Stories
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The Swallows soared, dove, skimmed the water, turned around and came back again in a profusion that was aerial dance and acrobatics.
The bats mostly stayed over the land just above me, flying in their jerky way. They would be out at most a half an hour and then drift away. I wondered if that was it for the night, and they went back home, or could they get enough to eat in just 30 minutes?
The next morning, the first thing I checked on the baby bird but it was dead and just as I left it. Now I felt really bad and buried it. After breakfast it was fish some more, pump water through water purifier, walk around the lake, busy, busy, busy. It was in the later part of the day that I decided to smoke some grass. I had brought a little bit with me in case I wanted to do a little experimenting, and was not something I usually did on backpack trips. After I took a couple of tokes, I sat back in my chair and I thought - "My God what a beautiful place", as if I was noticing it for the first time.
Intellectually I was aware, which was why I would expend all that energy to get out there. "What am I doing", I thought to myself. "I am busy, busy, busy - do this and do that, so that I hardly notice where I am. Why don't you just sit back and look at it - feel it?" And so I vowed to do nothing - to just sit and look and take it in - not to be running all over the place chasing baby birds to their death.
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