oh so, umm, yeah. i spent the day in the woods again. i can’t HELP myself (or maybe i am helping myself. think about that). i still want to be out there right now, the sun is finally out to stay when it was mainly hiding behind clouds for most of the day. but i can’t be out there all the time. can i? one day. not right now. i do miss the days when emma and i lived on the river though, being outside all day for weeks on end. that is life. i am hungry for it. the season definitely comes into play, the never-ending light and not the scorching heat of summer yet, everything opening up and stretching after a season of hibernation. spring is the season that makes all the promises, it brims. i found my first unfurling trillium today! and then i found my second on the way home! i hiked out to moss cliff camp #1, which was the dreamy one found those weeks ago. but it turns out i don’t like it as much as moss cliff camp #2. i stayed at 1 for an hour or so, moving myself into the sunlight when it came out. #1 faces north, so the sunlight is patchy through the trees. the sweet thing about the camp, and partly why it is so dreamy, is the river bends there so you have a longer view of it, you are not just right on top of it. but i was feeling called back to #2, so i hiked back through the moss-valley-big-tree-vortex and up the other side. camp #2 faces almost directly south, and is way less rocky, so a tent would actually go up well there. here i whiled away the afternoon taking pictures and filming a little and journaling between stints of writing a letter to navi. navi and i are only in sporadic contact, so she didn’t know i had not yet moved to the wee island, and therefore sent me a letter there general delivery. this was part of the reason i went there a couple of weeks ago, to pick up her letter. it had already been some weeks that it was waiting for me there, and it is now some weeks since i picked it up. but i wanted to wait til the right time to read it and respond. letters are treasures. they hold so much, and they are a slow pleasure. you can pick them up and savour them until the time is ripe. i did open it when i got it, and pulled out the photos she sent, and read what she wrote on the backs of those. and i opened up the paper she wrote the letter on and revelled in it’s beauty. but i did not read it, oh no. the peek helped to tide me over, and since then the letter has been sitting on my desk, flirting with me, waiting for me to dive in. today was the day. what a gift it is to receive someone else’s words, to be trusted with their thoughts, and to have it all wrapped up in beauty.

so it looks like i will be moving by the end of the coming week. i am kind of excited. it means less amenities, but i will be more in the forest as opposed to a parking lot. and change is stimulating, if also upheaving. i have been a little bit bemoaning living in a bus, because it can be difficult to find a spot to park sometimes, but i guess that has to do partly with what you are looking for and how much you are willing to pay. if you are willing to pay enough, i suppose you would be welcome almost anywhere. but then i remember the blessings of bus life – that i do not have to pack and unpack my everything, that i will have all that i need, and know where it is. there are pros and cons to every choice we make. i think i have found a pretty good spot, it is just down the road, so still pretty close to the river and uninhabited forest land. i will have an outhouse, and this time around i will have to set up an outdoor shower. which brings me one step closer to what life will be like on the wee island. i will also no longer have hot water (in dad’s house), a washing machine, or access to a freezer. i haven’t been using my fridge in the bus because dad’s was available and i have never actually run mine for long periods of time. when i did try it, it had a fan. i am not sure if the fan runs all the time, but it wasn’t something i wanted to listen to. i guess now i will find out what it’s like. again, this will be good practice for life on the wee island, where i will be off-grid. i am doing pretty good for being ready to leave. i still have to pack up all the firewood into containers to haul over there, and make the bus ready to move – putting away all the little things i have on shelves. and then bring in all the tidbits i have in dad’s like laundry detergent, shower supplies and fridge food. a little here a little there, but there must always be time for the woods. calming and grounding in the midst of it all.