The prairie is my home/companion
After work today I actually started reading my collection of Van Gogh’s letters. I bought the book used four years ago, and it is a beautiful hardcover from the ’60s, but just never got around to reading it. I’ve been carrying it along with me, from apartment to apartment, dorm to home, home to efficiency, Wisconsin to NJ and back again, ad absurdum.
A few letters in is one Vincent wrote his brother Theo to encourage him to take as many walks as possible and be immersed in nature constantly in order to understand art. So I put the book down and headed to the prairie. It was my third time there in three days-the first two trips were with friends, but this one was alone.
Spring crept into Wisconsin sometime in the last three to four weeks. I thought it would never get here! We’ve had snow and gloomy, cold days in the process, but suddenly I look around and the tree branches have buds and blossoms at their tips. The prairie gets greener every day-first that yellowish light green spreads around, and then it all deepens a shade or five.
Last Friday the Bio Department did a prairie burn and now certain parts of it smell like the fireplace and living room of my parents’ house in the winter. There’s this one section of land where the crooks of tree branches are covered with pyramidal cocoons. Judging by the larvae I still see in them, I think they’re for moths… We’ll see. I see apple blossoms, too, but I don’t think I’ll be here long enough to forage some free fruit like I did this past fall.
At any rate, things are alive again and that’s good for me to see. I sold my TV yesterday (I got it for free from someone who never watched it, who had first picked it up for free from someone who never used it. Maybe I shouldn’t have profited?) so I hope I’ll be outside even more for the rest of my time here.
Students are moving out and I couldn’t be more thrilled. I’m also being moved to an apartment for the summer. The perks: my own bathroom! My own kitchen! Two or three rooms to myself! Air conditioning! A shorter walk to work!
I’m not going to lie, I was really despairing about life for most of this semester. But I made it though, and I’m glad I did.
A few letters in is one Vincent wrote his brother Theo to encourage him to take as many walks as possible and be immersed in nature constantly in order to understand art. So I put the book down and headed to the prairie. It was my third time there in three days-the first two trips were with friends, but this one was alone.
Spring crept into Wisconsin sometime in the last three to four weeks. I thought it would never get here! We’ve had snow and gloomy, cold days in the process, but suddenly I look around and the tree branches have buds and blossoms at their tips. The prairie gets greener every day-first that yellowish light green spreads around, and then it all deepens a shade or five.
Last Friday the Bio Department did a prairie burn and now certain parts of it smell like the fireplace and living room of my parents’ house in the winter. There’s this one section of land where the crooks of tree branches are covered with pyramidal cocoons. Judging by the larvae I still see in them, I think they’re for moths… We’ll see. I see apple blossoms, too, but I don’t think I’ll be here long enough to forage some free fruit like I did this past fall.
At any rate, things are alive again and that’s good for me to see. I sold my TV yesterday (I got it for free from someone who never watched it, who had first picked it up for free from someone who never used it. Maybe I shouldn’t have profited?) so I hope I’ll be outside even more for the rest of my time here.
Students are moving out and I couldn’t be more thrilled. I’m also being moved to an apartment for the summer. The perks: my own bathroom! My own kitchen! Two or three rooms to myself! Air conditioning! A shorter walk to work!
I’m not going to lie, I was really despairing about life for most of this semester. But I made it though, and I’m glad I did.