Dear Curiosity Journal,
Ramp season is upon us and my dad is my lookout, my eyes in the woods. He calls us up with the “real time ramp report” during turkey hunting and beyond, and every spring we visit his land in Kendall to harvest this forest allium for our CSA. I was at the Radisson in La Crosse giving a presentation about Driftless Curiosity to the Kiwanis Club, so Rufus asked our new driver, Tim, to tag along for help.When I asked Rufus to recall highlights from the harvest, he said, “dappled sunlight, the relative calm out of the wind (we know he suffers from overexposure to wind), and the joy of taking someone to a new place”. Spending time in the woods is always a welcomed change of pace. For me, landing among the trees feels like I’ve managed to momentarily retreat from the “doing” aspect of myself and sink into the deeper “being” sense of who I am. All of my tasks, my attachments to machines, and my ever present ambition are far away. I’m unreachable, disconnected from doing and reconnected to myself as an animal in an ecosystem, another being in her natural habitat observing the simple, insightful truths of the natural world, collecting food in the forest.
~Joy
