When I was a boy at summer camp, I learned from nature. Oh yeah my family lived in suburbia, but it wan’t the same. Actually it was largely the same. But not at camp. Here there were fish in the lake that I didn’t recognize, and mosquitoes everywhere that I did. And there was corn to be husked for evening dinner. There were chickens for breakfast eggs to be collected if they didn’t object too strongly. And there was a fox who one year kinda liked my blanket at least until dawn. (We had a swinging screen door on the cabin, so he could come and go as he wanted.) And butterflies I had never seen, and an assortment of snakes I’d encounter on my walks thru the woods.
I never knew any of this would take — enter my mind in important ways, become a vital teacher on my journey. But eventually I made it upstate and later started growing veggies at a community garden and still later chose a house, because it was clear cut from the building to the trees. And I thought well I don’t know if I can take care of a house, but I can garden.
And that’s all I have to say about that.
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