Walk Around

I am sitting on the floor, at a pine coffee table I bought from IKEA a few months back. Simmering on the stove is a blend of herbs I formulated for the challenges of my current stage of life.In the oven is a piece of salmon caught in a distant ocean.I am typing on a laptop that is essentially a magic rock, made of elements (Aluminum, Copper, Gold, Selenium, Silicon, rare earth metals) from supernovæ that somehow made their way to earth over inexplicable time.Its quiet in this room, in this condo in a building in downtown. It feels, in some ways, like a library. As possessions go, I could fit everything I own in here in my van and drive away, with plenty of room for a passenger. But I own more things than I have in ten years. I am living a life I never could have imagined.And yet, amidst all the change, life always feels about the same. I guess because it is me that is living it. There is a strange thread that continues, day after day after day, and that thread I suppose I call myself. Resilient through changes and losses and gainses (sic), it continues while all else falls away.Until, I suppose, it doesn’t.But I don’t know what that feels like, and can only guess at the hereafter.There is so much talk of big shifts this year. “A new world order” as a world leader said. Large movements of distant planets that are said to impact our emotions. A lunar new year with double fire energy.Everyone seems to be saying: get ready.Get ready.Get ready.But ready for what?To me, readiness creates tension. Some kind of bracing for a fast start, or some future that cannot be controlled.But I don’t know what to get ready for. Maybe others do, maybe they know exactly where they are headed and how to do it all.I own that I don’t. I have no idea what to be ready for. And to fabricate something seems to be fabricating a form of augury that I don’t have an honest claim on.And so maybe what I need to be ready for, is to release control. To allow what comes.In many ways, living alone, I am spending more time on my own, with my own thoughts, than I have in some time. And studying medicine, I’m finding yet again that I am on a somewhat solitary, inward journey.Having come through the most difficult two years of my life, I am now sitting at a precipice, looking into the future. What will I do with all the supposed potential of my current life? I want to create a healing arts center in the high desert that will allow expressions of creativity as a form of life giving culture. And the opportunity for people to come practice healing modalities of many different kinds there.But to be honest, I don’t even know what healing is.And some days, I suck at caring for myself.I have a hard time eating alone, because it’s boring. I like cooking for people.Living alone and being single in a city can be hard. There are rules here that I have had to learn, and a lot of unhealthy social dynamics that people accept as status quo.Though I feel that all of this is on some kind of thread of direction that feels real to me. At least as real as anything I’ve done before, with the added aspect of being recognized after this passage as more than just a random artist with a camera, laptop, microphone, and notebook. I’ll have a license, be an “acupuncturist.”Is this what becoming yourself looks like?Because to me it feels messy, imperfect, uncertain, misty, painful, lonely, and strange—and this process has been going on for a LONG time.Sometimes I don’t know where its leading me.Two springs ago, when I couldn’t sleep more than a couple hours for weeks on end, was having panic attacks and night terrors when I did sleep, felt haunted by my own psyche, like I was an embarrassment to myself, my family and the world—I went to visit my sister in Boise. It was a blur of a trip. I can’t remember really what happened. My nervous system was so dysregulated, that even with my years of mediation experience, I couldn’t get myself into a calm state. I had to stop consuming any form of caffeine for half a year—I went off sugar completely for over a month. I experienced a complete nervous system collapse. This is what recovery from a long term addiction looks like, in case you were wondering.But there was a moment in the airport on the way, when I was sitting in the atrium area, and I noticed an old man dressed nicely, accompanied by his wife. They came up to me. I was listening, as I often do, to an album, and had recently been inspired to investigate dance by a person I was dating. The track was called Scythe Master by Four Tet. So I was dancing a little in the chair. I don’t know if he saw me dancing, or was just attracted to whatever vibe I was giving off.But he sat down at the table with me, after asking permission. He looked to be late 80s or early 90s, and his wife had a beautiful German accent. He told me he was a retired doctor, from WSU Medical Center in Seattle. He asked where I was going, and told me about the train trip he had taken north, long ago, through a tunne

Without honesty, life becomes a pantomime. And yet it’s hard to know what’s true.I’ve found that truth unfolds in concentric rings; like ripples in a still pool of water, or the growth of a tree.And each ring references, yet also takes space from, the previous.And so only in cycles of time, and in seasons, is a kind of long term knowing revealed.It’s easy to forget that there is a kind of glacial energy to the every day, like leaves unnoticed piling in drifts in the gutters in autumn. Each day another leaf, and soon enough, there’s a drift of half noticed moments, forgotten days, and the occasional memory that stays forever. And this is life?Through the threads of being and days, acting and passivity, choices and impositions, life passes.There’s a phrase in the northern part of Italy, up against the alps: “Tiempo alla passa. Passa il bin.” Which is dialect for: Time passes. Pass it well.And I came across a phrase, translated from Lao Tze by Lori Dechars, that says:How do I know the way of things at the beginning?I feel like I’ve come to a thought about life and love in general recently that feels clear: which is that I should let what loves me do so, and I should love only what I love. And endlessly let go of those things that aren’t this.In that way, I stop resisting the flow of life, and live out a trajectory that is true. And maybe I’ll gain some energy from no longer resisting the inevitable course that my journey wants to make.In all this, in writing and in conversation, I try to find the words that are true. And yet its always hard to find the right words. And in that same way, its hard to know when to follow what is easy, or pursue what is hard.It’s important to remember the rules of life. But I lost my rule book long ago. I do my best to make up whatever makes sense to do, whatever’s true, vital, alive, and real. And to remember that resisting is a form of safety. That it’s good to be safe sometimes, but a life that’s always safe... is maybe one that produces no living.Thanks for listening ~ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run

Vic PlaylistApple Music • SpotifyTRANSCRIPTA long time ago, I used to have some friends who liked to go around the country by riding freight trainsThey'd hitch out of Omaha or Lincoln or usually Kansas City and end up in Pennsylvania or Montana, California, ArizonaI never caught a ride with any of themI didn't really ever have the chanceBut I liked to sit with them on the rails and the bridges and watch the trains go byAnd they'd tell me about the different kinds of cars and which ones were good rides, where they were going, what you had to look out forMaybe that's why when I went for a walk recently and found an old abandoned railroad trestle in the western part of Victoria's downtown in Canada, where I live now. I climbed over a fence and went and sat on it for a whileAnd I've been going back to it, sitting there and watching cars go by, people, a couple of stories up above the groundI don't really have anything else to say but that, just a funny memory, I guessMaybe a reflection about living in an urban place because I've lived out in the countryside for so long nowRead more here This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run

At the checkout counter, the southeast Asian guy whose country affiliation I can’t quite figure out smiles at me and asks how my day is going. We smile back and forth, subtly catching each others eye, like we are in on the same joke that neither of us know. His haircut is high and tight, he’s got a golden wedding band, he’s always here at apna, the Indian cafeteria and grocery store I come to for cheap chai, dosas, and studying. ....Full text & photos: https://walkaround.run This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run

LakeYou are a young girl playing on a log with your brother and dog The water in the lake clear and cold and deep, the rocks warm on the bank, little cottonwoods grow on the edge, in the distance: Mountains near enough to cast their shape on the waters surface. The water blue and green some rocks white, moved there in glacial time. One day you will be a woman Living in a city apartment And you will go down to a corner bar And you will meet a man, with curling dark hair And apricot eyes And you will tell him About the pink bathing suit you wore that day About how you called your dog giggles, but his name was Oliver How you tried to get him to float on the log About how warm the sun, and cold the water was About the moment your uncle and giggles fell off the log and shriekedAbout how your brother died that summer And you'd run down a winding road With the wind blowing in one ear,The grass cicadas drone in the other You’ll be shocked to feel so young Yet so far from something long ago Be alarmed and excited at the warm hand of this once stranger Holding your arm as your memories surge And you cry, and are held. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run

TranscriptHello...I am on the hillside listening to two coveys of quail call back and forthThey've been slowly getting closer over the last 15 minutes, and I think they're going to link upI saw one groupThey had a bunch of fluffy little hatchlings running aroundI don't know how big the other group is thoughI'm below a range of mountains with snow and avalanche gullies, forests up the sides, larch and fir, ponderosa pineAh, wow, a western tanager just landed in a pine treeI haven't seen one yet this yearThat was coolThey're bright, bright orange, bright red, yellow, golden, crazy looking birdsProbably the most brilliant bird in the west maybeI guess there's lazuli buntings out here tooOr is it indigo buntings?....that quail is trying to get the other quails to come overThere's boulders on this hillside, and one of my favorite tea plants which is wild tarragonI gathered about eight stems of it just nowIt's a good spot for itThere's a bunch of plantsIt's nice to be hereI feel like my mind is already clearing out from the dampness of the coastal, humid, cold Salish SeaUp here in the high mountains, a divergent part of the Rockies above a big lakeOn a glacial moraineI guess I wanted to offer this today as just kind of way of saying of thanks to peopleEverybody that's supported me over the yearsEveryone who listens to this podcastI guess these quail are listening to it right nowI just feel really gratefulI'm kind of a recovering pessimist, you know, so a lot of that has to do with gratitudePessimism is kind of this idea that there's no safety. Or that things are never going to really be what you wantAnd the opposite of that, obviously, is gratitude for what you haveWhich is actually simple, but for a pessimistic mind, it's harder than it might seemAnd there's a lot to say about pessimismIt definitely comes from damageDefinitely comes from painIt's definitely a protective mechanismBut I feel like I'm growing less and less pessimistic as time goes on, which kind of relieves a huge burden on a personI heard a meadowlark this morning as I was runningDiscovered some physiological linkages between my lumbar and knee that have to do with nervesResearched this type of technique called prickly...prickling nerve stimulation technique, which is developed by a Japanese neurosurgeonAnd it's a technique that's used to stimulate the nerves in the lumbar spineWhich is developed by a Japanese neurosurgeonNeurologist named DrNagata, I thinkBasically, it's the idea that our skin is a direct door of access to our nervous systemWhich means that we wear our nervous system on our sleevesWhich is something to remember, as sensitive humansI think we're all very sensitive, actuallyUnless we've been damaged to the point where we've been able to turn it off, or we've learned how to turn it off, or have been in a mode of having it shut offAnd it's really fascinating to note that there can be healing in the skin and in the tissues, just by stimulating the nerves around areas of traumaAnd it's interesting to note that, more or less, that's what acupuncture functions on, to access the meridians and the internal organs as wellKind of working with the nervous system in a lot of waysI kind of see these quail as part of the Earth's nervous systemAs showing what the weather's doing, and where the good grass seeds and the insects are right nowIt's quiet here, I like itIt's easy to get away, just be in a quiet space that feels really bigI like thatI like to be able to wanderIt feels like it clears my mindIt's starting to rain a little bitAnd I've run out of things to sayI'm gonna walk down this draw and back to the van and head into town, get some groceries and finish settling in to my friend's house where I'll be for the summer doing rangeland surveys out here until I go to school in the fallGot a condo in VictoriaEverything's lining up it seemsI feel really luckyThank you for your support, and thank you for listening. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run

There’s finality to certain things in life. One kind has to do with naming something. Another has to do with speaking its name.Listen for some thoughts on quietude in vast spaces.https://walkaround.run/p/owhyee-countryPublic lands are in the process of being sold. Call your reps!(202) 224-3121https://www.backcountryhunters.org/take_action#/Owyhee Canyonlands: Road to 30 PostcardsMore on Northern Paiute Tribal Member, and FOTO Board Member, Wilson Wewa This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run

Distilled moments of presence in nature More at: https://walkaround.run This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run

TranscriptHey thereSo I am walking the backside of this little meadow, forested area where my mom livesIt's on the edges of old farmland and I'm about to hop over a split rail fence, which is a little awkward, it's a little tallThere's some, a lot of native plants around here, and also some volunteers from elsewhereOregon ash and cottonwood, willow, aspenThere's a grove of hawthorn in full flowerThis is a place where deer hang outFloods in the winterIt's marshy where I am right nowI could probably set up a tent back hereIt's quietI've just come back from the far east side of the stateI was off grid, down in a canyon for four days, in some pretty crazy country, working on a project and just existing reallyI think it was probably the least I've interacted with screens and media in maybe a decadeI didn't really have cell phone signal for about a week and a half, pretty intentionallyI basically just didn't turn my phone on unless I needed navigationAnd then there were three nights and four days when I was down in the bottom of this canyon where I really didn't do anything at allI just kind of existed down thereAte food and had a little fire now and thenWatched the light changeAnd it was beautiful and hard, easy, lonely, quiet, all the thingsAnd I've been thinking a lot about why I do what I do, my work as an artist and personI don't want to think about it too much, but doing something like that made me really consider a lot about why I make things, share things, live the way I doThere's just a lot thereThere's a lot of assumptions, a lot of reasons I've been doing stuff for yearsA lot of time passed, a lot of habits, that kind of thingNow I'm in the Grove of CottonwoodsIt's kind of a flood groveSome reeds back in hereMaybe there's sedgesSo I don't have a lot of answers about why, but I think I discovered a new language of some kind down in that canyonDefinitely a new relationship with myselfThere wasn't much to hide down thereTurns out being alone for long periods of time is pretty toughI mean, I've done it before, but this was different somehowIt's really good to do, but it's not easy sometimesParts of it aren't easyParts of it are really incredibleIt's always funny to be alone in a place like that and run into a person once in a while and realize that pretty much everybody else is out there with other peopleIt really got me thinking about the reasons why people do things and why I do thingsFor me, a lot of it is to get away from loneliness, actuallyFrom being alone with my own thoughtsPartially because they can be boringPartially because it's really not maybe the healthiest long term to always just be alone with one's own thoughtsBut I think that there's something really deep thereAnd I don't consume much mediaI mean, maybe a podcast every two or three daysSometimes I don't listen to one for a week or soBut something I thought was really strange down there is I had songs that I hadn't listened to for many days just repeatedly looping in my headAnd it was almost like my mind was just spinning in neutral, trying to find something stimulating to remember or to latch on toOr maybe it was just digesting everythingMy friend Martin said metabolizing, which I really likeActually metabolizing the experiences that I've hadAnd I think it takes a really silent, open, empty space without any direction, honestlyNo structureNo one else aroundNo informationJust the sun rising and settingAnd sitting in places like that really makes me reconsider kind of my whole life.Why do I do what I do? Why do I want to share writing and recordings with people? What's really at the base of all that? What need of mine is being met? Am I doing it as a means to an end? Or am I doing it as an end in and of itself? And I've decided pretty conclusively that I want to do things in my life that are an end in and of themselvesI don't want to be chasing different activities for a lot of my life because they're giving me something that's not inside of the activity itselfAnd I think I do want to share what I make, but it's difficult to know whether that's worthwhile or not for othersAnd so I decided that I'll do it for my own joy and my own insightsAnd if others want to come along for the ride and see what's thereI mean, I've been doing it this way all along, but I think that there's always these shadow sides, like hidden unconscious sides of any activity or anything a person does that aren't fully available to them unless they sit and really delve into the whyAnd an activity I've been doing recently is asking myself why seven or eight times about something really gets down to the root of what's going onIt's hardI feel like my mind wants to squirm away from those kinds of inquiriesBut I think it's pretty necessary and helpful in the long runI'm leaning on a tree and there's moss on itIt's youngWhat happened is it fell overProbably got blown overThat happened a while agoThe original shoot has since been pruned off by the tree itselfIt's broken off and

DONATIONSI am currently at a residency, in the midst of a self-funded project. Donations on Buy Me A Coffee, PayPal, or Venmo are all seriously appreciated right now—Thank you! In this episode I share a poem I wrote in Idaho last summer, reflections on the residency I'm attending, and some insight about remnants, joy, and grief—life, and death. I also have shared some photos from recent times.Listen, read, and subscribe on the website: https://walkaround.run! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run

If you think about it, what draws people toward something these days is often about reclaiming our humanity.What's healthful, and thus has gravity, are positive expressions about who we are, resiliency, and beauty, especially amidst hardship and grief. Dance, song, creating—expressions of our hands and bodies, and what we can do as humans. The modern craft movement is reweaving the tapestry of our culture—towards something that is functional and healthy, through our own hands and bodies.Mo Hohmann first learned to grow and weave willow in the mountains of Oregon from Peg Matthewson. A craft older than pottery, weaving comes from our ancestral past. Nowadays it's being brought into the light of the present by courageous and inspired makers like Mo and Peg."It's an innate human experience to be drawn by beauty. And beauty is pretty subjective. But it's my experience with the baskets that there is this gravitational pull towards what is beautiful. Because it feeds this deep need as human beings. It's a soul food right? It's something that brings a sense of belonging."Check Mo’s work on her Instagram and website: https://woventhresholds.com. Also, Mo offers online classes through Coyote Willow Schoolhouse, and plans to offer in person classes soon.https://linktr.ee/woventhresholds2025.03.08 Update: In the podcast, Mo discusses watertight baskets and her teacher Peg. However, Peg did not teach her about them, which may have been unclear in the original episode This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run

There's a moment in most of Miyazakis films, when the dialogue and often the music cuts, and a single character (usually the protagonist) is left alone in the raw and open experience of something. It takes mastery to convey a moment such as this, a moment of space and presence.This is the kind of moment I can relate to, when I know that I am who I am, when everything makes sense, when I know right from wrong, when there is magic in the landscape around me. But this type of moment is under relentless assault. https://www.walkaround.run/p/ma This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run

TranscriptThis morning I downloaded and logged into InstagramSomething I haven't done in a month or twoI mostly got off of the platform because I don't really think it's doing good things for humanityThe problem is so many people use itTheir communication and time is used up on itAnd many people have a picture of their reality from itAnd so to not participate is somehow to not exist as a creative personThis is something I've been ruminating on for yearsBut this is just such a short note because what I saw on there this morning, after I made a post about possibly selling some prints to support my schooling, was the two of the most extreme directions that humanity participates in, which are death and birthDeath and birthAnd I saw them in extremely gross expressionsI saw an explosion on a roadwayI saw a giant fireball engulfing cars in a place that I have no idea if I've ever been to or will ever go to or know any of the people or even if it's realBecause it very well and even likely could have been something that an application generatedI don't even like to use the word, but artificial intelligenceIt was probably thatIt probably wasn't even realAnother thing I saw was a video of someone getting slapped so hard that they passed outBut it wasn't only thatIt was an AI-generated image that showed his face collapsing in an unbelievable wayBut it wasn't realBut if someone's just scrolling and they're not paying attention and they see these things, they think, oh, this is realThat just happenedSomething I thought could never happen just happened in front of my very eyesAnd so that's deathThat's actually the death of the human spiritThat is complete collapse and destructivenessBasically to be creating fear through falsehoodAnd then on the other side, I saw a picture of a woman in a dressCould have been AII don't knowI don't know the contextI didn't click on the imageBut she was standing in a shimmery dressAnd so these images..I guess I should add that the dress was very tight-fittingSo basically what I saw was extreme violence and pornographyThat's what is being shown in the algorithmic feed on Instagram that people in general are just being subjected toSo what do we do with that? Well, I reported every single post that I sawIt's not going to change anythingIt's not going to do anythingBut it made me feel better to at least do somethingIn fact, it might make it worseIt only took me about five seconds to do these thingsBut I think it was worth itThe point of this, though, isn't to blame the Instagram platform and the creators for being evil, even though they areEven though the platform is destructive and horrific and terrible and uselessIt's also useful and creative and profound and abundantThe fact is, everything in the world ends up being related to these thingsTo skate along on the surface and believe that these experiences won't touch us is impossibleBut by interacting with the world through a screen, it seems like we can have some distance from the realitiesAnd we can just entertain ourselves by watching them instead of engaging with our livesAnd I think that this is extremely dangerous, and actually more dangerous than being shown violenceI think what's more dangerous is complacency and lack of connection and engagement with life, which is what these platforms really wantThey want you to just feel fear, feel lust, and then not do anything about itJust to consume more fear and more lustThat's the goalBut there's something profound beneath all of this, which is that the reality of fear and desire is inescapable in lifeBut the fact is, we have to be in control of our fears and desiresAnd it doesn't matter what the world shows us or serves us, what the algorithm displays, if we can't keep a center, there's no hopeRight now, it's election day, and the political stratum is basically birth and deathNot a positive form of birth and death, but the most deranged formsIs one better than another? I don't knowIt's all part of a cycleThe cycle doesn't want to endSo, we have to be the endI don't really know what that means, but I'm going to keep engaging with my internal world, with my internal workStaying true to what I know is important and what mattersI'm going to keep focusing on what is beautiful, and what seems powerful to meAnd I won't let my center be swayed by violence and lustThank you for listening. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run

Questioning my assumptions, and an encounter with Amanita, the Fly Agaric mushroom. Be sure to check out the images of the Nehalem and Wilson as well as the dunes at Bayocean Spit on the website This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run

Hello,Welcome to Walk Around. This is Hudson Gardner. It's been a little while.I've been out and about, traveling, hiking, running, doing things that I love, spending time with wonderful people, seeing beautiful things, having really beautiful conversations—learning about myself, learning about others, and by that, learning about this world we all co-create and exist in togetherI'm back in Port Townsend, where I live, and sitting in the pasture near a stand of trees on the edge of the field.It was my birthday a couple of days ago, actually, a week ago, and I have been coming back into some kind of personal awareness and depth inside of my own body and mind recently, thinking about things I've left behind for too long, things I've been incapable of doing, reflecting on life in general.Read more here at walkaround.run This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run

Transcript (includes errors)Hello.Welcome to Walk Around.This is Hudson Gardner.I am sitting at the edge of a field where the trees come out a little bit into the grass.And there's a little secret spot surrounded by hawthorn trees, there's an aspen that has a lot of young aspen around it.And down beneath the willow tree is a place that I come and make a little fire and have tea.I want to tell you a story today.Something that happened 10 summers ago, which feels like a different life, completely different time. A different world, a different person who was living and somehow that person was me and it was the same life in the same world.A hummingbird just landed on a twig of this little snag and he's just watching me.I almost feel like he's listening.So I'll tell him the story too.Ten years ago,I was living in southeast Nebraska in the town that I more or less grew up in called Lincoln.And I was getting ready to do something.I had been there a long time.My luck was running out.There was a general feeling of uncertainty, major change coming that I sensed.I had gotten out of a relationship that was,had been about three years long and it was a messy breakup and it was a hard time.My mom was living on a farm outside of town.And so I was staying in one of the guest rooms as I figured out what I was going to do with my 25-year-old life.And back then I felt that I didn't really have a conviction yet about who I was or what I had to offer I had the beginnings of it, but it was more like just a question and it's safe to say that I now know what that answer is but how to do it is still elusive.But back then I'doften go out to this zendooutside of town on a farm called Branched Oak Farm.It's a dairy farm with probably 15, 20 Jersey cows, some pigs, chickens.Pretty sure it's still going.And it was the best milk I've ever tasted in my life came from that place.Deep, deep yellow.I've never had anything like it.There's something about the pastures in the Great Plains that are just unlike anyother place from all those millions of years of bison and care.And one time I went out to the Zendo and I was in a strange headspace, I guess.I mean, who doesn't go to a Zendo in a strange headspace?And I went out there and before I went to the Zendo that day, I went out to thislittle reservoir nearby.It's the namesake of the farm, Branched Oak Reservoir, Branched Oak Lake.And below the Branched Oak Lake, there's a series of loess hills that were blown there by the wind over millennia.And there's grass and trees and little groves of flowers andI pulled off on the dirt road and in Nebraska you pull off on a dirt road 20 minutes outside of town and you can sit there for an hour and you don't see anybody else.It's a quiet place.And it was probably one of those days like today, beautiful, sunny, big puffy cumulonimbus clouds growing on the horizon, some kind of storm forming in the distance—the wind blowing across the grass and I went into this draw and I don't know what drew me there.I just had a feeling that I should go there and I walked up through the grass and I came to a grove of plants. And I had this intense feeling inside of me this anger at myself for being so old and so incompetent.I felt like I didn't know anything about the world,like I'd been wasting my life sitting around putting myself through school andcollege that I didn't want to go to,staying probably too long in a relationship that wasn't good for me or for the other person, unfortunately.And just being too comfortable.And so I had all those feelings when I walked into the draw and I knew I was on the brink of change.It felt that way.And I felt so angry and there was this plant, there's a big patch of them.And I thought I'm going to show that I have some competence.And I know what to do when I'm out in the wild places.And I took out my knife, which is something I would never do now.And I used it to dig up the root of one of these plants.And it was a pale white root.And it smelled like carrots.But it was not carrot.It was hemlock.And I ate it.And I didn't die.I've been thinking about why that happened.I've never really figured it out for all these years.And the fact is there's so many things to learn in the world and there's so many ways to learn.There's such an expansion of possibility, so much beauty.so much intricacy, so much information.And then it's also so simple.And because of that, it's so heartrendingly elegant and it's so beautiful.And it's taken me 10 years to find out what the simplistic, elegant message from that plant was for me.And it happened just a few days ago.I was harvesting hawthorn flowers with a friend.And there's this kind of back corner of this tree.pasture I live on and it's all overgrown with roses and blackberries and it's allbrambly and thorny and there's a bunch of hawthorn trees back there and we werekind of going through this shadowy shady part and as I was going through there withmy orchard ladder and picking bag moving on to the next tree

This poem came to me when I was sitting on the rocks near a wharf off water street in Port Townsend. I had climbed down off the sidewalk and found a spot where kids hang out and tag. It’s a quiet place but some other person came with a notebook and started sketching. She kept looking toward at me, and I wonder if I made it in the drawing.I’ve been out on my bike recently, and the color of the sky and water is almost unbelievable. I’ve started to notice things again, my sense of smell has begun to return, my mind feels clearer. I get headaches now and then, still sleep strangely, often feel like crying or angry out of place, and often the urges almost overcome me. But I am not going to give up.Thank you for reading & listening.AQUAMARINEThe water blue, no, green — offshore glistens The wind • • • in fits & starts traces low along the surface. Creosote pillars sunk deep in, braced, kept stable by toxcicity — nooks where life still lives despite heavy - metals - pain. Imperfectness, imperfection, needless ease, persistence of the tides, wind on the water and — look, be open — and the view becomes so wide. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run

As spring has gotten into gear around here, I've been noticing the general abundance of plant life, and weather, and birds, and social engagements—and it's got me reflecting on different kinds of abundance, overabundance, scarcity, relationships, community... From that corner of the human experience of consuming and creating the dynamic between those two aspects of our nature, you could say...Listen & Read More This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run

This podcast covers the issue of addiction.If you are in need of help, call the national hotline, 988.Transcript (may contain errors)There's a bell that I've taken around with me wherever I've livedI can't remember where I got it, maybe in Portland at the Japanese GardenAnd I've often hung it up outside and the sound has become familiar, even as all the places I've lived have changed for so longAnd that familiar feeling just hit me as I rode up this little hill through an orchard towards the cabin that I'm living in these daysI never really realized I'd developed a familiarity with it until that momentNow I'm standing out kind of more towards the field behind the cabin looking at a willow that's flowering and the first bumblebees I've seen this year are collecting nectar and pollen from the flowersThat's pretty hopefulBack in the forest behind the edge of the woods there's a giant ant nest, the biggest I've ever seen actuallyIt's probably home to hundreds of thousands of antsIt's probably four or five feet wide, a couple feet tallIt's been there who knows how longOld growth ant nest, ant pileRead more or listen here: https://www.walkaround.run/p/thank-you-for-listening This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run

A week ago I sent my friend Jen a poem I wrote called Selfheal. They told me that they too have a meaningful connection with the plant, and then sent the above image back. When I saw it, for some reason these words came: "Believe in your next steppingstone."Jim Harrison interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L3STymsjeg&t=932sListen and read more: https://www.walkaround.run/p/the-most-important-thing-about-lifeJen's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chthoneural_/ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run