Hello! Pre-post I like to announce that WE ARE GOING ON TOUR! I CAN’T WAIT TO SEE YOUR FACES! I MISSED YOU SO MUCH! As this is a new medium for me I’d like to offer you, my kind subscribers, the first crack at tickets. Bring your sweet asses and the asses of those you love!
TOUR PRE-SALE: Limited pre-sale tickets for all newly announced tour dates will be available tomorrow, June 16 at 10am local venue time with code “hallsofsarah”. See all details and upcoming tour dates at NekoCase.com
And now, back to Entering The Lung..
The forest I refer to as The Lung is not something I own, or could ever own. The Lung is stolen Coosuk Abenaki land within the ancestral territory of the Nulhegan band: https://abenakitribe.org whose people and culture are still here and very much alive. In “owning” the land my house is on, I am merely paying for the right to be its steward for as long as I can or until the government takes it away. The American Dream doesn’t frame it that way but if it did, we, as a culture, might be less toxic about it? More willing to share? Willing to preserve?
The Lung itself doesn’t have any boundaries. There’s just parts I know really well that seem to be more a part of my body than 98% of my blood relations. The other day I went walking over at a friend's place into the forest just a few miles away from me. I got a little bit lost and turned around. I realized I had no idea where I was but I was still "in it." I was comfortable despite the fact that I had accidentally crossed over a mountain ridge. The relations of the trees and the mosses and the brush from where I live were here too. Somehow they remain even though Vermont has been deforested at least twice by white settlers. Then, just like in a fairy tale, I happened upon a sugar house deep in the woods. It was very old but still standing and even occasionally utilized (though not for sugaring) from the looks of it. I felt like Hansel and Gretel. I was excited! But the fire pit was cold and unused, so I was also relieved. I wasn’t really prepared to trespass or be eaten. (I wasn’t wearing an outfit savory enough to be cooked and eaten in!)
The little structure looked as though it was part of the forest like when a goldenrod plant makes a swollen gall in its stem around a burrowing gall fly larva and ends up looking like an ostrich that swallowed a golf ball. The plant is unscathed and the larvae have their own apartment like Mary Tyler Moore! It looks a little odd, but is still a part of the plant without taking away from what surrounds it.
I had a crushing desire to burrow into the little sugar shack and stay forever. I could tell time went by much slower here. Maybe I’m the WITCH! (Swoooooon) I’m wondering if the sugaring of maple trees learned/appropriated from the Abenaki people by the settlers passively saved this ecosystem’s life? The tree's value as a producer of nutrient rich, uniquely delicious sugar saved a few (and I do mean a “few”) from the white-hot axes of New France and the Kings of England. Colonial settlers on all continents failed in seeing the big picture every place they ever went, and hence decided nature was either inexhaustible or for their very special, blessed asses alone. They decided not to see this despite the loud, repeated insistence of the people already living in these places. Actual ignorance was a very small slice of the pie graph it seems. Nine out of ten times they willingly chose not to see, subbed in a god and fell into their lanes in the mass, swarming race to capitalize. I’d like to think I’m different; but what do I actually do differently? This hurts at a sub-scabby level so I change the picture in my mind -- I imagine the maples and ash crawling across the hills eons ago when the mountains were a little sharper. (This is a version of “choosing” where I attempt to begin turning the cruise ship of oblivion with just me and one oar on a raft made of plastic bottles.) Baby maple trees are like jolly little flags sticking up out of the ground, “HI!!! We’re here!!! Need a cruise ship turned around??” Trees are supposed to be stationary, but anyone who lives here and studies the maples and ash would likely agree that they are very much on the march.
I live here...in VT. The trees are on the march and, sadly, under attack. The Ash are becoming more and more blighted, adios Chestnuts and now, Butternuts. My neighbor just had to cut three down due to a blight. The Maples are heading to Canadia, maybe they'll get better health care there. Nonetheless, it's pretty humbling walking through these old, bony woods, with the quartz veins and quartzite boulders strewn about. I'm usually there looking for the remains of the Abenaki's ancestors (sigh yes, ahead of some type of development); there's plenty of it. Those gnarly projectile points made from the blue-grey, elbow shattering quartzite dating back 10,000 years. It's a good place to be. People now pay big bucks to bath in it. The Lung. Nice image.
I live in the city. Portland, OR. Here, we are smack-dab in the midst of one of the most beautiful states in the union. I feel very lucky to have such access to very unique landscapes. Unfortunately, for now, I am bound to public transit and don’t get to explore outside of the city as much as I would like. Working in healthcare is also very time consuming. Alas, I read Entering The Lung on my bus rides home, and can imagine the forest you explore. I have never been to Vermont, and I thank you for the little slice of nature every day or so. Appreciate ya, Neko!