navigating grass blades completely by feel

In a conversation with a student recently we were talking about how motion evokes creative thought and introspection. A famous philosopher, and I can't remember who for my proper noun memory problem, said that the best thinking and writing is done while moving. So my student rides her bike with a microphone attached to her ipod and writes out loud.

I have thought of this conversation many times since and thought of how many times I have written what i thought would be a great post in my head while biking, driving or walking, and noticing when I sat down at my computer I just felt.... blank.

I was thinking of this as we walked through a forest in Point Reyes with motion only perceptible by feel and sound, as the night had fallen and the moon was obscured by heavy fog. It must not be only visual cues of motion, but a complete haptic sense of motion that evokes creative thought and introspection.

As we set out up the meadow path into the darkening night I learned from Devon and Andrew about the difference between trunk beer and trail beer, trail beer in hand.

Trunk beer is beer that lives in the trunk until set break at which point it walks with owners preferably to the train tracks to be ingested for a much cheaper price than set break beer.

Trail beer is self-explanatory. Andrew opened his, we traded, he opened his again and traded with Devon and pried the bottle cap off the last so that the beer I was originally holding ended up with Devon, I had Andrew's, and Andrew drank Devon's. Cheers to trail beer, it's the little things that make me smile.

The fog thickened as we wound our way through the trees and over the roots, identifying plants by smell and touch and vague silhouettes. The rhythm of our feet was only interrupted by the occasional misstep onto or into a root or into a puddle at which point the person in front would quietly call out "root" or "step up" or "hole" or "rock" or "puddle". We reached the meadow and the quiet light illuminated ghosts of giant trees at the meadow's edge.

The light colored path leading through the middle of the meadow faded into the forest again. And we followed this time completely by feel; Andrew leading, me in the middle and Devon in the back. There was almost no light. The only visible objects were Andrew's gray hoodie (if he was within 5 feet of me), my light colored jacket, the occasional sword fern on the trail edge or the trunks of nearby trees. All else was black. We walked in silence listening to our footsteps and the fog dripping off the trees or our legs brushing against the foliage if we began to veer off the path. It was as if we were walking with our eyes closed in an attempt to experience place by all other senses but sight.

We turned back to avoid missing the next trail and headed back towards the meadow this time in reverse order and this time with some familiarity of where the dips and the puddles and roots were and how far the meadow was by how far our feet had carried us and what direction we seemed to be walking, how close we seemed to be to some sort of solid wall we couldn't see.

The fog lifted as we neared the trailhead where we started and we looked up at the silhouettes once again of the trees.

Andrew asked me

-- what does that look like to you?

and as i had already been looking at that same tree and been thinking about it, I said immediately

--an alien with pigtails

he asked the same question of Devon

--a Bay