Tales and Journeys

It was time to return to the forest, so I jumped on my bike and sped off north. This time I decided to take the other way around the small nearby lake, which turned out to be an interesting change, as was the fact that this was two hours earlier than last week, so the lighting was different. After biking past plains and forests and quite a few people, I eventually found the place I sat last time; a rock some five paces from the road, with a view down to the lake above a diagonal sea of green. Sitting there again reminded me of the endless variations in nature, and in our minds. It was not the same as last time (not that I expected it to be), but no less pleasing. It was way hotter now, but that just confirmed my belief that I prefer warmth over cold. I sat there relaxing and absorbing the sunlight until the ants got to me, then I decided to go find other kind of settings and other kind of moods in the forest.

After just a few more minutes on my bike, I stopped by a side road in the forest, by a small bowl-shaped miniature valley around a small stream, all covered in pine trees and clovers, yet sparse enough to let through some sunlight here and there. And incidentally, two squirrels went up one of the pine trunks just that moment. They glared at me and tried to look scary, but somehow, perhaps due to their fluffy tails, that attempt failed quite miserably. At that moment I realized I really need to get a digital camera. When I realized I might be scaring them, I walked further down the hill to look for four-left clovers for a while, but then I decided that this section of the forest was too dark to be staying in at such an hour.

I walked across the side road into the forest on the other side, which proved to provide even another kind of mood. No, several. First, this place was much more sparsely covered with trees, and there was a lot more grass and green bushes. Also, there were several rocks very reminiscent of the forests back home. All in all, the moods I found here were quite special in that I’ve felt them a lot before, in my childhood. No memories came to me because of this, only feelings stored from when I’d been in such forests before. It’s very interesting.

Before heading back, I also went some distance on another, dark side road, over another stream and up a steep, rocky hill where nobody could’ve been for a long time. Suddenly I was on another level of the forest, a kind of highlands, full of blueberry bushes and very sparse pine trees. Of course, though, there were paths up there, too. Nowhere is completely isolated in that forest, which is one of the things I don’t like about it so much, but which at the same time makes it gentler somehow.

When I’ve got my breath back from racing all the way back here, I’ll head down to the gym, after which I’ll read for my next exam for a while until I grow tired, buy a few eggs in the kiosk and head back home to make pancakes for dinner.