Everyday, it is so hot, that the thunder storms that sometimes crack the darkening sky in the afternoons seem like the monsoons of the Rajasthan desert. Everyday at dawn, I go to the Cottonwood Trail before the intense heat. The storms have done little to fill the wetlands back up. The reeds are turning brown reaching up from the mud. One morning I can see not one but two Great Blue Herons perched high up in the tops of the dead trees in the wetlands. There are deer tracks in the mud. There is a flock of goldfinches careening around in the damp warm air. A doe picks her way through the bending grasses.
One day, I hear the deep and distant chanting of a large group of human beings. They are coming closer, breaking the orchestral music of the cicadas, the crickets and the birds with their "sound off". A group of ROTC students with their leaders are marching through the forest, calling out their sound off.
As children, we had a sound off that went like this:
I left my wife and 49 kids,
the old gray mare
and the peanut shells.
All because I thought it was right,
Right,
Right through the cornfield
Right by jingo (skip into the air and change feet)
Left
Left
Left
I left my wife and 49 kids
the old gray mare
and the peanut shells
Without any hamburgers
Left
left
Another day, I found a snake skin curled on the bank high over the creek. I took it home.
The skin can mean, change, rebirth, the sloughing off of the old ways that are no longer viable.
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