If you have ever doubted being part of an ecosystem, consider this.
My feet are peeling.
Not just a little flake here, a little flake there. Whole sheets of skin are sailing away. I’ve never seen anything like it. I know, but try to stay with me.
It’s like my poor feet haven’t walked barefoot in years, nor seen the sun. And now, with both a daily experience, they have determined to become an entirely new set of dawgs for me. I’m here for it, if that’s what’s going on. I am choosing to think of myself as a lobster, outgrowing it’s shell.
This morning I woke, and am lingering shamelessly in, an empty Lions Park Boat launch area in a little town called Cherry Valley. Population about 300.
I am parked under a giant oak tree beside a pergola I enjoy referring to as “currently mine.”
There are feral cats who live here. I fed them last night, while Corny was sleeping, for obvious reasons. From the look on their little hoodlum faces, I’m pretty sure the fishermen give them fish. Although they may just take what they believe to be theirs. It retrospect, it had more of that feel, hence my inclination to prove we are open to an arrangement.
Squirrels have been dropping acorns on the bus. Not sure why yet, but it doesn’t feel territorial. That was just setting the scene. Because scenes are helpful.
This morning, whilst still in my PJ’s. I set up my mat out there on my pergola, and thought I would do some foot care. Why not, right? It’s 10 am on a Thursday, and I don’t have a set list for the day. And I’m peeling. Which despite my positive state of mind about it, still seems like a a potential health event.
So, I’m out there in my pergola, with all the usual foot maintenance tools, doing my thing, when I notice a battalion of red ants circling my mat. It was a bit disconcerting if I’m honest, because there were a lot of them. Maybe it was their matching red uniforms, I don’t know, but when they breached my perimeter (the blanket) I began organizing my retreat.
That’s when I noticed one of the soldiers carrying what I assumed was a breadcrumb. And then another and another. And they were forming lines and passing them, like a bucket brigade. This required I get down for a closer look.
Hold the phones! That wasn’t a breadcrumb!! This wasn’t a miliary operation! They were organizing around my molt!
This was some sort of local eco clean-up brigade. I had been a bit worried when I noted that the only available WIFI networks in Cherry Valley were listed as “Cloaked FBI Vehicle” and “The Fairy Godfather” but the arrival of a clean-up crew was something altogether different. Way to surprise me, Cherry Valley.
All of this community service unfolding right on my mat, while a glaring of felines assess from under the bushes. You can see one of them, doing just that, in the photo below. This is the view from the side door of the bus. Under the old Oak Tree. Where the nuts keep raining down.
I’m so tempted to stay another night cause this is getting interesting.
Doesn’t matter where I go. Nature knows where to find me.
This Wholehearted Life 