Three turkey toms ambled through the meadow in front of me, and a deer held up its sinewy neck to see me, stretching out its super-sensitive ears. I tried to stalk the deer, but of course my gumboots' squeaky flap against my calves with each step gave me away, and presently they thundered past me, on the other side of a copse of trees. Two adults and two darker speckled fawns, the adults way ahead of the shorter-limbed babies, so sweet, but my pictures were just blurred, too excited to hold the camera still!
I walked today with Molly, as I was in a hurry because I still had so much to do before the visitors arrived.
There were two young siblings in the party, 10 and 6, who performed America the Beautiful in 4 variations, rock, opera, country and regular, which was very funny and very sweet. They stood there, so beautiful and young themselves, so proud of their creation, belting out the words, in tune with one another, Gina and Chris the Beautiful.
Amazing how children are mostly so happy to perform, how wonderful it is to see them singing like that, or dancing with abandon, like my little girls used to do when we would go to live concerts. And all the videos Emma and Jess made me take of them and their friends, making up plays, doing their own creative dances to the tunes of the day, Cher's It's in his Kiss, for example. And the boys asking me to film them doing funny routines with long staffs they had made from driftwood on the beach, or singing, or just clowning around, and eventually making their own videos, filming elaborate stories. All those creative moments captured, all those fragments of childhood, of my beloved offspring, my darlings, all those dancing singing performing genes handed down from those of their bloodline who came before: a pretty young grandmother cooking sausages and mash, singing in the kitchen, a great-uncle playing the violin on stage for the soldiers of the Great War, a great-grandfather performing in private for his wife, to make her laugh, a father playing the guitar and singing in his beautiful voice for his friends.
Today a quick sketch of a seagull.
In Campagny (continued)
The flutter of green wings. "Looker! Looker!" He awoke again with a start to find Beeze fanning his face with her flight. "Come with me," she ordered, "Hurry, Looker!"
He rose with difficulty and followed the green beacon through the dim forest, as it was almost dark now. She led him to an wizened tree next to a flat grey rock. As he approached the rock he could see and hear honeybees. They were buzzing around on the rock, not too many, but enough to give a good stinging if they were not careful.
Beeze told him to ignore them and eat the honeycomb. "Eat this and you will be fine, the honey badger left you some." His hungry stomach longed for the honey, so he searched his pockets for his gloves and hat. Pulling the hat down over his face as far as possible, and putting up his collar, he gingerly reached for the honeycomb.
He managed to eat most of it and use some for his head wound, and was only stung once, which was good. Beeze congratulated him. "It looks like you are feeling better now, so we will continue down. There is a cave where you can sleep, not very far from here, and in the morning we will find a clearport and hitch a ride on a flier."
Luca had no idea what she was talking about, but he did feel better, and looked forward to sleep, so he put one foot in front of the other, as his mother had taught him for difficult and exhausted times, and in this way they made it down to the cave.
The cave had sleeping supplies which he had not expected, soft blankets, with lightsticks and firesticks. No food though. He wrapped himself in one of the warm blankets and fell asleep at once.
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