Sevenfold Silence

(further camping stories under the beltaine 2008 trip tag)

I made mention in the first camping story post to a walking stick, I think, but I didn't go into it--long story short, I went into the woods, got a branch to balance with so I wouldn't fall as I was going up and down the slopes, and ended up feeling compelled to work it over the course of my stay. I attribute that primarily to the land wights, not anything internal. Here, take this, make use of it, play with it--it's from us.

While I was doing that I felt like all of a sudden I understood the whole cold iron thing, which is one of those things I don't twig to (!) instinctively. (Admittedly, though, I was understanding it in relationship to the supernatural world in general, not in relationship to myself and my own 'kinness.) When I brought it back to camp and started messing with the branch, I was offered knives, over and over again, to work the wood. And I turned them down again and again, increasingly pettishly, increasingly repulsed. Knives weren't right. Not my knives, not anybody else's knives. Knives were hard and unyielding and cold, and with this it was between me--my own flesh and blood--and the stick I was working. I'd peel off the bark with my fingernails, heat it over the fire, but metal was cold and unnatural and wrong and I'd have none of it. This was from the forest, and damn it, it'd stay that way.

(That said, I did hand off the staff the next morning to a friend who professed interest--apparently she loved what I'd done with very literally my bare hands. I don't have need for a staff but I wasn't about to work it and cast it off into the forest--it was a gift, after all. I don't know what she'll do to it, how she'll treat it, if she'll carve off the rest of the bark or add crystals or anything. Nor do I really care--working the staff on my own, with my own personal power, was what was important.)