Fathering and Fiddleheads

Sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by books, bookmarks, and notebooks. Enjoying the silence, except for the hum of the old freezer. Everyone but my oldest son sleeps. He's sitting out in the woods somewhere listening to a myriad of birdsong I imagine. The other day he returned from the woods with some fiddleheads. He boiled them in a pot along side a frying pan of scrambled eggs with chopped sweet-white violet leaves and flowers. I begged some fiddleheads off him. My first time ever having them. After a lot of butter, salt and pepper were added they weren't too bad. 

Yesterday, while going for a barefoot run in our yard, I noticed broken robin egg shells. Something about seeing them lifted my spirits after delivering over 400 boxes and 100 miles of mostly junk mail yesterday. Days like this I wish everybody would sit down and write a love letter sealed with a kiss, drop a postcard to a friend, write their representative about something that really pisses them off, or you fill in the blank. Anything to help people get in touch with their soul, elevate people above products, and make my job a bit more satisfying and worthwhile. 

We're headed south to Bloomer this afternoon. It'll be the 4th baseball game this week I will be attending in the capacity of fan and proud father. I will most likely see about half of it or so. The rest of the time will be spent playing catch with whatever kid wants to play catch, and there's never ever been an instance where this wasn't the case.  I pretend that it's a chore, but it's really not. The only time I can focus in on a game is in the capacity of coach or player. I like to keep moving I guess.....

Spring just keeps springing along.

Kamana Reflection

It's been almost four years since I signed up for the Kamana program. There is four levels to it, and for some who are really dedicated it can take just over a year to complete. I'm over half way through it and not particularily proud of it. I told myself that after we moved into our cordwood house I was going to start visiting my sit spot again. Well, we've been living in here for almost a month and I haven't visited it yet. So I've been thinking a lot about why I'm stuck in this program. I figure if I can help build a house from scratch and remain debt free (except for a few credit card bills) I should be able to complete this program.

Last week I asked what the definition of vision was. I quoted Daniel Quinn out of Beyond Civilization trying to come to some kind of understanding what this invisible thing we call vision is. I find myself going back to the section about vision in Beyond Civilization trying to understand why I'm having a hard time finishing this program.

Every year, without fail, we outlaw more things, catch more people doing them, and put more of them in jail. The outlawed behavior never goes away, because, directly or indirectly, it's supported by the strong, invisible, unrelenting force called vision. This explains why police officers are much more likely to take up crime than criminals are to take up law enforcement. It's called "going with the flow." pg.17

Like the police officers in Quinn's example, perhaps I'm going more with the flow of our culture at this point in time. There really is no external reward (Like getting paid to do it.) for doing what is required in the Kamana program. To put it simply, the program doesn't pay the bills. This makes me wonder how much different this Kamana journey would be for me if I got paid for my time doing it?

Reading This Morning

I usually wake up around 5:00 AM in the morning. What I usually do before everyone gets up is read, journal for the Kamana program, and sometimes go sit quiely in the woods to listen to the birds greet the sunrise with their songs.

This morning I ran across a few interesting things that I know I'll eventually use. So I want to write them out here for future use.

Right now I'm reading Animal Tracking Basics , by Jon Young and Tiffany Morgan. This is really an amazing book for anyone that wants to get started in tracking and naturalist skills. It's full of exercises, stories, quotes by experienced naturalists and trackers, and neat facts like the one I'm going to post below.

Here is the fact by Daniel Gray: "Did you know that kestrels can spot voles while flying over a field by using an infrared scope mechanism in their eyes to pick up the lines of the animals' urine along their most used tunnels."

And also this quote by Tom Brown Jr. out of Animal Tracking Basics: "Not only is an animal a instrument played by the landscape, but the landscape is an instrument played by the animal. Thus the spheres of animal, plant, and land come together to form a whole."

While journaling the Nightshade plant family for the Kamana program I ran across this little tid bit of information out of Tom Elpel's book, Botany in a Day: "Our European heritage of witches flying on broomsticks comes from these hallucinogenic plants. An ointment containing Atropa and Hyosyamus was rubbed on the broomstick then absorbed through the vaginal tissues by 'riding' the broom"(Emboden)