An acorn on the forest floor under the trees, struggling – as acorns would be – to catch the stray beams of sunshine breaking through the canopy. The acorn feels itself on the cusp of something real: ready to sprout, to shoot, to unfurl. The forest is also home to wild boar which rampage through the undergrowth looking for food. Sometimes, that might be an acorn. The acorn hesitates between stretching further, unfurling further toward the light, and quivering fearfully as it nestles in the leaf mold. The ground beneath that loose layer is tight and dry, stretched like a drum. Now it reverberates with the pounding of hooves hammering away in a crescendo of approaching weight, a heaviness – muscular, true, and therefore agile. But heavy, mostly crushingly heavy, everything the acorn isn’t. Armed with spades (their hooves) and the ability to sample by mouth and snout whatever the forest floor might give up, the strong dark beasts have a power way beyond the acorn. It is, after all, not yet an oak.
This morning the sky is trying to rest; a rising sun gives all its light and heat to it, burning up the remaining clouds. A windstorm is ending, or maybe it’s continuing? It wasn’t as fierce as predicted, no trees came down near us. The temperature will go way down, though, if those predictions come true. Yesterday it was in the 60ºs, really eerily warm even as the winds gathered by evening. We went for a brief walk together at 6:00 – still warm, eerie for March 1. But by Saturday, March 3, we’re expecting a high of only 20º.
My routines are dull. I could list them all, but I won’t. Afternoons too often go by amorphously, unshaped – not even like an acorn, but threatened nonetheless by trampling, marauding boars (so boring, these routines). Can oaks grow from such humus? Don’t think so…