Swamp Threads

My name is Savakano and I sew green threads into my tunic.

[swamp-threads]

The roots are speaking. They tell me to be wary. To be alert. Today. Now. Soon. It will be time to be braced. The trees can sense the storm coming, far before our eyes can see the rain.

Be it literal or figurative storm, be ready. Pray the winds are kind to you.

[swamp-threads]

In times of despair, it is nice to know that I can walk into the forest and the trees will not judge me harshly.

[swamp-threads]

When a tree catches fire, the swamp greets the flames at the root.

I envy the tree.

[amrogersart]

Small journal about my new job, plus a silly little bonus

[swamp-threads]

Always strive to be useful to nature. You'll be part of it again some day.

[swamp-threads]

There's something very special about running your fingers through fresh mulch.

The smell of years of rot giving way to a new bed for green.

[notbeingnoticed]

150 meter aluminum sea serpent skeleton sculpture in Nantes, France. Artist Huang Yong Ping

[redscharlach]

Not only is this is extremely cool, but it also looks cool when viewed from Google Earth.

Just nibbling this beach, no big deal.

[swamp-threads]

This too is a thread of nature, half spun by mortal hands to weave into a greater cloth among the blue weave of the sea.

Gorgeous. Those metal working folk sure know how to make a skeleton.

[swamp-threads]

Sometimes it is difficult to take solace in the helplessness of individuality. It is easy to say "I am *just* a thread in a much larger fabric."

But we all know what happens when you pull loose a single thread. Such is it with the fabric of the natural world and the beings it is made up from. You cut down a tree, you kill a deer, you pick a mushroom, you erase a person, you move a rock... These are all threads. Any one of them could be the one that causes the whole thing to unravel. Even you.

[swamp-threads]

Some people wonder if love is part of being a thread of the natural world. And it is. Love means something a little different in every different part of nature. But it is still there.

I see love when I watch a bear defend their cub. There is love when one tree braces against another leaning in the wind. There is love when a rotting log or a stump gets mushy in the damp and nurses the growth of other things. There is even love in the way an insect or a haggleurn eats their mate; imagine being loved to the point of consumption and subsumation, being loved so much they needed you to be part of them.

Man, the threads of nature don't always form a pretty tapestry. But there's love in it. Love in the weaving of the threads and the image they create.

[swamp-threads]

Often, I feel unloved. I can feel insignificant, unhappy, alone, scared. Gods, I feel so scared all the time.

It is easy to stand in a grand forest with your feet in the mud and to look up and feel like an ant. Like a grain of sand lost in the mire. Looking down can make you feel bigger but it does not erase the memory of the branches above you. To feel at ease you must become a tree. The trees don't care how tall they are, they only seek light and water. You can be the same. You can root yourself. You can become part of the forest.

[swamp-threads]

I have eaten pink moss today and must remember not to eat pink moss again.

[swamp-threads]

Before I get carried away making this my little personal journal, I will explain things once. I might explain them again if nature reveals a greater truth to me.

But, like, there's a bunch of different nature folks. But mostly there's druidic orders, which are all about beauty and the sublime and balance and order... And that's fine. I'm chill with druid folk doing what druid folk do. But then there's natural thread folk, like me, that are just part of the world the same way nature is part of the world. A green thread in the swamp is just part of that fabric that makes up the whole swamp. Everything that lives in it is a different thread. And there's green threads for forest folk and brown threads for forest folk and brown threads for rock dwelling folk... And it just kinda goes on like that. And the guys that go out to sea have those nice blue tunics and I call them blue threads, cus they go out to sea and get a little crazy about big fish and things with tentacles and mermaids and the vork. Fuckin vork. But then there's also white threads for snow dwelling folk and white threads for sky sailing folk, but those sky sailing white threads are like advanced threads. And there's probably blue threads for sky sailing folk too. But, anyway, threads are part of the nature. Nature is everything and nothing, conceptual and physical, everything is part of nature including stuff that isn't part of nature. Swamps and forest are nature, and cities and towns are nature. Just different kinds of nature. Different kinds of threads.

People think I'm eating mushrooms out in the sea p slime and I need a bath. But I'm just walking around and weaving my thread through the trees and under the rocks and through the fabric.

[swamp-threads]

People back in the village keep looking at me weird, they keep saying "what's that kid doing? Why isn't he getting a new tunic? Where are his boots? Why does he keep coming back with more bones tied to him?" And those are fine questions. But, man, I haven't got the time for them every day.