in geology. Hill formations, layers of rock and dirt that looked like the sand art from a carnival, the why and how of it all, and this goes all the way back to traveling as a child through landscapes in the southwest that were vividly colored and chaotic in shape. I could SEE the formations, the undulations of color and shape because there was so little plant life to hinder the view. I distinctly remember the first time I saw a saguaro cactus and thinking, 'That guy is lonely', personifying the foremost cactus as if he were a general in an army scattered across an orange desert, lost, trying to hitch a ride somewhere else.

Plants always had my heart. From puttering around in fields of datura and wild grasses to tasting green almonds on a dare, shirtless and sunburned and always hungry for more of everything. Love, food, sunlight, the sounds of wind through the leaves, and the mushy squish of fat mulberries between toes, turning them purple and dusty; more swings on the tire, more puppy breath and dust motes, kitties licking my fingers with scratchy tongues, crowns of peach leaves, and glasses of cold water after a hot day of pretend. 

Study is on the agenda when I return home, starting with that enormous book of resins.