SILK CREEK RETREAT 05 RAW

SILK CREEK RETREA 05

September 24, 2005, 4:21 PM

I am sitting on Scott's couch in his livingroom waiting for him to get ready for our annual Silk Creek Retreat. I had said I'd come at 3 PM and was an hour late getting here, and I was hoping he' be ready, but he's not. I brought food. He said he'd go to a neighbor's and get a zucchini, but I don't think he did that, either. He seems really out of it so much so that I am worrying about him and have asked several times if he's OK. He says, "Well, I think my blood sugar is OK." Meaning that hes not OK, maybe mentally or emotionally, but he's OK physically. Or, at least I assume that's what he means.

I can hear him rattling around. Oliver, the cat, who is very talkative, keeps mewing. And beyond that is the sound of ticking. The grandfather clock and another clock are both ticking loudly and there are lots of other ticking sounds.

"I'm almost ready, he says, sounding a little sad and apologetic.

"Okay," I say, cheerfully, not wanting to benagry with him.

I am writingon the Psion, old Pasada B with the broken screen. I cannot see what I am writing, so if I make typos etc, I'm in toruble, but worse yet, if I get interrupted, I have no way to regain my thought or even to know if I've laready written a word.

I can't go back and read what I have written and revise it or epand upon it, something that will make writing poetry difficult. I have no notes, like the ones I was making on my Milly and Bud story. Only whatever I can dredge out of my memory, because I have no access to them. They are here, on the computer, but not available to me.

I ordered a new Psion. I also bid on one on eBay and forgot to check it. Last time I looke, yesterday, there was 13 plus hours left, but those 13 hours are GONE and I forgot to see if I won. Shouldn't they have sent me an email? YES! BUT to my comcast address, which I never check any more. Argh! I need to go

Shit. I mean, Dang! Both of the new Psions are USED so I don't know how they'll be. I need t check. I need to chnage my primary address on gmail.

Scott says he's ready at 4:38 PM and I shoulder my pack and head out, but he dashed off to the bathroom.

He comes back and adjusts the load on his pack.

10:41 PM Well, here I am, finally, seated in the dark on the brink of the high embankment (cliff) over silk creek. It was a long time coming. We did come up earlier, while it was still daylight, and set the tents up. Then we went back and I made supper, a steak stir fry with shiitakes, brocoli, peas.

Then we loaded up with more gear--the AC power supply, the CPAP etc, and heaed back down to the creek. When we got there, Scott, fell in. I mean really IN. He had his diabetes pump, his cell phone, his digital camera, etc etc, books.

Luckily he wasn't hurt and the diabetes pump still seems to work and the digital camera,but the cell phone isn't working. I hope it works when it dries out.

He was drenched and his bots were full of water, so we went back up to the ouse and spread things out to dry. He showered and dressed in clean clothes (meanwhile, I called keith), and put his wet clothes in the wash, and we came back up again.

It's hard walking in the dark where there'sno trail. At night, you can't see any landmarks and you can't see the herd paths made by the deer excpet where they are well worn. Everyting seems farther. But we did make it.

This is the silk Creek Rereat and I feel as if I should be witing, writing something more meaningful thanour tale of woe. Well, it could be a lot worse. But I.m tired. I want to go to bed.

Earlier, I was enjoying listening to the crickets and katydids. I was playing with my ears, making the sound loder and softer by creating animal ears. Now, here above the creek, I can hear nothing but the rush of water.

A small miracle has happened, the liquid crystal blob that leaked out of the crack in Pasada B's screen has migrated back to the right side of the screen and I can see the left half. For a whhile, I couldn't see it at all. The tocuh screen still doesn't work, and I can:t use the right half of the menu, but I was able to chhnage the font size to huge so I could seeit in the dim light of the red-fiiltered headlamp on it's low setting.

Scott had already gone to bed and shut off his light before I came over to sit on the brink of the cliff.

I would right a poem. I would write nonfiction. I would write a story. But you have to start somewhere.

And I have lost the starting place.

It was your first, tonight, to fall

into the creek.

11:05 PM I was going to try to write a poem, but it was awkward, there on the brink, with the hemlock roots gouging into my butt . I decided I was too tired and I came into the tent and changed my clothes--sort of. I must have left my PJ tops at home where I was packing, so I am wearing the the thin fleece PJ bottoms and the sweaty green Thornden Park T-shirt Sara gave me that I hiked up here in.

Scott is still awake, grumbling he frgot his reading glasses (how can he read in the dark?) I offer him mine, but he declines.

I worry that the AC thing may not run the CPAP all night--guess I will find out, though.

I ate shiitake mushrooms for supper, for the first time in a wee, as I was suspecting them of making me isick. I do feel just faintly queasy and ill. But not enough, at least not yet, to blame the shiitakes.

It was your first time, tonight, to fall in the creek, stepping toward the dark waters, your arms outstretched.

I'm too tierd.

Sunday, September 25, 20005, 8:23 AM I am trapped in a small tent in the woods. I say "trapped" because I have to pee, and it is raining pretty hard. I don't have a change of clothes up here, so I'd prefer not to get wet, since I wanted to spend a part of the day, onring, early afternoon, writing. And reading.

I head the rain coming, first the wind,and the the quintessential wall of rain.

I was awakened at that point by a branch hitting the tent. It reminded me of the dangers of camping in hugh winds. Luckily it was only a small branch, but a lot of people were killed camping in that Labor storm with its wind shears.

The tent leaks, but not too badly.

I dreamed at one point, sure proofthat in spite of many issues, I did get some sleep. I dreamed that I am being mean to a boy. The boy is younger than Graham and blond. Shorter hair, round-faced, sort of. Looks nothing like Graham. He's chewing on a washcloth and I pull if out of his mouth and smack him in the face with it, not hard, but tauntingly, over and over. I wake up feeling bad about it, feeling mean. There are other kids in the dream and I'm not being mean to them, only to this one boy. The dreams makes meunhappy and uncomfrtable inmy own skin. I don't want to be mean to anyone.

It occurs to me that the boy could be myself, the male aspect of myself, as seen in the vision with the rattlesnake and the cicada at Pueblo. Or, it could be a representation of the meanness within, a shadow slef that sneaks out occasionally. It cold be showing up because I've been thinking lately of something mean I once did at the most where I egged someone on to do soemthing and then got them in trouble for it.

I did not exactly have a good night. I did not have my foam matteresses I normally use, they are all in Detroit. I wonder if I should bringa couple back. I hate bringing things back when I'm trying to get moved. AK!

I could not get comfortable on the thin backpacking mattress I had. Have. No matter which way I turned, The ground seeme horriblyhard, seemed to be pressing against somepart of me that hurt--my hips, my shoulders. Fibromyalgia an thin mattresses and old age don't go well together.

The rainw as just dying out and I was thinking of venturing out, and then I hear another "wall" of it approaching through the trees and woods. Battering the leaves.

I keep changing positions, I can.t get comfortable.

I finally did drift off to sleep, woke numerous times to turn because the pain was getting too uncomfortable.

Sirens outside. Hope Scott'shouse is safe. They are very nearby.

At about 3:45 AM, I think I had an apnea event--I was dreaming about being built into wooden claustrophobic boxes andnot being able to breathe. I woke up gasping for air and had to take my CPAP mask off. I was breathing in deep breaths feeling deprived of air. When I have an apnea event, it always takes a while to feel as if I can breathe OK and have enough air. In the process, the CPAP make came apart and I had to turn on my headlamp, disassemble it and reassemble it,which is a difficult task. By the time I finshed it, well after 4 AM, I was wide awake. The CPAP did not seem to be generating anough pressure, and I wondered if that was the cause of the apnea event and if it was caused by the power AC unit running out of huice. I was very tired from a restless uncomefortable night and decided to sleep again. At some point, the AC unit began squeaking and I turned off the CPAP and took off the mask.. A while later, it began squeaking again and I unplugged the CPAP. I drifted back to sleepto sleep without the CPAP, which is supposed to be bad and exascerbate the fibro, but I was so tired I couldn't help it.

Now I am all stiff and painful an no .atter which way I trun, I can't getcomfortable.

The rain is letting up again, so I am going to attempt a venture out, although here comes another wave.

Camping, especially backpacking, has a certain mumber of disadvantages.

I venture out, emergine from the deep dark blue of tent into a brighter rainsoaked wods. Scott appears to be sleeping soundly, though sveral times earlier, I heard him groaning or making other noises that indicated he was awake.Keeping my tent between me and his tent, I walk a ways into the woods and pee. Then walk to the rim of the cliff and look down. The creek looks about the smae. It hasn't rained enough to raise it, just to soak all our gear and dampen our spirits a little. I climb back into my tent, dragging with me wet leaves and mud. I went out barefotted and in my PJs, so my feet are muddy and my PJs wet. The upper PJ is the Thornden Park T-shirt which I also have to wear today, at least until I get back to the car.

The tent has leaked in a number of places--it probably needs to be seam-sealed. So even the gear inside the tent and inside the vestibule is gettinga little wet.

One of the disadntages of this tent is that it is so small. I cannot find a comfortable position. If I were home, I'd sit in the somputer chair. It seems the most comfortable chair I have, for my fibromyalgia. The trip back and the rest of the days actiities will be negatively impacted by my increased pain.

I feel as if all I am doing is complaining and that is annoying. I came here to write.

***

The Plunge

It was your first time, tonight. stepping toward

the dark waters, burdened with blankets

and light. Your first time. The dark weeds were tall,

the nettles stinging your bare legs. You struck

at them with a stick, as if they were serpent

while the weight swung precariously on your back.

You reached out a foot for stepping stone, a foot

for the dark water, and slippe. It was sudden,

unexpected, that plunge into the icy creek,

the water swelling up around you, your body

slipping into the dark current. You hat swirled

away downstream and you plunged after it,

staggering to shore with the prize, dripping,

angry, embarrassed. Your dumpded a quart and a half from each boot.

slogged home up the hill Y

all these years you've lived on the creek,

and you never fell in. Now you can laugh

And you do, and you don't. You're poised

On the creek bank in the nettle, one foot

stretched toward the water. YOU still have to cross the dark water.

^^^

"Always an adventure"

****

Well, I've written a poem, but i can't tell how it is because I can't reread it. I can't fix any typos and I can't edit it. Because I can't see it, only the first word or two or three of each line.

OK, it may not be good, but at least I WROTE something. I wanted to write simply and well, with complex layering and multiple asides, like Marianne Boruch. "Simple" language, Imean, not simple porty, but what came out was soemthing very different, with sexual and mythogoical and Biblical undertones and implications. I can't seem to help myself.

I'm very tired and my eyes hurt. Scott still seems to be aslep. I I'm getting hungry.

I disassemble the CPAP and mask, pack them into the inner and outer cases, and then pack that whole assembly into A day pack It took me two trips to haul everything up, because of the CPAP, and probably will take two trip to haul it all down. Maybe even more, if Scott doesn't carry the AC power supply, that thing is heavy.

I take off my T-shirt and put on my bra and put my T-shit back--presto, I'm half dressed. I don't put on the tank top I was wearing because it's wet, got rained on, dripped on. I take a few pictures inside the tent,none of which turns out well. The flash washes everything out and the shot without a flash was too long an exposure to be handheld. It's very dark in here, inside two layers of tent under a hemlock and beech under a dark clody sky. I have to use the headlamp to see, even though it is 9:47 AM.

I stuff my sleeping bag into it's stuff sack. It's damp, so I will have to unstuff it at home so it can dry out.

I must be getting old. It seems to me that getting ready to go camping , camping itself, packing up afterwards, setting up, hauling out, rying out and putting away is all much more work than the pelasure derived. It actually is more work and less fun than it used to be. I have to haulmore stuff (Cpap, extra mattresses etc, battery pack) and I am in more pain, than I used to be.

Going on a oNE-day camping expedition is probably not worth it. If you stay longer, then maybe. Because then the proportion of pleasure at least theoretically can expland relative to the emount of hassle and pain.

This is going to amount to two or more days of "work" for one evening of pain.

I'm still sort of glad t be here.

Scott really wanted tocome up, really wanted me to come with him. And, in honor of our friendship and all the previous Silk Creek Retreats, , I wanted to come, to be here for him, to do it myself. But I'm huddled uncomfortably in a daark small tent while it rains outside. Hardly inspiring. If I didn't have to keep changing position every minute or two because something hurt, it might help.

Ah, the joys of camping, and we still have to break trail and ferry all this gear through the woods and back across the creek. Probaly in the rain.

One thing this accomplished was getting me to order one or two more used Psions. I could imagine being out here without one. This one wasn't working.

I yank the compression straps on the sleeping bag case, yank and yank to make it small enough to pack. The rain beats downon the tent and on the leaves above the tent. I had been hoping it would stop so I could eat breakfast outside, above the creek. But I think I am going to give up and eat in the tent. I'm hungry and i've been hungry a long time.

For breakfast, I have dry cereal with rice milk and a teaspoonful of bran. Something is peepeing outside that sounds like a peeper, which reminds me, I saw a small drog when I went out earlier.

10:21 AM well, breakfast is over. All eaten. I am huddled in the tent . The rain has let up a little, but big plops are falling from the trees as the wind rises and falls.

I sit in the dark, blue-lit tent with my red headlamp on and I think of Grahndfather, in Tom Jones, telling him not to retreat on a mountaintop with a beautiful visita, but deep in the dark woods, in a tanle of brush. But, that's for vision questing, and I didn't come here for vision questing, I came to write in the woods. I could just as wel be huddled by my big computer, blue, in my office at home. There it would be light and bright and comfortable. But I would be accessible to the world. And I could acess with world. The internet would bethere, and the telephone. And all the problems I need to deal with, the unfinished tasks.

Here, I can't do much. I can't pack much more until I am reay to go. I don.t want to pack the backpacking pad that I am sitting on, because then I'd have to sit on the cold, hard, wet ground. I don't want to pack the tent until I am ready t go,because then I'd have to sit in the rain.

I would MIND a vision, it's just not what I came here for. I used to go vision questing every year on my birthday and often several other time, but now irarely do that. I've lost touch with my spiritual life..

Being out in the woods alone is a sort of spiritual experience. I'm not alone,but Scott is still asleep, unless he's reading or writing very silently. Usually, when he wakes up, he makes some noises. I can't see him from inside my tent, nor hear him. Only the rain and the dripping and the wind and the creek, and now a train whistle, long and distant.

It seems like dusk in the blue tentlight and the red "firelight" of my headlamp. There's that peeping again. Cars on the road, distant. A woodpecker pecking, the sudden release of rain from some leaves.

Suddenly a character wantstts to tell a story, but I have no feeling at all for what she may wish to say, or her story is.

Arianna huddled in the wettent, pulling her scratchy wool shirt closer around her, listedned to the wind rise and fall in the trees. It seemed like dusk in the dim light of the small tent. She wrapped the blanket more tightly around her legs. The damp seemed to be seeping coldly into her, reaching under the warmth of all her many layers to chill her.

Beyond the gorge, a siren shrieked and then another. A wispof smoke rose from the house, a lick of flame. They would look for her body,but they wouldn't find it in the rubble. And no one would look here for her. She was too old, they would think, to scale the gorge walls.

Too old to camp, too, Arianna thought. Way to old. She twisted this way and that, trying to get comfortable.

----

I do a yoga posture for my bakc. I am thinking about this story, how wrng it is, in a sense. I don.t need to start alot of stories, I need to write middles and endings and revsions of all the ones I've already started. But I can't do that here.

Arianna is in a tent in the woods in the rain. But if she's set her house a fire and run away across the gorge, there has to be a reason for it. I don't know what that reason is. IT sounds lie the beginningof a novel rather than a short stroy. What about Bud and Lily?

Maybe Arianna was raped. Why would someone rape an older woman, and why would she destroy her house and take to the wods. Maybe her husband was abusive and she hit him with a shovel and accidentlly killed him, after he raped her. Can a husband rape a wife. YES, the answer to that is yes.

But is that what happened?

Someone, Sue Monk Kidd, maybe, said, the task of a novelist is to take a bad situation and make it worse. But if it starts out this bad, it.ll have to get MUCH worse. Maybe it should start somewhere else.

Maybe the husband throws the bathe baby up in the air maybe the husband shakes the baby and kills it, accidentlaly, and then Ariann accidentlly kills the husband.

No, no no, that's not it.

The husband has been abusive, has beaten her, has had affairs, and then Arianna falls in love with another man, a neighbor, who is kind to her. They don't have sex, because Arianna doesn't think it's right., and also is afraid of Herman, the husband. But Herman is still jealous of Randy. No, Randy is not a good name. Randy implies sexual wildness and indiscretion. it also could be a boyish fellow, but I don't like the implications. Or, maybe it would be a randy and she does have indiscretions. Or, maybe it would be better for Randy to stay home and Herman to just be abusive and force her to have sex with him and she hits him with the shovel and kills him accidentall. AK

I don't lke this story.

I think i.ll go back to Milli and Bud. maybe.

My hair is a rat'snest form thrashing about in here, so I dig out my little folding backpacking brush and brush it out and braid it. Luxkily, there are rubber bands in there, because I forgot to bring any. That is, they are in the pack of stuff that lives in the backpack.

I don.t really want to think about milli an Bud.

Slould I make myself? Or should I read??

There are leaves all over my yellow blanket,which I just washed yesterday.

The screen has disappeared off the Psion and is gone entirely. Well, the physical screen is there, but it is utterly blank. Just the big blob of liquid crystal which is gathered around the crack. No words at all. This may be a good time to do soem reading!!!

I read Marianne boruch's poem, at the Y. I readit again. She read it at the reading at the Y, whe first poem she read. I heard most of it, but hadn't yet inhabited it. Even after reading it twice, only my right arm, shoulder and breast have entered the poem. But I could see then and can see nwo what a wonderful poem it is. And how to read a book of her poems cold take years, because it might take a week to really read one poem. Or maybe it's just me, with my ADD:.

This is a forced concentration, sitting in this dark hole, maybe that's why Tom Brown's grandfather said so. But deep and enclosed as it is, internal and inwadas it is, I stilll can.t concentrate.

But Ritalin would make it worse, not better. I don't see how it could help.

I am writing into a void. There is nothing but the blank screen. I don't know if it is recording. A siren goes off, rises, and then slowly slowly fades in a lng attentuated mournful hwl. I think it might be noon, but it is not. It is 11:37 AM.

I had the tent open earlier, but I closed it because rain was coming in, and I was cold. Train whistle. Now I open it and peer out. The rain seems to have stopped but the trees are dripping, the forst floor is saturated. It is dark and wet and cold and uninviting. I zip the tent back up.

I wonder if I should wake Scott. He has somehwere to be at 2:00.

I holler over to Scoot, "Are you awake?" He says yes, but sounds asif I woke him. I ask about his 2:00 appointment, we both stick our eads out and talk. He says he has to be there at 2:00 and play at 32:15. He says he wanted me to be here with him, bbut he doesn't wantto write. He implies this is't the real Silk Creek Retreat. I thought we'd decided it was. Hmm.

Lotta work if it wasn't!

I take off my Pajama bottoms and put on my damp shorts and am officially dressed.I am about to emerge from the tent when I hear Scott crashing around in the bushes, so I decide to wait a few minutes before I go out. I put my damp raincoat on so that when I do go out, I'll be protected from all the wet foliage and the dripping. It is windy enough so that the dripping will be blown away to some extent shortly, maybe, if the rain doesn't start up again.

12:09 PM I finally get tired of waiting for Scott to return and I climb out of my tent and into my sandals and half stagger to the rim of the cliff of the gorge above the creek and sit in a cradle of broots of a big old hemlock that clings to the edge of the cliff. My feet hand over and I lean forward into the open space and feel for a moment as if i might pictch forward into the creek.. I'm not sure how I'll et up from here.

The sun comes out, weakly, then a little stronger, I can't really see the sky through te branches so I don't know if it.s clearing or not. what I see is a screen of leaves that falls over me, that actauually falls befow me, but is swept up continuously by the wind, and above and below that, a screen of hemlock brnches, angular and fin, and beyond that, butternut or black walnut, I'm not sure which, a yellow feathery charteuse.

I read an emily Dickinson poem before I came out, one in marianne Boruch's book, In the Blue Pharmacy , and that and the poem about the Y made me thin and feel that I don't like the person I've become sincefibromyalgia and insomnia, always in pain, always complaining. I want to be deeper and more sensitive, I want to be less self-centered. I notice that I think about myself MORE when I am in pain than when I am not. I am nmore open and loving.

Scott said nothing to me when he leaft, but he still hasn't come back. I'd assumed he'd gone to pee, since that's the first thing I do when I wake up. But he's been gone so long. Did he go off tramping. I feel slightly worried and a littel concerned because I might lie to go ff trmping, too, might like to pee again, might like to talk to him before heleaves, but since I don.t know what he's doing or were he went, I feel a little trapped here. I wish he'd hae just said, I'm going off to pee, or I'm going to go write at hiker kitty ridge or I'm going bakc home or whatever. I don't want to tramp into the woods and interrupt hhim if he's at his tolet. I don.t want to take off for a walk if he's wanting to go for a walk with me. Communication is such an issue. Why don't or can't people communicate better?

See, here I go complaining.

I can chane no one but myself, and I am lucky if I can do that.

I want to take a picture of myself sitting here above the creek.it's 12:25 and Scott is still gone. My guess is he's gone off for a walk without me, which sort of annoys me, since last night, we'd discussed taking a walktogether and I was waiting for HIM, since he said he wanted to do that, but he didn't wait for me. I don't think he want back to the house because he left the tent open. I could go off and walk by myself, but if he's still out there pooping or soemthing, I.d interfere, maybe, and if he comes back another way, I won't be here to see him off when he leaves for his music thing at the church.

COMMUNICATION! A simple explanation of what's going on would make mylife better. I can understand him not mentioning it if he was jst going to the bathroom and comingright back, but it's been half an hour.

Or more.Oh, there he is, or there someone is, dressed very much like him. It is him, and he's taking pictures.

I just wasted more than a half hour of my time obsessing over what to do because I didn't know what he was doing.

Scott and I are down at Bubbles cascades. He had gone to "relieve himself" and since the woods were so open, he'd walked a long ways, and had gotten distracted along the way looking atthings and taking pictures. I'm glad I did wait for him, because we walked up the hill together, and then went into the "Adirondack" area an dtook pictues, and then creekwalked down here to bubbles cascade without our sticks and are sitting on the bubbles ledge where we could write.

The leaves circle in swirls of foam below the bubbles cascade falls.

Scott, perched on a lege, looks handsome and manly

I take his picture, thinking personals, thinking, attracting women,

but he doesn't need that any more. He has

a sweetie, and i think, pictures for Vanessa.

The water flows toward us, tumblees over the legeds, swirls away

around the corner. The first leaves of fall

gather along the rocky banks

and catch on submerged branches. Fall

aumtumn has come, the golden days,

but for Scott, at last, it.s early spring.

]]]***

It's hard to write a poem when I cannot see what I am writing. I can't fix it.

I can' revise it. I can't even do line breaks because it's hard to know how it will look on the page.

Suddenly, some of the words become visible again. As if through fog.

Hey, i can see well enough to change the font size again, but it is still all broken up, hazy, and half-blocked by the lquid crystal blob. I can't see well enough to edit or revise, because I probablu can only see 22% of the words. But I can see well enough to know that the words I am wiritng are appearing and thus II can probably save them and work on them later.

3:18 PM We are back at Bubbles Cascades. We went back to the campsite for lunch. I had tuna with bran, which reminds me, I ate shiitakes and only felt faintly quesay afterwards. I don't know what was making me sick, maybe I ha a bug. Tuna and bran on hemp bred, water, and three prunes. I can go back and make any changes because there is no way to see where the cursor is, so if I leave something out, I have to repeat it.

I'm going to do a writing practice exercise a la Natalie Goldberg and I am making myself a promise that I can write absolutely anything, if something comes up, and I don't have to share it if I don't want to.

Scott is reading Natalie Goldberg now. My book.

I am, by the way, feeling better. My pain and tiredness and grumpiness have all subsided now that Iam out of the tent and can move around.

I think I am going to do something really obvious. I'm going to start with the tipoc of Silk Creek

Go:

I am sitting on the leges of Silk Creek's Bubbles cascades Falls, at the edge of frm pool. The ledges are still damp (read wet) from the morning rain. Colored leaves are swirling in foam pool, browns of tulip tree, yellws of prunus serotina, reds and pinks of wodbine. Leaves and foam islands circle aimlessly, or probably with some current pattern, looking like clouds on a weather map, making concentric patterns. Scott sits beside me in his $8 wallmart water sandals, his nice Khaki shorts amd a red T-shirt. He is writing furiously, using the same twenty minutes I am to write whatever he's chosen to write. I'm writing in Pasada B with its damaged screen and he is writing on a spiral notebook with a black ballpoint pen he borrowed from me because he doesn't havehis--it may have been left behind after he fell in the creek and we had to go back to the house for him to dry out ad repack. Notonly are there leaves flating on the surface of the water, but also submerged leaves that circle in a different ptattern, deeper, more omnious,moving like some mosnter. I dreamed one time there was a moster under the water. It turned out to be a submerged and waterlogged tree, but even when I knew this, I felt afraid of it, as if it threatened me is some deep and scary way. Beside us are the cascades where the water comes smootherly and silver fromt he sky to flow over the ledges in a rush the reminds me of Niagara in its small roaring way. Niagara, Tahquamenon. The falls where I met Keith, met him first at Tahquamenon falls,et him second at Niagara. Keith who is more than 400 miles away. My love. I had a "vision one timeof myself stading at the bottom of a huge falls, huger and more powerful than Niagara, and I stood on a rocky Island in te center of the river and all the water falling over the falls was energizing me, filling me with "radiant" energy, by which I mean, making me glow with inner strength, joy, energy, and that energy was radiating out and touching every area of my life and everyone I touched.

I felt that way for a while. But I have lost touch with my spiritual practice and it makes me sad. I have lost energy, I feel less loving. That drea I had last night about being "abusive" to some kid was really disturbing. The wind blows the pages of Scott's notebook and he tries to held the page down and keeps writing wildly, madly, like a man possessed. Beneath his feet is water. Benath is feat is water crees. Beneath his feet are and accumulation of bright wet falls leaves, undulating lightlu as the current llifts them and sets them down. Hunger. I don't know why i said that. I'm not physically hungry at all, but i have a hunger for something. For soemthing deep and spiritual, for jy, for happiness, for love, for satisfaction, for soemthing unnamable.

The wind roars in the trees and thewater roars over the casades, and the two roarings blend together. Beneath my feet, water, and the rocks, the ledges, and the rflections of the trees moving. I worry momentarily that it will rain again. I don't want it to rain until I have pakced my stuff safel down out of the "mountains", off the the highlands above the gorge. Ha ha, they call the run through here the "Alpine run" because that the place where it crosses, the walls of the groge are like mountintainsides.

The creek flows pas su, one small part diverting to swirl through foam pool, the rest sliding down over th rocks in riffes and rapids. The fishman we met a few days ago called this a "hle" and said he caught a bown trout in this hle, a nice one. I think the word pool is nicer than the word "hole" but maybe it's the deep spot where the trout are that is the hle. It's in the hole, the deep spot, where is is darkk and covered with bubbles, that the submerged tree lies, the dark waterlogged one that scares me. It's not in this physical pool, but in some pool behind me, beind my eyes, in the dark world that follows me around, that I could fall abckwards into. The snag is dead. It's inert. It has long sharp branches, like a hemlock. They are a threat, you couldget caught there and drown. I could. a leaf floats among the other leaves in fam pool, white and translucent, as if it had been circling the pool forever and had lost all its color. The other leaves look newly torn away and recent, colorfil. This is the ghost leaf, the one with te dead eyes, the one under the water. It goes by again, neither under the water or floating, but just belw the surface, like a threat, covered with foam, like soemthing rotting.

Rotting is a good thing, an important thing. Ecologically, it recycles that which has died so that it can reused by the living. It's that word died that is scary to me. Rotting implies death and death is scary to me I'm not afraid of being dead, not too, anyway, but afraid f dying. I'M afraid of pain. I am also afraid of oss, the loss of myself. Of not being. I think probably once we are dead, we're just dead. We don't suffer and we don.t feel and we have no consciousness, so there is really nothing to worry about int hat state. I don't of curse know fr sure. There's no way to now for sure. But I think that's proably the case and it's not to be feared once you're all the way there. But losing this is scary. Lsoing the fresh sell of the wind, the rushing and circling water, Scott, who has stopped writing and rocks on his haunches ookin up at the sky. Ceasing is scary. It's scarier even than the pain But if the pain were too bad, then Id rather cease because it would no longer be the red woodbine on the dead elms and the trees with their orange leaves an green leaves. So even though I fear ceasing more than I fear pain, in the end, I would choose ceasing over pain, I think. I don't like pain.

3:53 PM Well, I wrote for 30 minutes instead of 20. I told Scott at 4:00, I would want to go back and pack up the gear and start ferrying it back, because I think I will have to make two trips, maybe 3. And I have no supper. Andit is always hard to leave.

But it is hard to leave hERE! This is what I want when I'm in Detroit, this is what I long for. Not scott, but Silk Creek. I mean I like Scott, I love him, as a friend, but I love Keith as my partner. I want to be with him. But Keith and I rarely sit for a long time in a quiet natural place and GROK. Boy, there's an old world. Don't hear that much any more. But we don't. We rarely sit quiet and read, each of

each of us reading our own book, happy and quiet in each other's copany. I don't know why we do't do that, I wish we did. Keith is too busy, I'm too busy, we have a kid with needs an aactivties, but somehow we need to make quiet time for nature and contemplation, for reading ec. Somehow.

We do go and sit in quiet naturl places together sometimes, like at metrobeach and Stoney Creek and Bele Isle. But there is nothing quite like this there Nothing WILD.

I get so that I long for it so. And we didn:t camp much this year.

I have to remind myself, this is why I come camping THIS is why I put up with the time involved and discomforts and so on. Tobe in this beuatiful peaceful place and to finally relax. To let down. To breathe out. For a short time to relase my commitments.

After all, I AM glad I came.

Its4:00 and we probaly should head back and pack up, but I don't want to. WAHN!

I'm glad I ahve Scott as a friend. If it weren't for his badgering, I probably wouldn't be here now, I.d be dorking around with all sorts of issues at home.

Scott reads me his piece, but I can't read miine with my bad screen I kept watching the little minnows, but forgot to mention them, because I was always in the middle of another though,t, and the asters, the blue and purple and white asters, the calico, the small andlarge ones.

Scott is fascinated by the bees. There are bees hovering on a little rocky island. The Psion is flashing and freaking out an I amafraid it may just died.

8:39PM I am home. I was starved and just as I was about to make dinner,t he power went out and I waited a while and finally ate two bowls of dry cereal. I wanted more. My appetite is coming back. But i said, no ma.am, 2's enough. and I stopped.

The power went out and it is still. I can't do laundry or shower or download the pix from Silk Creek.

9:04 PM I am up in my"office." I ate my prunes and talked to Keith on the phoneonce to warm him I had no power, and I took the sheets off Graham's bed. I had lit some candles, but the bird started flying around crshing into things so I blew the candles out. I am sitting in here with my headlamp. I can hear generators brningat the nighbors. But outside, I see no ights at all.. I am sitting in the office smeling the stink of blown out candles, listeing to the generators, and waiting for Keith to call. In the dark.

This computer,unless it gets repaired,prolly isn't long for the world. I hope I can download it. Keith prolly won't call at 9:15 because he'll look on-ine first.

If the power doesn't come on before I go to bed, the radio will come on and lights will come on wen the power does come on. If I remember, I'dlike to turn the radio off. I decide to do it now, and go down and turn off the radio and as many lights as I can tell about. But I knock into the hall switch in the dark and ca't tell if it is on or off, becaue there are two switches..