Well Bottom Blues

Today was the first time I set foot on Scout Island in City Park since the 1960s. I had some unpleasant childhood experiences there: the Cub Scout den camp out when I burned myself on the Coleman lantern and my father and Uncle decided to treat it by pouring cold Dixie beer onto it, and later at Jamboree someone I still consider a friend today but who was subject to moments of maniacal assholery when he was young got a small posse together and tipped over the Port-O-Let that I was in.

I was the kind of kid that thing happened to, and I was pretty disconnected from the kids in my neighborhood after I was shipped off to Christian Brothers for fifth grade.  That was the end of my association with Scouting.

Couterie Forest Arboretum across the avenue that bisects the park is lovely and I don’t know why Scout Island is fenced off along Harrison Avenue so one needs to drive from one to the other. I feel very close to Couterie Forest, but I think I need to come back in longer socks or jeans and start poking down some of those side trails on the Island.  Much of the wooded sections are more open, inviting you to leave the trail where Couterie is full of say on trail signs. And some of those side trails vanish into closer growth.

If consider myself Heathen given  Odin’s association with poetry, but my dear friend who was once Queen of the San Francisco Pagan Pride parade wondered if I wasn’t tempermentally a Druid. I reminded her that among blasted St. Boniface’s claims to fame was cutting down Thunor’s Oak in Britain. I wear a mjolnir in memory of that the way Catholics wear a scapula.

And so there are so many pictures of the trees from this first past through I’ve progressed from the old growth Live oaks in the manicured park along the remains of Bayou Metairie. which once saved me from madness and despair, 0nto wilder paths. I’ll go back to sit under those oaks and see if the crows remember I bring cat food or peanuts once the buckmoth caterpillars are done, but I’m drswn to the wilder parts.And when I’ve worn our the semi-wild spaces of the park I need to light out for other nearby territories.