Field Notes, Vol. 19 (Lossless)

Thick clouds block the sun. Insulate the world in stifling breath. Relentless green stretches ahead - holds the gaze - while the feet scoot and crash in crunching rhythm. Invisible silken threads span the bridge of the nose, backs of both hands, the left elbow. Now cross the throat.

Here the road climbs again into the embankment of a hill that sits on this mountain's wide back. Today's ridge strewn with dull gray-green stone. Fallen trees and dusty leaves share the floor with blackberry brambles and sweet-smelling shrubs.

A moment stopped and hard-breathing brings sweat from brow to chin. The reflex to hack and spit a gnat to the earth.

In the muggy early summer the mind wanders to air-conditioned, networked excess. Ideas of futility and doubt; prospects of purposelessness. Cosmic vastness against which we are comically small. Notions disquieting yet long-held, hardwired, seldom questioned.

Raindrops come heavy now. Strike deeper than the hairs and pores they find. Points of light emerge from countless droplets. Leaves shine into verdant depths. A useless memory believed forgotten, eternally unfit.

A forked and fallen branch still leans on its living oaken body. Beneath boot, scores of springtails. For a time, this leaking and thinking thing. Nothing to learn or lament. Nothing lost.

Lossless, 6/7/26