Into The Forest

Friends say, "Where are you? You're not blogging. Are you okay?"

Yes. I am more than okay. After two weeks of struggle, I am slipping gently back into soft old skin. I am melting back into desert time. Dream time, the aboriginals called it. The sun rises and sets outside Sanctuary, and unlike last week when I wanted so to be hospitalized for my own safety from my mad self, now I give in to the rhythm of the desert dream, and I sleep and rise to eat and read then sleep again and rise and read again. The wind's whistle siings me to sleep, gentle breezes even, talking thru thin lips of windowpanes barely open.

In one day, maybe two, I read "Into The Forest" by Jean Hegland, and all the while I am in two places, present desert and redwood forest of my youth. Two young sisters learn to subsist in a collapsing society waiting for lights and computers to spring back to life, waiting in vain. Uniquely protected by the location of their home deep down a forest road, they learn over time to live off their environment, to live with less and yet so much more. I read by lamplight with wicks fading, then headlamp with batteries dying. I am right there with them. I am in the story 100 percent. Then it ends, and I want to go with them steeped in their fiction. But the cooing of the wind and constancy of crickets bring me back. I close the book smiling and mount the loft for another slide into dreamtime. - RSM
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