As we have learned over the centuries, when it comes to burning witches, it doesn’t really matter if you have burned a real witch or just someone who, in your fevered, partisan, and paranoid imagination, could easily become a witch in the future. It is the burning that is the message.
So Lily and I left the tree and went to my favorite spot, a rock beside Yokum Brook where the water tumbles beneath my feet, and I reflect on the various complexities of life.
Once home, chagrinned, I glanced at my insect-shield clothing lying unworn in its basket and my bug spray unsprayed on the mudroom windowsill. I had been tromping full-tilt through a New England forest in the height of tick season with no protection whatsoever.
Within minutes, I saw a bright orange flash in my left eye. There, maybe 20 feet away, deep in the ferns, the wavy scalloped shelves of chicken of the woods blazed in the morning sun.
Mushrooms are FASCINATING. AND BIZARRE. There are countless varieties that come in all colors (even blue and purple!), sci-fi shapes and perplexing consistencies (some are essentially slime).
"When I was younger, I was an A student, in the 98th percentile on all the tests. I did ballet. You wouldn’t have thought I would end up the way I did. All my teachers thought I had a lot of promise and would do well in life."
Two nights ago, the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood performed Mahler’s third symphony, a large, rambling, ambitious work by a young composer who had recently lost his sister and mother, suffered poor health, and whose intense love of nature offered him meaning and comfort.