April
The Forest
“This is a beautiful spot,” the woman says. “I’ll bet that we’re the first people to camp here since the Indians.”
The man answers, “That’s because inferior people know the signs are for them.”
The woman smiles as she looks at the NO CAMPING sign. Then she looks around nervously, feeling a little guilty.
Above, minute patches of the cloudless blue are seen above the canopy of broadleaved madronas, maples, bays, and tanoak trees. Falcons and eagles soar above the green floor, catching occasional glimpses of the animal life below the tree line. Their reign over the woodlands runs from the two hundred foot Douglas firs of the northern slopes to the gigantic redwoods far south, and all the magnificent forest to the Pacific Ocean.
Beneath the ponderosa and western white pines, flourish the spruce and cedar trees. Deer families, wild sheep, goats, and pigs share the forest floor with badgers, weasels, beetles, and ants. Wild dogs roam in packs. Coyotes and bobcats seek the plentiful prey, wary of the larger predators. Bears and cougars lord over the vast expanse of natural life and beauty.
As the fawn suckles at his mother’s teat, he watches the red breast of the robins and the red wings of the blackbirds. The blue-gray gnatcatcher is eating on the wing as are the magpies, wrens, and ravens. The harmonious symphony, music to eat by, is supplied by warblers, chickadees, and nightingales. The fawn is happy with the delights of his home, as the flying squirrels jump from tree to tree in their travels.
Throughout the forest, the earth floor is strewn with detritus. In the heat of the early summer, leaves drift down to the ground as birds snip thin twigs to add to their nests. The huge trees don’t mind. They stand as sentinels to the ages. Larger, taller, wider, they spread their leafy arms out in a loving embrace to the animals harbored among their trunks and branches.
Snakes slither through the nettles and bits of grass and other foliage as rodents, worms, tree toads, and insects find other places to be.
As a deer family stops for a drink of water in a mountain pool, the doe watches the black tail of a jackrabbit disappear into a dense glut of vegetation. In the reflecting pool, she sees the red tail of a fox disappear around the same vegetation. She stands still for a moment and watches a muskrat leave the water near a rock where a stark contrast of black and white confirms that a skunk is busy supping on an egg.
The deer leave the pool and again enter the deeper woods, rich with leeches and parasitic insects. Leaves rain down from a tree that’s being devoured by mistletoe and dodder. As they find a haven for the night, insects, ticks, and moths feast on the large quantity of wildlife scampering about.
The owls, shrews, minks and other nocturnal animals are still sleeping. The forest will quiet down a lot before they begin their livelihood. The world is as it should be, wonderfully made by the Creator, the way that it was prepared for man.
“Like Adam and Eve,” they say. The man and woman lay naked in the grass to make love while the baby sleeps.
The child wakes and sees his sleeping parents. He pilfers the cigarette lighter. Scrambling away, he tumbles down the side of the hill and discovers that he’s unharmed. His too loose diaper is held up by his oversized toddler pants. Sitting quietly, the child takes the cigarette lighter and tries to make the flame come out of the lighter like his dad does before he and his mother smoke the tightly rolled joints.
Finally, it catches. He touches it to a mound of dying leaves and drops it as he hears, “There you are, Kevin.”
The boy looks up at his father. The man scoops the child up, admonishing him.
The picnic cleared and packed up, the car engine starts just as a gentle breeze fans the smoldering leaves. The red glow of the small fire matches the bright red sunset that the family enjoys. The man winks at his wife as they pass the sign that says no parking, picnicking, or camping, and finds the road that leads them out of the pristine, almost virgin forest, that will soon die horribly, along with its wealth of creature life.
March
Pot Luck
Patsy had a great turnout for her first potluck supper. The school principal and most of the teachers showed up as well as members of the PTO. Even a few parents that she talked to in the mornings at drop off. Her neighbors were drifting in through the side yard and made themselves comfortable under the ligustrum trees. Southerners were certainly friendly and welcoming. She was glad that she’d bought those large fancy pots. Her Dutch oven wouldn’t have been big enough.
Her prowess as a good cook must have been televised, she thought, as she looked at all the people. She was a little disappointed that most people brought beer instead of food and hoped there would be enough to eat. Her husband Nick suggested going to a drive-thru for fried chicken because nobody brought meat, only Tupperware with canned veggies. Patsy insisted there was enough meat in the chili and told him to mingle.
From her kitchen window, Patsy noticed who the extroverts were as they moved around the yard, meeting new people. As several of the school people met Nick, they flushed with excitement. She’d forgotten they’d never met her handsome husband.
Finally ready, she called, “Nick, help me with the big pots. They’re so pretty. Odd that there’s no handles.”
He looked at the love of his life. She’d worked so hard to have her potluck be a success in this lovely community. He was perplexed. Should he mention what he’d learned or just carry the heavy pots to the big table? Nick put them on a cart and wheeled them outside.
“Soups on,” Patsy said. She used a long handle spoon to ladle food from the pots. Moving away from the cart, she began eating. Best tasting chili, she’d ever had.
People lined up with their plates and filled them with vegetables that tasted like can, but no one ate from the big pretty pots.
“Dig in,” she said. “This is good stuff.”
“Those pots sure are pretty,” one of the teachers said. “Where did you find them?”
“Since we’re new here, I want to support the community. I got them from that used store, Pots and Pans. They were setting outside under one of those fancy chairs.”
“Did you go in the store at all?”
“No, paid cash to the owner. He tried to sell me a chair with a hole in the seat.”
The evening was a success. As Nick helped Patsy clean up, he emptied the still full pots in the garbage then packed them in a box in the shed with the planters. As soon as his wife forgot them, he’d put the chamber pots in the garbage.