raged in my head, my thoughts a low, angry mutter that never reached my numb tongue. Then I tripped over something, perhaps the same round shape that tripped me up yesterday when I fell into their tent, and the entire load slipped from my arms and took my flute with it to bounce off and be buried somewhere in all of that junk.
And all of my anger fell away with it; my fists and teeth slowly unclenched as I felt the rage drain from my body and out through my feet to the soil where it could dissipate across the whole garden, spread thin until it posed no threat and all that energy could be put to use. Shame crept into its place, shame at the damage I'd done and my cruel disrespect, shame at my own stupid lack of self-control. All the autonomy I'd learned in this garden, all of that independence, what was it worth if I let other people dictate my most private feelings? How self-sufficient was that?
I crawled through their campsite on hands and knees, looking for my lost flute and trying to arrange things the way they had been, trying to move blurry shapes back to where they belonged. I spread their clothes on the bushes, though perhaps not the same clothes that had been there before, and I tried to arrange their other equipment more evenly over the ground instead of piled in the angry clump I'd constructed. But when I was done, when I'd done my blind best, there was still no sign of my flute, only a sharp tang of detergent stinging my nose from crawling so close to their clothing.
I deserved it, I knew that. I'd earned the loss of my long-faithful flute through arrogant rage and selfish desires to smash up the camp. I'd wanted to tear down their home—albeit a transient one, a tent—and now I'd lost something in it. Disappointed as I was, I couldn't call that unfair, so I stood up and I picked my way out of their campsite and returned to the task of getting my meal. Fluteless, but with a new note blown through me by the Old Man's firm breath. If he had wanted me to evict them, if he had wanted me to respond to their presence at all, he would have told me what I should do. I should have done what I'd done for as long as always, as if those hikers weren't here. Harvesting carrots and digging potatoes, scraping bark from birch trees and picking rose hips and, on a good day, snatching fish from the river.
I spend so much more of my time finding food than I did when this garden was new, and when I was new to this garden. Hunger wasn't a problem while Mr. Crane and his house were still here and my meals arrived as if by magic. Nothing fancy, porridge in the morning and a bucket of stew and a hard loaf of bread to split between my other meals, but those meals kept me fed and they came every day. Simple and solid as my cave and my ratty old blankets.
As simple and solid as me, too, I would like to think, but these unwelcome and angry emotions have thrown me off course. To have been so provoked and pulled so far out of myself—there's no question what I'll spend the rest of today and who knows how long thinking about as I float and I harvest and weed. These hikers are colonizing more of my energy and time than I'd like to admit, and much more of my meditations, but it's me who is letting them do it and it's me who must make it stop and must go about life in this garden as my life is supposed to be lived.
After all that, my attack on the campsite and the loss of my flute, my own shameful loss of control, I was too sick to my stomach to eat lunch at all, so rather than head for my cave and my kettle as I'd intended, I walked toward the beehives to sit on the hill that rises behind them. At moments like that, when my mind is a muddle and focus is hard to find, the droning hum of the hives helps me center by blocking out every sound—something that has become harder and harder now that my hearing is doing double work to make up for my eyes.
On the way to the hives, following the dark wall of the blackberry brambles until I reached
And all of my anger fell away with it; my fists and teeth slowly unclenched as I felt the rage drain from my body and out through my feet to the soil where it could dissipate across the whole garden, spread thin until it posed no threat and all that energy could be put to use. Shame crept into its place, shame at the damage I'd done and my cruel disrespect, shame at my own stupid lack of self-control. All the autonomy I'd learned in this garden, all of that independence, what was it worth if I let other people dictate my most private feelings? How self-sufficient was that?
I crawled through their campsite on hands and knees, looking for my lost flute and trying to arrange things the way they had been, trying to move blurry shapes back to where they belonged. I spread their clothes on the bushes, though perhaps not the same clothes that had been there before, and I tried to arrange their other equipment more evenly over the ground instead of piled in the angry clump I'd constructed. But when I was done, when I'd done my blind best, there was still no sign of my flute, only a sharp tang of detergent stinging my nose from crawling so close to their clothing.
I deserved it, I knew that. I'd earned the loss of my long-faithful flute through arrogant rage and selfish desires to smash up the camp. I'd wanted to tear down their home—albeit a transient one, a tent—and now I'd lost something in it. Disappointed as I was, I couldn't call that unfair, so I stood up and I picked my way out of their campsite and returned to the task of getting my meal. Fluteless, but with a new note blown through me by the Old Man's firm breath. If he had wanted me to evict them, if he had wanted me to respond to their presence at all, he would have told me what I should do. I should have done what I'd done for as long as always, as if those hikers weren't here. Harvesting carrots and digging potatoes, scraping bark from birch trees and picking rose hips and, on a good day, snatching fish from the river.
I spend so much more of my time finding food than I did when this garden was new, and when I was new to this garden. Hunger wasn't a problem while Mr. Crane and his house were still here and my meals arrived as if by magic. Nothing fancy, porridge in the morning and a bucket of stew and a hard loaf of bread to split between my other meals, but those meals kept me fed and they came every day. Simple and solid as my cave and my ratty old blankets.
As simple and solid as me, too, I would like to think, but these unwelcome and angry emotions have thrown me off course. To have been so provoked and pulled so far out of myself—there's no question what I'll spend the rest of today and who knows how long thinking about as I float and I harvest and weed. These hikers are colonizing more of my energy and time than I'd like to admit, and much more of my meditations, but it's me who is letting them do it and it's me who must make it stop and must go about life in this garden as my life is supposed to be lived.
After all that, my attack on the campsite and the loss of my flute, my own shameful loss of control, I was too sick to my stomach to eat lunch at all, so rather than head for my cave and my kettle as I'd intended, I walked toward the beehives to sit on the hill that rises behind them. At moments like that, when my mind is a muddle and focus is hard to find, the droning hum of the hives helps me center by blocking out every sound—something that has become harder and harder now that my hearing is doing double work to make up for my eyes.
On the way to the hives, following the dark wall of the blackberry brambles until I reached
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