Blackberries oh no please don't throw me in the briar patch I wore jeans and big boots and a thick cotton shirt and the thorns managed to puncture my cowskin gloves. Great care must be taken-- the thorns angle down and are tender on the new growth. They weren't as painful as those damned Canadian thistles, with inch-long thorns that work their way into the flesh and then break off at the tips. Although my joints all feel great right now this is hardly recompense for the many miniature stabbings I suffered of a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Pulling thistles and briars in the drizzly rain felt almost meditative; something about cold raindrops and the hot sting of thorns put me in a soft frame of mind. I'm not saying this is a regular recreation or hobby but it wasn't totally unpleasant.
 
I thought about a lot of things, and people, and the machinations and ways of the world.
There are forces at work we just don't understand; we can't predict storms and yet we try so desperately to predict favorable outcomes for political situations. No one knows which way the wind will blow. It is tempestuous and inconstant, churning like water in a storm-tossed sea. I have seen the ocean during a winter storm, the blue Pacific whipped and frothed, turned hard and sharp like iron. Great waves thunder white against hundred-foot cliffs and roar back out to sea, wind taking my breath, water tearing away the land.
 
I have also seen it hushed and still, holding its breath, deserving of its name, seven miles to the horizon and twice as blue as the sky, no trace of the wind. I can't count the number of times I have watched the sun sink into that great wide blue, or watched clouds or fog roll inland. Some dissipate, others build in size and intent and leap the mountains. Errors in forecast, the lines are down, something is coming.

I could write a book but it would never be finished because there will always be more blackberries and thistles to pull out of the ground.