10-11-12: Going nuts

 This month has seen a record-setting period of sunshine for the Northwest. But at last we had rain in the forecast, beginning Friday. There's a lovely nature reserve in east Portland, known as Powell Butte, and I realized I hadn't been out there in a couple years. I wanted to visit before the gray weather set in... as it invariably does.

 I took my bike. Needless to say, after pushing that old rig 140-plus streets and then (on foot) up a long hill, I was tired. I was even more tired when I got back home several hours later, having hiked all over the butte and then pedaled back home that same 140-plus blocks. My muscles felt like sponges filled with warm honey. It was wonderful.

 I was very glad I had gone. Every so often it feels great to push one's body very hard. And the butte was so beautiful, with sunlight streaming through the forest on the west side, and that bright green of those miraculous, deciduous solar panels --- maple, poplar, birch --- vivid against the clear blue of the sky, on the verge of turning autumnal colors but yet to explode into full palette.
 On the east side the butte is largely bare, and this time of year covered in waving golden grasses, dried stems of herbs, the occasional crabapple tree laden with tiny sour fruits. It was on this half of the butte that I spent most of my time, basking in both the last "summery" day of the year (though it is technically autumn) and the beauty of the land, with its fields and woods, rolling foothills and valleys, and Mt. Hood veiled by a pinkish haze hovering in the languid air, fragrant with that essence only a well-ripened season can have.
 Powell Butte is old, as a place people have loved. On its bare crest is a large orchard, with other trees scattered here and there. On visiting this orchard before, I gave my attention mostly to the few apple and pear trees on the fringe: The main orchard was all some kind of tree with weird fruit, or no fruit at all, and a young person tends to stick to what they know and can get good things from. But today I thought, These trees were planted for a purpose. I looked up, then down at the ground, and the purpose was clear ... if only because I'd recently picked more of these same "fruits" from another tree in the Northeast District.
 Walnuts!
 How wonderful it was to break open a nut I'd picked myself, and taste the meat of it, as sweet as any nut I'd purchased in the supermarket! Sweeter, at that. The instinct to gather when autumn comes is millions of years old, and it hasn't been bred out of us humans ... even us city-dwellers. Then again, I grew up in a rural area, so I may be closer to the land than most.
 I spent at least an hour wandering the entire orchard for the first time, among the patient trees that spent their days in this sweet golden light (and all other weathers), now gnarled in their venerable age and no longer tended by human hands, except for those of the odd hiker or kid. I filled my paper bag with walnuts, to the point where I knew I'd have to rig up a sling for it with my sweater on the bike ride back home, or rii-i-i-i-i-iip!
 I wonder if the trees had any sense of the creature that spent time in their company, sharing --- if briefly --- in their peace, grateful for their bounty? Did they know me by vibrations, or by my chemical scent, as I know them by sight? Another one of those two-legged, fast-moving things. And this one knows what we are, has an armload of our little ones. My years, few as they are, are but a blink of time in the lives of these beings.
 I knew only that I was so full of peace, and so glad to be there, in that moment, that a couple of times, I cried. I felt something incredible.
 There were other trees --- a grove of poplars in the southeast corner, surrounded by their many gangly offspring --- with whom I spent time, now finished gathering and wanting only to prolong this delicious treat of a day as long as possible. The sun was swinging very low indeed as I started back through the woods, arm heavy with walnuts, and the light gilded the top of the canopy and bathed the forest vale in pure liquid life, a glow of pleasure to celebrate the end of a well-lived day and season ... a glow that settled around my heart.
 It sounds "aw", but that's actually how it felt. Really.

 Days like that one in the walnut orchard ... I have to be honest here.
 They can be better than sex.
 I think it's because it's not body-sex I'm working with, here. It's more like body and soul-sex, which not only feels good but kind of fills up your empty tanks and, instead of leaving you on some bashed-up high or just wanting more --- or worse, wallowing in filthy sheets of regret --- leaves you replete with good feeling that never fades. I mean, it's awesome.
 Don't get me wrong, I like a good hit now and then. But I also think, if you can't appreciate small things like I did that day, take pleasure in them, what is life?! I feel I add a lot to my life, and my writing and art, by soaking up stuff like that, rolling around in it.
 These days, the 50 Shades erotic series is all the rage. I'm usually willing to give things a glance, so I sniffed out some excerpts and quotes. And thought, wow. This is pretty sad. Easy read is one thing. Nothing wrong with that. I sometimes take note of easy-reads, to learn to simplify my language. For you lowest-common-denominator-crowd folks. Ouch! Now I'm just being cruel ...
  But there's the quality factor, the taste factor. BDSM flavors done well, versus served up a la stale-marshmallow-peeps. Mind, I'm not above creativity, in sex and other pursuits. After all, I'M the freaky chick whose characters have blades in their tongues. Right? That gets rather tweaky at times, mm-hmm. But when you can only get off if your life is one endless stream of full-stimulus machine-gun OMG, and that's all it is, and you essentially have the mental and bodily IQ of a wet vibrator ...
 ... well, oh my. Let me relate a tale ...
 At age 23 or so, I wrote a graphic novel about an electric superhero. Cute guy, if bald (electric, after all). He had a nice, macho-electric-boy nickname, Juice, but he had a bit of taste in his sugar-water as well. In one of the many episodes of Juice's college/superhero life, he had a spell of naughty with an electric supervillainess ... then he went back to his white-bread, non-suped-up girlfriend. Why? Not just because she was a nice, cool chick. He liked the subtlety. He could feel every nuance and flicker of her electric field, and it so, like, totally turned him on --- as opposed to a repetitive, mindless wash of 5000 Kilovolts that smothered any finer sensations. lame lame lame lame lame lame lame OMG!!!!!!!!!!
 Juice's feelings are mine, here.
 I dig the subtlety. Heck, I can get off on a beam of sunlight in a frigging walnut orchard.
 And, my English is a bit thick and meaty compared to today's norm, I noticed.
 And, even my bloodsucking playboy characters can dissect and ant and name all its segments before they do you (and then wipe your memory, if they simply must).
 In some ways, I'm very easily satisfied.
 In other ways, I'm not.
 The final point here, though, is that people are talking. Get people talking about something, and they'll get into it --- that's what defines popular. And it doesn't have to have anything to do with quality ... McDonalds and Britney Spears are proof of that. Sometimes, it just has to be easy and quick to swallow, especially for those who have lost their sense of taste.
 Sadly, that number is probably growing. This is the OMG age we live in.
 It is interesting to ponder, though. Personally, I'm not sure I could write like that --- maybe if I really tried. Put that in italics: really tried. But by and large ... read my stuff, strap that leather on your mind as well, and get ready to hang by those Jungian archetypal handcuffs, babes. Is it above your average American mommy? We have yet to see. If so ... tough.
 Maybe I'm just a throwback.
 Maybe I'm just nuts.
  heeee heehee hehehehe heheheee.