ode to the outdoors

July 07, 2008 candacemorris 7 Comments

well hello again, dear monday afternoon readers.

i find your eyes kind and gentle this easy monday. seattle is gorgeous today, and i must confess a lightness of spirit because of the following:

• it's camping, camping, camping on the brain. i have completed my grocery shopping list (minus a few meat items - i could NOT buy farmed salmon at the cheap grocery store i had to go to in order to stretch my new cash budget to fit my camping menu!) and am excited to have received a new air mattress for an early bday present (thanks mum and dad!). we are off to enjoy the woods on wednesday night - and meet our soul's longing for the most moving inspiration available - nature. i am excited to take my sketch book and enjoy some time alone (which will happen probably b/c everyone else will get antsy and go off exploring, and i get a bit scared being in the woods alone, (silly, i know - but i grew up in the desert!) so i will sit in the sun in my campsite soaking it up!)

dear light beams through treetops green - spray me with your light-heartedness.
enchant the open pages before me, dance on my loungy body.
tempt me not, preoccupation, with your unkept hair and dirty fingernails, and ever-increasing tasks.
infuse my lungs with the deepest of ease and serenity.
for this benevolence i will always return

and return
and return to dust again and again.

• i spent the weekend in equal parts laze and productivity - and this, my dears, is an ever-anxiety producing mixture for my spouse and i. we spent saturday lazing about watching Pride and Prejudice, and boy did that make me crazy for words and books! later that evening, joel read some of my book to me, and i got so addicted that i stayed up even later than god and continued reading! oh swoon, i sure love being lost in the pages of my friends. on Sunday, we went to mum and dad's and i was quite the productive little woman! i made granola, mended some clothing, collected camping gear, and went grocery shopping at a place where one might fear for their life. (j/k, i am a grocery store snob now that i live in the city).
  
• no other reason just the knowledge that summer is indeed upon us, and my scarfless neck and air-tickled toes bring a bounce in my step that even the most casual bird would notice. how ostentatious of me!

as a side note: if i could change one thing today - it would be my fear of the woods (i have just never felt comfortable. i hear my mother cautioning me against rapists!!! i am also afeard of getting lost.
the other is my self-consciousness. i can often be oh so self-conscious - not defined traditionally in that i am unconfident, but instead just overly self-aware. sometimes (and especially while camping when stripped of my comforts and wardrobe) the self-consciousness eats away at my serenity and make me just terribly anxious.
oh if only this were not so!!

also, i would not mind being in better shape. alas, i will perhaps just wander the woods at my own pace (sticking to the trails of course), with my camera (which always decreases both my self-consciousness AND my fear) and just be.

perhaps if i bring a shotgun. or a machete. you know, to protect me from the rapists.

loves,
~crm