a different forest story
Nov. 21st, 2016 09:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2gvWFcU:
thebyrchentwigges:
Once upon a time, there were some benevolent years called the early 90s. Oversized white t-shirts were sexy, everybody ate carbs, and friends wrote and mailed long letters. And it was during the 90s that I went on an all-women geology field trip.
We were on the road for four days. Seven women students, one woman professor, one woman TA, a van, and the rolling early-autumn hills of the Poconos in northern Pennsylvania. It was as positive and harmonious as could be. I had a mild, agreeable crush on someone in the van. I believe there were s’mores. The Lumberjanes Do A Science.
On one of the middle days of our trip, we drive up one of the worn-down, tree-draped mountains. The forest’s greenery is just starting to be touched with yellow and brown. We were going to climb a fire watch station and get a look at the geography. Our van pulls up to this site: there’s a cabin, maybe two, and the fire watch tower. A dog lollops out to greet us. The dog is wearing a bandana. The fire watch tower’s human emerges, a lanky man. He says nothing in greeting.
Instead, he begins to juggle.
We fall out of our van, entranced. He raises the stakes by balancing himself on some kind of teeter-totter. When he lets the balls drop, he tells us that we are welcome. That we can climb the fire tower. And that we are also welcome to play with his circus equipment.
We spend an idyllic half hour trying out juggling clubs, balls, balance beams, and hula hoops. Oh, and climbing the tower, taking in the roll of the land beneath its blanket of temperate rainforest. The land and the circus toys and the bandana dog all seemed part of the same benevolent magic.
I don’t remember how we left - looking back, I wonder why we left. But we did.
thebyrchentwigges:
Once upon a time, there were some benevolent years called the early 90s. Oversized white t-shirts were sexy, everybody ate carbs, and friends wrote and mailed long letters. And it was during the 90s that I went on an all-women geology field trip.
We were on the road for four days. Seven women students, one woman professor, one woman TA, a van, and the rolling early-autumn hills of the Poconos in northern Pennsylvania. It was as positive and harmonious as could be. I had a mild, agreeable crush on someone in the van. I believe there were s’mores. The Lumberjanes Do A Science.
On one of the middle days of our trip, we drive up one of the worn-down, tree-draped mountains. The forest’s greenery is just starting to be touched with yellow and brown. We were going to climb a fire watch station and get a look at the geography. Our van pulls up to this site: there’s a cabin, maybe two, and the fire watch tower. A dog lollops out to greet us. The dog is wearing a bandana. The fire watch tower’s human emerges, a lanky man. He says nothing in greeting.
Instead, he begins to juggle.
We fall out of our van, entranced. He raises the stakes by balancing himself on some kind of teeter-totter. When he lets the balls drop, he tells us that we are welcome. That we can climb the fire tower. And that we are also welcome to play with his circus equipment.
We spend an idyllic half hour trying out juggling clubs, balls, balance beams, and hula hoops. Oh, and climbing the tower, taking in the roll of the land beneath its blanket of temperate rainforest. The land and the circus toys and the bandana dog all seemed part of the same benevolent magic.
I don’t remember how we left - looking back, I wonder why we left. But we did.
