can't give up acting tough (it's all that I'm made of)

If you are gonna be friends with the animals, you have to be friends with all of them, not just the cute, cuddly ones; nor just the bad-ass, really cool ones. That was part of what they left out of the Seven Dwarfs: Snow White singing to banana slugs.

Like choosing sides for kickball at recess, one by one the animals picked their saints out of the group of volunteers. The owl, the spider, the bear, the swan, the wolf, the rabbit. She found herself the patron saint of porcupines (one of the more cute, cuddly looking of the rodent family) and it seemed masking herself with their likeness might come in handy.

There were things to consider, however. Would those that approached her, then, need to wear armor or be resigned to the fact that holding her would amount to voluntary voodoo, a loss of blood by a million tiny pin pricks, crochet hooks in thin skin?

It's not like she needed to warn anyone, they could see it upon approach. And it's not like she could take off the dress (maybe she didn't want to).

She thought how different things would be if she had been chosen by the alpaca, or the rainbow trout. Instead of harsh quills, she would be clothed in something soft and lovable, or shimmering with mirroring light. But then, surely she would have been robbed to make sweaters, or worse.

"May as well play the hand, I suppose." she thought as she crunched into a shiny red delicious, choosing to consider her prickly friends as quite bad-ass. It was what she needed.

Paint the Hills

I am windswept and sun bleached.  

Eastern oregon is an amazing, inspiring place.  Which is the main reason for the adventure of the last three days.  Cyr, Jo, Kelty and I left on sunday morning to drive to the Painted Hills, part of the John Day Fossil Refuge about two and a half hours east of Bend.  Our friends Lori and Shane joined us for the first leg.  We had no destination besides the hills, with  Cyr's camera in tow, as well as costumes and a vintage black film sign with moveable letters.  

Cyr took 345 photos.  

Much of the trip was pulling over at old farmhouses, or walking up the fossil bed self guided path so Jo could play her violin in front of green clay cliffs.  We found an orchard, the John Day River, a baby bird in an old pioneer cemetery, several old bridges, a shoe tree, a coyote dead on a fence,  a rickety foot bridge with cowboys driving trucks through the river nearby, two perfectly suited camp sites, a hundred year old country store, a chocolate blackberry milkshake,  and most of all- silliness, laughter, and poetry.

I'll show photos eventually.