The Flowers of Fogville

There were no flowers in Fogville, and the sky was always gray.  Faces were always sad.  No one ever smiled.  It was a place all about business.  Everyone had something to sell.  Everyone had some place to be.  Everything in town served a purpose, just as every minute was spent purposely.  No one laughed.  Why laugh?  And no one cried.  Why cry?  Both were purposeless.  And what was happiness?  What did that word even mean?

     The people of Fogville lived shrewdly under the cloud; they lived decisively.  Everything was black or white.  And change was pointless—unless it was a change in product—and creativity for the sake of creativity was frowned upon.  Indeed, it was forbidden for children to have coloring crayons.

     There was one child, though, a worthless girl, the daughter of convicted artists: she was obsessed with color.  With her crayons (ones that had been hidden when her parents were taken away) she colored on walls when no one was looking.  Her name was Mali.  Often, she walked a long way down the road that led out of Fogville.  If she had been bigger, she would perhaps have kept walking until she found a place where color was embraced, but she was a little girl and Fogville was her home.

     As it happened, one day Mali crossed paths with an old man who was heading into town.  He was dressed in clothes that were severely faded.  Yet, and Mali was pretty sure of this, it looked as though the man’s clothes had once been colorful.  His pants were a washed out shade of yellow and his coat was a faded green.  She noticed, too, that with every step he took, he sprinkled a little of something.  Intrigued, Mali followed him into town.

     She watched the way the merchants sneered at him.  She heard them gossip.  Someone was going to have to tell that poor-old-man-with-nothing-to-sell-and-no-money-to-buy that it was against the rules of their culture to wear clothes like that.  It was not good to have a man like that in town.  And what was he doing?  Was he smiling?  There was no smiling in Fogville!  And what was he sprinkling?  What were those little things?  Someone was going to have to clean it up!

     Mali was following a little closer now, and on the other side of town, when no one else was around, she said, “Hello.”

     Without turning around, he replied, “Hello, little girl,” and went right on walking.  Mali kept with him and was now beside him.  She asked, “What are you doing?” 

     He laughed. 

     It filled her with joy to hear laughter.  She smiled.  She never smiled.  She wanted to laugh.  She did not know how.  She asked, “What is that stuff you are sprinkling—dust?”

     He laughed.  “Seeds.”

     “What kind of seeds?” she asked.

     “Wait and see,” he told her.

     He walked on and she followed and with every step a sprinkling.

     They walked down a side street and circled back and came upon a mob of men.  The mob yelled, “You can’t leave your … STUFF everywhere!  If you have nothing to sell you’ll have to leave!  Are you smiling?  Stop smiling!  Are you laughing?  Stop laughing!  Laughing is forbidden in Fogville.”

     The man laughed and sprinkled his seed, and the people were offended, and they puffed up their chests at him and scowled and screamed.  No one touched him, however, and he walked by them, and Mali followed, and the people made sour faces at her.  But time was ticking and business could be interrupted no longer by this trespasser and his follower.

     The man turned to Mali and smiled and they kept walking.  “Look at how they move,” said the man to Mali.  “Always in such a rush.  Listen to them talk.  No time for niceties.  See how they live!  No place for pleasure.”

     "Tell them that!” Mali cried.  “I know what is wrong with this place.  I want to know how to fix it.”

     “You already know,” he said.

     “I do?”

     “Every time you color on a wall, you frustrate them.  They get angry, and they are angry with themselves.  It is envy that they feel, and some of them secretly admire you.  Some will eventually realize free-time is a valuable thing—the most valuable, next to love, which together bring happiness.  Others will remain certain that ceaseless striving is the meaning of life.  It is not in your power, little girl, to change people.  But be a bright beacon.  In that way lead them to happiness.  In that way bring color into their lives.”  And with every sentence, a step, and with every step, a sprinkle.  And they walked all the streets and then at last came to the end of town.

     “You’re not staying?” asked Mali.  “Not even for the night?”

     “I am a wanderer and must keep on.”

     “Can I come with you?”

     “You must stay and be the beacon.  I envision the day when Fogville is not all about business and people laugh and play.”

     “What about your seeds?” she asked.

     “What about them?  They have been sown.” 

     And he walked on and was soon gone, Mali standing there at the end of town until she could no longer see him. 

     And then she went to work at a kiosk selling calculators and it was hard to hold on to the memory of the man (as it is hard for a little girl to hold on to anything) and she soon forgot him, and then her crayons ran out and the little bit of color faded from her life.

     She stopped taking walks.  Why walk to walk?  She hated her job and wished she had something of her own to sell, and it had been a while now since the crayons had been used up.  It hurt to smile.  She stopped.  Like everyone in Fogville, she saw the world in black and white.

     Then, one day on her way to work, she looked up and caught a hint of blue.  Then the clouds parted for an instant and the yellow ball blinked and her face was alighted, and she smiled.  She remembered that there was more to life than making money, more to life than sell! sell! sell!

     And each day on, a little more blue came through, and with the brightening sky came an improvement in her mood.  And color, color everywhere began to sprout, it began to bloom!  Suddenly, unexpectedly, there were flowers!  There were all sorts of flowers everywhere!

     Some people, suppressing smiles, wearing dealing frowns, condemned the uprising of color.  “We could be overwhelmed!” they cried.  “Who knows where this will lead?”  And others were overjoyed.  “The flowers smell so good, and they are everywhere!  How can you say it isn’t beautiful!”  The angry answered, “Beautiful is a word like happiness.  Beauty—happiness: there are no such things.  If they exist, where are they?  Where can I buy them?  Who has them for sale?”

     And always close, hidden in her kiosk of calculators, was the girl.  Now, finally, Mali found the courage to shout.

     She shouted, “What a ridiculous discussion!”  And she started to laugh.  "Ha-ha!  Ha-ha!  Ha-ha!"  It felt so good.  "Ha-ha! You fools!  Ha-ha!  Ha-ha!"  It felt like ... she could not find the words to describe the feeling.  If she had known what fireworks were, perhaps she would have compared laughter to those explosions of color, but instead of in the sky the explosions were inside her.  Fountainheads of flowering sparks purple and white and red and blue and yellow and pink: all the best colors were exploding inside her.  Boom!  Boom!  "Ha-ha!  Ha-ha!"

     “Stop that!” they cried, some of them, and others joined in the laughing.  “She’s right,” they said.  “Who cares?  Let’s nobody work today.  Let’s run around and play.  Let’s pick flowers and put them in our hair and tie bracelets and necklaces and let nobody care.  I’m tired of business.  I’m tired of sell! sell! sell!  It’s time to play, laugh and say goodbye to the gray.  Worthless work can wait until another day.  Ha-ha!  Ha-ha!”

     And on a hill

     High above the land

     Sat, looking down, the man.

     He could see all the towns

     He had been through

     And the flowers blooming

     And his dream come true.

One Can Leave

Forget about the orange leaves that were falling all around you. It was being inside a gentle tornado of calm death, the leaves twirling down like tops. And it was impossible to grasp the real beauty of it. Nor will I soon remember how you addressed the earth.  Calling it drenched in leaves all the colors you can guess dry and all around that crunching friction of the leaves on the branches brushing and the leaves spiraling down touching. You stood there in the middle of this last dance, this gentle tornado like a spinning ballroom dance, all the dancers spinning and presque mort mais heureuse. Each leaf did its own dance and it was one big dance and I stood there in the middle of it until all the leaves had fallen.
     I felt that, it feels that, and it will, like the leaves are falling and I in the eye. One can leave and never have left.
     Just as one can stay and be gone. And there is the other idea, the other thing that came to you. Unlike the leaves coming down around you, this other thing came. It came when you were looking down and hitting that button on what you said and did not say and before you knew it you were catching I talking to I. A car could have swerved and you would not have seen it coming. But you caught the craziness ... and the ability to appreciate beauty is a most wonderful gift from God.
     Of.
     By.
     There was a moment, too, back there, when you were walking so fast and feeling the self-destruction of the night in which you spilled that glass of wine on that woman's lap. Red wine. You knocked it all over her with one of those big ridiculous hand gestures. Back there, when you were carried away by these kind of pitiful contemplations and feeling the pain in your legs, back there you thought you were no longer able or at least for the moment unable to feel any good emotion. But good love came through. You love the trees and the falling leaves and even in the pain of guilt and intoxication, you found your love and beheld its beauty in death.
     What thing decays, what goes, what enters back into the earth more gracefully than the falling leaf? Rain? Snow? Sunlight? Not dogs or men. Were leaves, are leaves, Designed to be conduits of water or to be carried by the wind?
     However that may be, the beauty in the death of a dog or man speaks directly to the dignity with which that poor creature fell.

The Cast of Harmony

Let’s call the cast of Harmony,
And cast out the foes of Happiness,
Loosing the troop of Melancholy,
To set the stage with friends of Bliss.

So lonely Selfishness be gone,
In your place kneel Servitude,
So ugly Evil, so long,
In your place should stand Good.

Cruelty barks as he is driven away,
So that Kindness may play the part
Of the loyal dog bound to stay
With Master Loyalty, who wheels the cart,
That carries Betrayal to his grave.

Hope, you have the role of Despair;
Now, Rage, retire to the Pit;
Now, Calm, you stand right there,
Next to Courage who never sits,
Who replaced the coward who sat in fear.

Hate, you failed, you’re fired, leave,
And make room for shining Love,
Who knows nothing of how to deceive,
For only Truth comes from above.

Fill the stage and act your roles,
Allow Patience to direct your moves;
His voice is soft unlike Frustration’s growl;
His voice, it guides, it soothes.

Yes, mind yourselves, know your ways,
And fulfill the potential of the play,
Which is joyous life on any day.

If you falter just look to the lead,
Whom of course is Love,
If you stumble just look to He,
The brilliant light above, that
On our simple stage is the simple dove.

Our costumes are plain, our stage is neat,
Now that Pride is gone.
Come please, Humility, sit and eat,
While the rest of us sing to you a song …
“… Last shall be first in the Kingdom of God.”

The Deer (an excerpt from a forthcoming novel)

What of the deer, Pacific?  Remember when we drew them?  The drawings are in that clothbound book.  The deer just held there like they were made of paper.  Perhaps their instincts tell them to be afraid and their hearts tell them something else.

     Now I watch them, write of them.  I turn the page; they look at each other, the sound of the paper having startled them.  The big one turns his back on me, now lopes away.

     Earlier, I approached them.  I held out my arms and spoke to them and tossed them apples.  They looked at the apples on the grass and would not go near them.  I inched towards the deer, with arms outstretched, and got within ten feet before they fled.

     Now I sit here in the amphitheater of my home, in the open back door.  The gray is lovely, tinted yellow.  A dissolving fog rinses the treetops.  Two crows soar across the screen.  Language goes back and forth between the black birds.

     I wish you were here, Pacific.  We would wait for the deer to gain courage and we would draw them again and try to feed them apples.

     Rain, fog, our wet world adds detail to the day.  The incessant wisp of tires keeps time moving forward.  The rain starts, it stops, never predictable.  Someday you will understand, my son, you will understand how little you know, and your perception will change.

     Where are the deer, Pacific?  How long should we wait?  Should we go find them?

     One time we snuck up on them and got so close we could have hugged them.  When they finally tripped, we were right beside them.  Pacific, they were not as afraid of you as they were of me.  You could have kissed them.  Remember when we got that picture of the fauns kissing?  Were they kissing, or sharing a flower?

     Would you like to live like them, to sleep under a bush, to eat plants out of gardens, to always be on guard, always ready to flee?

      Perhaps they relax when they believe they are alone, and that is why they can be startled so.  We shock them.  Their memories are poor.

     They are right to be afraid.  Their meat is as peculiar in its taste as the animal is beautiful, with its white tail, with its bowed legs, because of its big bulging black eyes.  And the deer can run faster than us and better bear the cold.  The deer is pure in its silent relationship with creation.  The deer belongs in heaven, I think.  Its blood is purple and in a legend was sifted for gold.  Someday, Pacific, I hope to bless with you a meal of venison.

     But never would I harm these deer, for I know them.  In that, in knowing them as neighbors and therefore respecting their existence, I fear lies a terrible truth.  A deer somewhere else, in some hunting forest, seen from afar, that deer I could kill. 

     I knew these deer when they were fawns.  Their white spots betrayed them as they rested under a fir tree.  Kirsten pointed them out to me.  Sunlight was around them, their spots reflecting the light.  It seemed as though they were imagined.  I felt certain they were possessed by angels or saints or children.

 

Upon a Chariot

Asks my little boy, "Can I read your words?"
"Yes."  He does not know how to read.  Old notebooks, journals, on the floor.  He carries them under his arm, hands one to my wife.  I say, "That was my first journal."
     "It's cute."  She flips to the middle.  Quiet for a moment.  Now, "You should put this poem on your blog."
     "Which one?"
     "Here."
     "I wrote that six years ago."
     "And?"

Upon a chariot,
I ride there,
The Place of Eternal Spring,
On the outskirts of the City
Of New Ideas,
Closer to the Creator.

Upon a chariot,
Commanded by Angels,
I ride there,
The Place of Infinite Relation,
In earshot of the Temple
Of Contemplation,
Closer to the Giver of Life.

Upon a chariot,
Commanded by Angels,
To the Seventh Dimension,
I ride there,
The Place devoid of time and question,
Down the river from where
Moses and Elijah drink,
Closer to Perfection.

Upon a chariot,
I ride to Elysian Fields.

An Open Window

(Jake was built like a boy—his long body thin but untrained—and Jake had the hair of a boy—light brown and full, an easy wave to the side. His cheeks showed gracefully the scars of adolescence and his smile was broad and warm, and there were no lines around his eyes. Jake was thirty-two and could pass for twenty, and it was his youthfulness he believed was holding him back. Jake yearned for gray, for wrinkles, for age in some manner to manifest—even just a pot belly would help or black bags under the eyes or jowls or baldness. Then he might get somewhere! Then he might get some respect! Eight years he had been with the hospital, in administration—eight years: perhaps a tenth of his life—and he was still at the bottom.

     Wretched youthfulness! What other explanation for his stagnation? There was none. Jake was motivated and kind and smart. And it was not that no one was advancing. For sure, he had watched with concealed pain and feigned glee as peers moved up. It had been with misery that he noted the mark on each of them: that one a permanent furrow with receding hairline, there a burgeoning buxom with newly onset diabetes…. Jake too was ready to give something to the hospital, ready to sacrifice some vitality. Yet youth—life—clung cruelly.)

The corridor was dark and underground, a foot-tunnel for staff connecting the buildings. The thirty-two-year-old Jake felt comfortable running here, because there were no patients and it mattered not that he looked unprofessional. As he ran along his tie flapped over his shoulder and his hospital identification card swung loosely on the nylon lanyard. Jake was thinking what he often thought, of how he wished he was a doctor. Badly he wished it. Then no petty hierarchy could hold him back. Then he would actually be helping people. Now, instead of running to a meeting, he would be running to save a patient. But the dream of being a doctor was hopeless. Jake had a huge number of children—three (to think he had once wanted six!)—and Jake had already spent six years at college. No, sadly Jake’s course was set and well underway. Now, if only the lines would draw quickly down his cheeks. If only his hair would go gray or down the drain. Then he might get a raise.

     At the far end of the corridor Jake came to an elevator and double-tapped the “up” button. He shook impatiently, slapping his thighs like they were drums.  Today he had meetings scheduled back-to-back-to-back-to-back, four straight hours of them, with no breaks between. It was as if someone wanted him to run late.

     He was still waiting for the elevator. Again and again he pushed the button. He ripped his phone out of his shirt-pocket and fumbled it. It exploded in three pieces on the floor. The elevator arrived and the doors opened. He knelt and hurriedly gathered the pieces. The doors started to close. He slipped inside. Bracing the pieces of the phone to his chest, he kneed the button for the fourth floor, but missed it. Number three illuminated; he didn’t notice. He played the game with the battery, made it fit, and then slammed on the back of the phone. Now Jake was really sweating. He powered up the phone: he was not wearing a watch and he wanted to check the time. But why check it? He knew he was late. And what was the meeting even about? All he had was a location.

     The elevator stopped and the doors opened. He rushed off, looked left, right, and hurried down the hall. He was looking for conference room 408. The first door he passed said 313, and he realized the error. O, he didn’t have time for this! Even the elevator was against him! Back at the elevator, he pushed the “up” button. The doors opened. On board was an elderly woman in a wheelchair. She looked painfully at him. He deliberately pushed the button for the fourth floor.

     Jake was too good for this madness. He had a Master’s Degree in Hospital Administration, from a good school. He knew a lot about running a hospital. He knew how to implement a program and perform a cost analysis. He could tell you a thing or two about networks and patient needs. But no one listened to him. It seemed his coworkers did not want to make the hospital any better. Six months Jake had spent preparing his last presentation, and what had come of it? Nothing. Now meeting after meeting haunted him.

     The doors opened on flour four and Jake checked his lunge, for a couple of drug-reps—by the look of them, by their big fake smiles and gleaming foreheads and shiny shoes—were in just as much of a rush to get on as he was to get off. They yielded to Jake, as they yielded to everyone in the hospital, with their stressed-out, sweaty smiles. Jake thanked them and hurried to the conference room.

     The rest of the team was waiting for him and turned to him when he burst in through the door. It was a combination of looks he received: judgmental frowns and satisfied grins. The middle-aged woman to present said arrogantly, “Now that we are all here.…” And then something turned off in Jake. He could not hear her voice, nor could he see her. There was a window open and he took a seat across from it so he could look out the window. It was windy outside and the sun was shining. It had been cloudy on the drive in early that morning. Jake had come in early to work on some emails regarding the possible preparation of a presentation about the implementation of a program. But why dwell on that? It was sunny and wind was blowing and a tree reached up past the window and spread its branches across it. And the wind was taking the white leaves and spinning them so that it looked like flurries of snow. Jake remembered when he had seen something like this before….

I pulled up to the entrance to the school and noticed something in the air. It looked like snow. But it was May and warm and it was not snow but the white flowerings of some cherry trees twirling on the wind. I rolled down the window and felt the spring wind and smelled the leaves. I reached out and grabbed a fistful. My girls came out with their teacher Mr. Poulton. Mr. Poulton must have seen the emotion on my face and my fistful of little white blooms, because he smiled and shook his head and it seemed he was made happier by my happiness. “How beautiful!” I shouted, and I could have cried….

Sitting there in the meeting facing the open window with the shedding tree: it was the high-point of his day. Jake could see past the tree all the way to the building across the street, and looking up Jake could see the yellow and blue sky. And it was hard on the eyes to stare at the sky. The air came cool and fresh into the conference room, and Jake held it in his lungs.

     “Will someone close that window?” said the woman presenting. “Is anyone else chilly?”

     Jake could hear her again and see her. He said, “I kind of like it.”

     “Well, Jake, I’m cold. Your young blood can handle it. I’m chilly. Do you mind?”

     Yes he minded! It was the high-point of his week! Couldn’t she bear it? No, of course she couldn’t. “I’ll close it,” said Jake.

‘“I’ll close it,’ you said with your stupid self-deprecating smile, and you closed it gently and returned to your seat happily and your act was believable, but on the inside you felt raped of an innocence." Now was a few days later. Jake was talking to himself. “You were like a child that doesn’t know the names of things. You knew it felt good and was pleasing. You knew you wanted to be outside with the good feeling all round you, to look up, down, forward, back, and have that pleasant feeling go right into you. You were a child, an infant, staring at the outside world.” Jake whispered aloud to himself, “Why build buildings and work in them?” He was crossing the tunnel—he spent a lot of time here, underground—on target for another meeting. “But tomorrow is Saturday,” he said, “and you can spend the whole day outside with the kids. And you can show them and tell them about what really matters.” Jake sighed, fatigued, sick of hurrying. “How absurd,” he thought out loud, then silently, “But it’s how I make a living—I make a living—that has to count for something. I’m just done pretending. I mean, I’ll keep acting, but there’ll be no more lying to myself. You’re thirty-two years old. It’s time you have some self respect.”

Mount Si

Where my foot needed to go was snow-covered and there was no way to tell if it would hold. But that was where my foot had to go. “I think I see it,” I said.

     He was above on a perch clinging to a bush. He smiled warily. “Careful. Go slow.”    

     If I slipped my job was to keep my body into the cliff, to tuck my feet into my butt and press my forehead into the rock. We were a hundred feet up without a rope. It was stupid.

     My foot held.

     The next move was a big downward step. I said, “One more tough one and the rest is easy.”

     You could see the fear on him, surely as you could see it on me. Regardless, we stayed calm. I looked down.

     It was exhilarating to look at. It was a perverse feeling. I was not seeking death, instead seeing if I was ready.

     I eased down. My foot held. I blindly reached over flaky rock and found a finger-hold. Quickly I made another move, and the tough part was over. I said, “Do you see where you have to go?”

     He lowered himself onto the vertical section, facing the peak. I slid over in the fall-path. If he slipped, either I arrested the slide or we went as one. I asked him, “Do you see it?”

     “No.”

     “Take your time.”

     His leg shook. It was part of him I had never seen before. He had a wonderful ability to push through pain. He never exuded weakness. I thought the shaking must be uncontrollable, for he kept his composure. I said, “If you slip lean into the rock.”

     The leg trembled as if it was separate from the rest of his body. Then he peered down and his face was stern, and the leg stopped. It was another taste, not long awaited, of his indestructibility.

     I braced myself against the incline. It felt unstable, that my feet might slip at any time. “Do you see it?”

     “I think so.”

     I was ready to catch him but then he made it look easy.

      

It was nice to be on the flat of the plateau. Gray cloud curled over us. I told him good job. He replied, “I was dizzy for a second. I took codeine this morning. I shouldn’t’ve been up there.”

     We ate lunch on a buttress of black stone. The wren ate out of our hands. We lobbed globs of bread into the abyss and watched the little gray birds dive after them, swooping underneath the bread and gobbling it out of the air.

    

A week later the snow lay thin and fresh on the slope. I watched light flutter down on dust-like snow. The sky was changing and blue was coming through.

     On the trail, the conifers were populous and rose straight up off the terrain. The trunks were thin and gray and limbless at eye-level. We had been at it an hour, he and I.  “Pretty isn’t it?” I said. 

     “Yeah.” He was stalking the trail. I knew he hurt. He had to hurt. The trail turned and steepened. I felt bad for talking. For spoiling it. I tried not to think about him, but I could not help it.  Why was he going so hard?

    

When I came up on him he was retching. His head was hung over his knees. The snow at his feet was red. I asked if he was alright though I knew how he would answer. 

     “Yeah.” He kicked dirt and snow over the blood and resumed. I thought he probably liked the pain in his lungs and legs, for it was distraction.

     It was not long before I had lost him again. When I found him he was resting on a jut. He was peering at the freeway in the valley. I stood next to him. You could hear the traffic. Watching the succession of cars made me feel lousy. I hated being a part of it. Turning away he said, “We drove two hours to get here.”

    

We struggled.

     It was good to be where it was quiet. The soul might fix itself out here. A man can howl and bark at clouds and cry and argue with himself.

     What was he thinking now as we came out of the woods and upon the mounds of granite black and slick and piled as if it was a quarry? Was he wondering if he had been dumped from above? Does it matter what I do? You know the one and she is gone and there is nothing you can do. Craving escape, to be present. It will be too late when you finally make it.

     I smelled scarf. I was warm inside a sweater and fir-lined corduroy coat and acrylic socks. I asked him how he felt. He was more comfortable than last time. He wore a small yellow backpack now and had tissue in the nose of his boots.

     We climbed over pillars of rock leaning like great growths of crystal. Clean snow lay like drapery in the creases. We wanted to look at the haystack.

     Getting close I asked why. I thought that it was you heap up a bunch of responsibilities and then have to prove to yourself you are still free. You need to know you have not slid into cowardice with all you have to lose.

     “I don’t want to die in a hospital,” I said to my friend.

     “I know,” he said.

     “I feel I could die right now and be okay with it,” and I stopped myself from saying I had lived a full life, for that belief will bring out the coward too.

     “I am not ready to die,” he said. “That’s what I figured out last time. I am not ready and don’t want to. Dying is selfish.”

     We crowned the mountain. The sky was all blue, and the sun was soothing. We paused just a moment and then found our way to the haystack.

     “It doesn’t look that scary from down here,” he said. “Should we try it?”

     I laughed. We returned to the same projection of rock and spent time with the birds.

     “Look at the city,” he said. It was like looking at Seattle in a glass ball. It looked quaint, unobtrusive, there in the flat environed by the biome.

     “Are you ready to be a dad again?” he asked me.

     “Now I am,” I said.

     “You needed what happened last time.”

     “I think so.”

     “Me too,” he said.

Halfway down we rested. We lay back on the snow above the trail. It felt wonderful to recline. I thought of what I had read in some Vedic text about Krishna admiring men who live well.

     We broke once more near the bottom of Mount Si. We trudged off trail and knelt beside a creek and lapped water over our faces. I swished some and it was cold and delicious.

     We sat away from each other on decaying logs, and we talked about never wanting to leave.