Our little hippyshack in tucked away in the woods, and our “back yard” is several hundred acres of forest that is owned by The Evergreen State College. As you would expect of several hundred acres of woods near a college, the forest is crisscrossed with a web of trails. If you walk out our back door, past our campfire pit and the treehouse our landlord lives in, and then down a forested hill, you will eventually find “the elephant tree,” which is a tree growing out of the top of a stump that has fallen over but then continued to grow vertically, producing a huge bend that looks a lot like an elephant’s head, complete with a trunk.

Take a right at the elephant tree onto the narrow trail, follow it a fern and ceder grove, then cross the little creek (someone always slips in the mud on the creek bank), and then up a little hill and you’ll meet up with the biggest path that leads you down to the beach. It’s a fantastic walk, with an infinite amount of distractions: little mushrooms growing out of tree bark, feilds of moss, the random “tripper alters” (built by students talking to god while arranging rocks in a circle around a stick), and tons of side paths branching off to who knows where. All this in the deep coniferous rainforest, with water dripping off the tree boughs even when it’s sunny out. I love it. Supposedly there’s a path for every different kind of trip, but I wouldn’t know.

Now that you can picture the path, let me tell you this: it was MUDDY last night. Welcome to the forest, city girl! We managed to have a beautiful walk anyway, with the half moon shining throught the trees, it’s just that the the conversation was frequently interrupted by outbursts of Ew! Shit! Gawd! Dammit! Forest Tourette’s, you might say.

This morning, I was up early to make panchakes (no, that’s not a typo: when other people make them, they’re pancakes, when Ariel makes ‘em they’re panCHakes) for everyone, including our landlord, Robin, who came by to install our new gas range! I’m not much of a cook, kids, (pancakes is about as crazy as I get) but I’ve missed having an oven. I’m baking some cookies tonight.

So, a nice mellow Saturday here at the stately Stallings manor. And we like it that way, after our exhausting Friday night.