Grit will be the thing that gets us all through in these trying times of environmental woe. It will be the survivalist key to the green castle. To the temple of enlightenment and you will need it in the hardest of times. So I recommend,(at a young age when you can still afford it morally and your parents can monetarily) you go wreck a hotel room. Get it out of your system and move on from those shit head days as quick as you can.
This year that forest was a little different. Not in any way different from years when those pines had dropped their cones in the road but you are older now and more aware and it seems this year the cones are so many you can hardly believe your own eyes. The crunching of them when you run them over, driving up that meandering driveway, just seems a lot louder. Nature has a way of surprising you all the time even though you've seen those same gardens every spring and you've planted the very plants that surprise you. Those same white pines that were like family all those years, surprised you this year because they are trying to tell you something.
...Plum Islands biowarfare ties date back to World War II and Operation Paperclip, a top secret government program to shield Nazi scientists from trial or punishment by quietly bringing them over to the U.S. and giving them new identities and U.S. citizenship in exchange for working for the government and military.
Our single plant studies are love songs, pure, unfiltered, admiration, of one species of plant or tree. One plant with so many scent notes in its catalog, balanced by millions of years of evolution...
Traditions run deep. They swirl around in our collective imaginations and bring us to that cherished, nostalgic place. I wonder though, if these heirloom notions and warm traditions have become a burden on the environment.
Breath it in. Really look into it. Those pines. Now look at the nuances. Look at the smaller things - the post & chestnut oak, the pepper bush and fragrant bayberry, laurel & huckleberry, then even smaller - the viney greenbriar, cranberry, summer grape and the sweet fern. Even deeper, under the leaves of that underbrush, deeper to the forest floor, hiding under the shade of gorgeous blackberry and sassafras, the rare pink lady slipper orchid, the mosses and cinnamon fern, the tiniest of violets and British red coats.
Up at this elevation the bug didn't infect the firs. This was a comforting thought but a fleeting one because soon to follow was the impending knowledge that some day, in the not so distant future, the climate would warm just enough for those bastards to make their ways to these healthy stands.
For me wild crafting is a ritual. Its a study of myself & what it means to be part of the natural world. In a nutshell, it means I go into the wilderness, whether it be the grand wilds of America or the local ones in my backyard, & I get dirty.
Growing up on Long Island has created a deep lagoon of nostalgic, maritime memories & romantic stories that reoccur like the tides of The Great South Bay...
The thing to consider is that there isn't as much plant diversity here as there is on the west coast for example, and this is something to really think about because this means that these plants & trees have existed here for thousands of years, undisturbed by serious adaptation.
Our Pine Barrens Wilderness Cologne is ready! Made from 100% wild harvested plants & trees from the Pine Barrens of Long Island - Pitch Pine, White Pine, Sweet fern, Bayberry, wild flowers to name a few of these amazingly fragrant ingredients...
