The Way-Back-in-the-Woods Pines

I haven’t done a water study in a while.  Feels like a good morning for a bunch of unconnected sketches.

The finger of water roved over the hard packed dirt like an ant scout looking for the lowest path.  In places it paused for orders—or more volume—then ranged forward enthusiastically.

The refraction of the plexiglass merged effortlessly with that of the water.  Not only did this bulldozer-sized vat of water defy sharp focus it also held a sand shark.

Yesterday the dr fence boards felt like hundreds of razor blades packed tightly—unable to cut, but still unappealing to the touch.  Today, wet with rain, they feel like damp hard sponges.

Water lay below us.  Rain fell on the land.  The land soaked the rain in.  The wetness sank through the sand, the soil, the clay, and the rock.  It collected slowly and deeply like the thoughts of a god in the subterranean spaces.  Soon, our well would uncover It’s thoughts.

Wet soles.  Wet surface.  Broken wrist.

Four inches of rain turned my unmown Gulf Texas lawn into a marshland.  Two more into a residential lake.  “Ah shit.  There go the tomatoes.”

“It’s a fountain.  Not magic,” she reassured him.  “The walkway is a grate and hidden jets spurt water as you walk by.”

A gray mass of atomized water rose from the lower end of the valley. Tendrils wriggled in the cattails at its fringe.  A graceful and subtle heave swelled at its center then receded less than it had grown.  This misty bellows engulfed the low-down reeds, the edge-of-the-meadow aspens, and finally the way-back-in-the-woods pines.

Day 271