Once upon a time, there were feathers dangling like this everywhere. They were suspended at different levels, so you’d never know where on your body you might get tickled. Some people were so sensitive to it, that they spent their lives crawling on their bellies. Those people eventually evolved into snakes and other low lying reptiles. Back then, the species that didn’t have fur used to map all their journeys to maximise feather tickling. They’d often develop elaborate dances and take the extra long way, just to pass by their favourite feather or two. Things were better for people then, because capitalism didn’t exist, and no one lived or worked in a cubicle. People just twisted and turned through forests of feathers before getting on with whatever it was that needed doing. People twirled much more back then. They would stick their arms out wide, tip their heads back, and turn.
These are called tree crisps and are a very rare find indeed. In fact, they’re so rare that I had to consult my Woodland Trust app to even know what they are. According to the app, tree crisps (or arbores calamistratus to use their proper name) generally taste of salt and vinegar. However, there are some varieties growing in the West Country which taste like prawn cocktail, and in extremely rare occasions in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, you may find tomato ketchup flavoured ones. I don’t know about that though, it sounds a bit far fetched to me, but then again, so does deep frying a pizza. The reason tree crisps are so rare is because they only appear to hungry travellers who habitually kiss trees. I wasn’t actually hungry as it goes: the tree mistook my fannying about taking random photos of Serious Pig rosemary cheese balls as a
This is known locally as The Wizard’s Tombstone, because that’s actually what it is. It’s an interdimensional marker which blends in by taking the form of a common warning sign. So in this dimension it looks like a traffic cone, but in another it would look like something quite different. I can’t help you imagine what, as I am from this dimension and I am not sure what common warning markers look like in other dimensions. Any attempt I make at a description would likely be hopelessly inaccurate. Let’s think about it a little. Warning markers in this dimension come in a wide variety of types: prickly spines, too good to be true handsome types, unseasonably yellowing leaves, top marks on everything, bottom marks on everything, and switching cat tails. So a warning marker elsewhere could be anything from a pebble to a peach to a piranha. The problem with warning
I was a beech tree in a former life, which is why I am confident in asserting that this beech tree was once an elephant. I asked her if she minded being a tree, so far away from the savannahs and grasslands of her African home. She said she didn’t mind it so much, as a different kind of forest was also once her home. I am not so sure about that, because the forest spirit of Epping has mostly gone, and where it remains, it is angry, anxious, and in pain. So I wonder how much time the forest, and this tree, has left. I went to hug her trunk to show her the love I could feel she was missing. When I did so, I saw with utter clarity her life before this one on the plains. I knew then that, contrary to what she said, my suspicions were
At the beginning of 2023, I started regularly hiking / walking. I mainly did linear coastal hikes at first, but by the summer, I had done all the walks I knew and had a failure of imagination on how to find new ones. I knew about Alltrails, a database of walks, but for one reason or another, I wanted to create my own walks. However, I didn’t know how. As a Londoner without a car, I am limited to day hikes which are either circular from a national rail station or linear between two stations. I like to walk between 20-30km each time and don’t really want to spend more than 2 hours travelling to the destination point, even less in the winter months due to shorter days. A neighbour recommended a lovely book by Julia Smith called Walks for Each Season, which I highly recommend. It is very pretty in