Grove Rag, Side A

In among the pines, with a useless toolbox I purchased on a whim, I gazed arborward. What could I do with so many wrenches? I had long learned that it only takes one. My partners had deserted me earlier and frankly, I let them, insisting that heading further into the woods was my thing and I didn’t expect anyone to follow. One of them hesitated briefly, the others turned and left. Their shadows galloped out of view.

Looking back, the pines aren’t that bad. I made me a nice little house out in a mystic grove, which dumb luck had delivered and I readily accepted with a pathetic sense of entitlement that one stranded in a mystic pine grove really can’t be faulted for exhibiting. Anyway, there is some strong evidence that a past civilization had criss-crossed the grounds long ago. They had evidently mastered hedonistic masonry and nihilistic poetry. They cast marble-plated shields that, at first, I couldn’t even lift. I made a friend in the grove. Her name was Melissa, and she had reached the grove about two years before me. She showed me how to lift the shields, how to suck the brains out of forest insects (the best part), and how to make my living quarters as livable as possible. She knows her stuff and I think she’s great. There’s this odd dynamic between us. Odd in the sense that it takes two to tango and one is an odd number.

In all honesty, that’s not the point. I sat up one evening in my favorite spot. See the grove is spacious and remote enough that I’ve spread out all through it. I've settled little areas all over the forest, but the best one was up on Great Round Hill.

A quick aside: I can’t claim spreading out was my idea; I found this incredible portfolio of detailed maps in a tree trunk’s unearthed south-facing rim. It took a night of drinking mushroom water with Melissa to figure out that the diagrams mapped to our mystic grove. A couple minutes after I showed her the maps, she said, "Those drawings are maps of the grove." I looked incredulously at the parchment. A few distinguishing shapes peered off the page and rapped at my brain: the perfectly straight line of trees along the creek, the marble columns arranged like picnic benches, all the little half-natural canopies ringing the Great Round Hill. "I think you’re right!"

My weekend spot sits at The Parlor, which is a landing on the fifth highest circle of canopies on the Great Round Hill. At that elevation I can see out over most of the pines, to the end of the pines, the concrete, the shore, and the sea. The landing is about 15 feet wide. It extends 6 feet from the hill. I dug thick round holes into the side of the hill using a tool I found in the grove. I plugged them with slightly thicker branches and then wove less hearty, leafier boughs together to form a roof over my weekend spot. It's easy enough to sit above the landing further up the hill for an unobstructed view of the stars - I rarely go up there though - I tend to stay within the confines of my landing.

I've been slowly adding personal touches to my place at The Parlor: berrymaze molding, marble beam covers, wooden spoons with little holes at the handles. The decoration is welcome, but to me nothing's worse than some lame quotation pinned up as if to stir some interesting emotion within the indifferent, chiefly absent audience. Having said that, we have some wonderful verses up here on Great Round Hill. If I ever hang a quote it would certainly be: "You're decomposing - leave the pines."