Urban Organica: camouflage

We came home, but we are hiding out. Blending in, slightly shocked to find our feet clean at the end of the day. It actually hurts to have this pavement between the Earth & I. I feel lost without her genius. Please do notice the pine-needle stripes on this wood frog. The bark-textured mottle on his legs & his birch & shadow coloring under his eyes. He is vaguely metallic & see-through, making him disappear like a trick of the light. I mean really, what the eff? How does that happen?? Lake Winnipesaukee - Smile of the Great Spirit. I have to believe Spirit still smiles on us here, too. But we are trying to find our way back home. The home we just left.

New Hampshire is so sparsely populated, landing there is an instant psychic cleansing. You breath in once, & all the years' past is forgiven. You breath in again, & you are your purest, strongest self. You live in your one outfit until it begins to rag. My boys miss this part of them, the part that breathes so deeply & freely. The part that is trusted by the littlest of their playmates. Such as...

9 merganzers. 2 bald eagles. 1 red-backed salamander. 1 baby wood frog on Lake's pillow, 1 hopping across the braided rug at 3 am. Our pet snake, in it's usual spot. Many argumentative red squirrels. 3 perch, quite a few minnows. Several egg-weilding 3" dock spiders. The world's baby-est lobster (1/2 cm baby crawfish). 1 screaming kestral. 1 moose's tracks. 1 bat in my livingroom/bedroom. 1 possum. 1 racoon. Some divinely cute dogs by the names of Pretzel, Calvin & Hobbs.

So many things to love about this moth: The shaggy haircut, the ice-queen robe, & what is that fuzzy mass she's protecting, anyways?

Whew. Nearly drowned. Didn't know frogs could drown.

We swam to this tiny beach, on a faraway island with our friends. D thought he stepped on a slimy rock, which turned out to be a huge catfish. Suddenly the kids all squealed with delight: the black maple leaves decomposing in the sand turned out to be 500 half-inch black baby catfish. They fluttered magically & each one looked like a fairy-sized Chinese goldfish. We realized we were accidentally beaching them, all the adults & kids rushed around for 15 minutes trying to gather them up & return them to their mommy. Then the mama fish swam out & gathered them from the 10 x 6' space in about 2 minutes. Awesome. To see a mama at work like that, with no hands, no yelling, in the midst of freaked-out humans.