The Boy in the Giant – Artwork by LadySparrowhawk

I’m blessed to have Casey Wilkinson, aka Lady Sparrowhawk, a gifted artist as a friend. She provided the artwork for this story.

Enjoy!

Once upon a time, when a small, magical child lived in a magical woods, a horrible thing happened. Someone left the child outside in the cold, rainy, wet damp of dawn. It doesn’t matter if this happened once or a thousand times. When you are a child, even once is enough.

It so happened, as the child grew into a boy, that others came by who were blind to the child and the boy and splattered mud as they passed. The mud covered the growing boy, its coldness reminding him of being abandoned in the cold, damp dawn.

The child grew into a clever boy. He kept his eyes open and watched the flowers spreading their petals to let in the morning sun, spiders spinning delicate webs stronger than the strongest steel, and squirrels and ants busying themselves gathering winter’s harvest.

Over time the boy fell in love with the world around him and decided that no matter what happened to him, he could learn from it. Quickly the boy’s wisdom grew as he watched and studied and quietly observed until he became quieter and wiser than most in the Woods.

But while he grew, there was a mud caked child inside, a child the wise boy knew nothing of, crying in the cold, damp dawn. The boy lived with the ache of the child inside so long it became like a cloak which no one else could see and which was more real to the growing boy than anything else in his world. The boy sat and watched the mud that caked around him as others splashed and noticed it hardened as it dried. The child gave the boy an idea.

“What would happen if I took some mud and fashioned a cloak around myself?” As the mud hardened he could make the cloak stronger and harder. Eventually the cloak would keep out the cold and the rain and protect the boy and child from pain.
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Agnes

It’s the way that she move, the things that she do

I mentioned in WildLife – Heckie, Sheldon, Veronica, Porgy and Bess that we have lots of wildlife in our yard. We encourage it. People who knew me in my NextStage days will remember my frequent posts about one such creature, Agnes the Turkey.

Well, she’s back!

She came back in Spring with her flock and we hadn’t seen her since. We thought she’s moved on/passed over (Nothing Ever Dies of Old Age in The Wild).

And then this morning, as I was sipping some coffee…

Heckie, Sheldon, Veronica, Porgy and Bess still come by nightly, as do Larry and Phil (two adult male raccoons, brothers, we think, and no pictures yet) and Ponchie (an opossum pup, this year’s litter by his size and also no pix yet).

I’ll share more as time allows.

And the Agster, the Aginator, Agnes who keeps our hearts warm and true, is back.

Writers’ Groups – Introduction

Questing…or so it seems

I’m involved with a few writers’ groups.

<ASIDE>
“involve” is one of those words that conveys so much, isn’t it? “How are you involved with…?”, “It’s involved…”, “We’re involved (in a relationship/in an activity).”, “Finding an adequate solution involves…”, “We haven’t determined my level of involvement yet.” (that last one is a business euphemism for “What do I get?”)
“involve” is a gateway word, a word that gets you from one side to the other. You need to know what’s on either side of it to appreciate what’s happening with it, what it’s signalling you, what it’s telling you. “involve” is a transitive verb, meaning it takes a direct object, hence its transportational qualities.
I wrote about another fascinating word, “affair”, in The Complete Eventing Yourself Arc.
</ASIDE>
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Heckie, Sheldon, Veronica, Porgy and Bess

Children, playing in our yard

I’m taking a break from submitting and writing to do some writing.

Busman’s holiday, I guess.

Some readers may remember the NextStage Evolution Facebook page. It’s long gone and it was probably best known for the wildlife pictures and stories there. Susan (I mention her on the About Joseph page) and I have been working with the wildlife in our backyard going on ten years at this point. One of our regrets about taking down the NextStage Evolution Facebook page was taking down all those wildlife photos.

Over the years we’ve worked with raccoons, skunk, opossum, deer, northern and eastern woodlands coyote, red and gray fox, turkey, fisher cats, bobcats, various owls, bumblybees, hawks, spiders and I’m sure I’m leaving some out (please forgive me).

I’ve written about the wildlife interactions in several places. Perhaps best known is Nothing Ever Dies of Old Age in The Wild (republished on Discover The Practice). Much of the wildlife in our yard have learned to take food from my hand. Bart, an owl from a few years back, would perch in a nearby tree when I was grilling and wait for me to toss him bits of meat (don’t tell Susan. She always wondered why some steaks shrunk so much when I grilled them).

The wildlife still comes. There hasn’t been as much this year. We had two regular racoons, Hecate and Deneb, and never saw any trace of other wildlife. One year we had 19 racoons in our yard, three skunk, two red fox and their kits, some gray fox and their kits, a deer, …

But not this year. I asked Hecate where all the racoons were and she said, “There are three of us.”

I didn’t know what she meant. Did she have two kits? Were there only three adult racoons in a woodland area that once supported racoon colonies?

A few nights later Hecate and Deneb were eating some peanuts and yep, a third racoon, Leopold, came forward. Shy at first, then getting right in there with his peers.

Then we saw Kirkpatrick, an amazingly healthy northern coyote.

We’d been hearing coyote for several nights (quite soothing) and wondered if that explained the dearth of wildlife.

Then we saw some gray fox and a bob (sorry, they’re quite shy. No pictures yet. Haven’t even told me their names).

Okay, that variety of predators, perhaps few scavangers have made it to Fall.

Then Olivia the Opossum showed up (again, no pix yet). The next night she brought her partner, Max (nope, both shy).

And then


Labor Relations

Pesky characters, always makin’ a ruckus…

Interesting experience a few weeks back. I got into a serious argument with some characters in The Augmented Man. The argument was so serious that all writing stopped. Not only writing on The Augmented Man, also work on Ritchie and Phyl, Gable Smiled and a host of others.

Fantasy characters threatened to strike in support of their literary fiction brothers and sisters. Characters still in development refused to cross picket lines in support of their already written brethren and sistren.

There was talk of locking up my keyboard until things got resolved.

But if you lock up the keyboard we’ll never reach an agreement, I explained.

Phyl said, “You have two paragraphs, Mister. Get writing.”
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