s Forest Storm

Alternative Culture MagazineCougar WebWorks Celebrating Nature, Culture, and Spirit
Alternative Culture Magazine

Alternative Culture Blog


Further Adventures of a Rogue Journalist

by Nowick Gray, Editor of Alternative Culture Magazine

journal online

 



Forest Storm

No TV. No Internet. No email, and even the phone was out for a day--which was better, in a way, than unplugging it, because this time I just had to let go.

Nature spoke. I didn't even hear the wind over the rain in the night, but in the morning trees were down everywhere. Needles and branches littered the dirt road through the forest I call home. The power lines were down for three days.

It was no death scene of a distant city, like those I had witnessed the week before, with the painful luxury of a front-row seat three thousand miles and a way of life removed. The forest took its losses without complaint.

Another Gulf War, longer, and larger, rages in the rumors of front pages, elsewhere. But today, instead of world news or baseball, I take in a walk to the river. I write outside with cold fingers on a small notepad, while the silver morning grows over the mountains to the south. A single raven calls, answered by various-rhythmed birds... then a humming silence.

Last night the boys did homework by candlelight, played acoustic guitars. The night before, Nintendo gave way to Kahlah. I re-learned an old tune on the pennywhistle, beat on a drum.

Have I embraced this emptiness yet? These last few nights there was more time for sleep, dreaming, love. Now there is only time.

Shouldn't it be this way?

Nature spoke. I can no longer take "power" for granted.

--Nowick Gray, 26 September 2001


journal online

Archive

Many of the essays appearing here are collected in convenient e-book format (pdf). Coming Home: Nature and Me and Other Essays is available now for free download.

Right-click to save to your computer: nature.pdf

Rule Reversals (January 2003)

Telling it Like it Is (January 2003)

White Rabbit (February 2002)

On Novelty (February 2002)

An Open Letter to the Democratic Party after September 11 (December 2001)

Psychoactive Sacramentals: Essays on Entheogens and Religion (book review) (November 2001)

Forest Storm (September 2001)

Feminism, Poetic Myth, and Alternative Culture - An Homage to The White Goddess (July 2000)

Quests for Identity and Other Addictions (May 2000)

Wheel of Fortune (April 2000)

Great Writers and Street Poets (February 2000)

Upgrade for Speed Because Time is Running Out? (August 1999)

Retail Therapy: Decision Making in the Computer Age (August 1999)

Retail Therapy2: Random Brief Downtimes (August 1999)

Farouche Speaks (April 1999)

NetGlut: Notes from a cleansing fast (February 1998)

To Unix and Back Alive (January 1997)

Webness (November 1996)

Surfing Again (November 1996)

Bananas in British Columbia (May 1996)

Confessions of a computer addict (May 1996)


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