There's a moment in most of Miyazakis films, when the dialogue and often the music cuts, and a single character (usually the protagonist) is left alone in the raw and open experience of something. It takes mastery to convey a moment such as this, a moment of space and presence.

This is the kind of moment I can relate to, when I know that I am who I am, when everything makes sense, when I know right from wrong, when there is magic in the landscape around me. But this type of moment is under relentless assault. https://www.walkaround.run/p/ma

Questioning my assumptions, and an encounter with Amanita, the Fly Agaric mushroom. Be sure to check out the images of the Nehalem and Wilson as well as the dunes at Bayocean Spit on the website

Hello,

Welcome to Walk Around. This is Hudson Gardner. It's been a little while.

I've been out and about, traveling, hiking, running, doing things that I love, spending time with wonderful people, seeing beautiful things, having really beautiful conversations—learning about myself, learning about others, and by that, learning about this world we all co-create and exist in together

I'm back in Port Townsend, where I live, and sitting in the pasture near a stand of trees on the edge of the field.

It was my birthday a couple of days ago, actually, a week ago, and I have been coming back into some kind of personal awareness and depth inside of my own body and mind recently, thinking about things I've left behind for too long, things I've been incapable of doing, reflecting on life in general.

Read more here at walkaround.run

This poem came to me when I was sitting on the rocks near a wharf off water street in Port Townsend. I had climbed down off the sidewalk and found a spot where kids hang out and tag. It’s a quiet place but some other person came with a notebook and started sketching. She kept looking toward at me, and I wonder if I made it in the drawing.

I’ve been out on my bike recently, and the color of the sky and water is almost unbelievable. I’ve started to notice things again, my sense of smell has begun to return, my mind feels clearer. I get headaches now and then, still sleep strangely, often feel like crying or angry out of place, and often the urges almost overcome me. But I am not going to give up.

Thank you for reading & listening.

AQUAMARINE

The water blue, no, green — offshore glistens The wind • • • in fits & starts traces low along the surface. Creosote pillars sunk deep in, braced, kept stable by toxcicity — nooks where life still lives despite heavy - metals - pain. Imperfectness, imperfection, needless ease, persistence of the tides, wind on the water and — look, be open — and the view becomes so wide.

As spring has gotten into gear around here, I've been noticing the general abundance of plant life, and weather, and birds, and social engagements—and it's got me reflecting on different kinds of abundance, overabundance, scarcity, relationships, community... From that corner of the human experience of consuming and creating the dynamic between those two aspects of our nature, you could say...

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This podcast covers the issue of addiction.

If you are in need of help, call the national hotline, 988.

Transcript (may contain errors)

There's a bell that I've taken around with me wherever I've lived

I can't remember where I got it, maybe in Portland at the Japanese Garden

And I've often hung it up outside and the sound has become familiar, even as all the places I've lived have changed for so long

And that familiar feeling just hit me as I rode up this little hill through an orchard towards the cabin that I'm living in these days

I never really realized I'd developed a familiarity with it until that moment

Now I'm standing out kind of more towards the field behind the cabin looking at a willow that's flowering and the first bumblebees I've seen this year are collecting nectar and pollen from the flowers

That's pretty hopeful

Back in the forest behind the edge of the woods there's a giant ant nest, the biggest I've ever seen actually

It's probably home to hundreds of thousands of ants

It's probably four or five feet wide, a couple feet tall

It's been there who knows how long

Old growth ant nest, ant pile

Read more or listen here: https://www.walkaround.run/p/thank-you-for-listening