I'm on the crown of a grassy hill. I want to do yoga. But the top's all picnic tables, so I go a little way down the slope to get elbow room. I do fishhooks, and rolls, and frog stands... it feels so good! Been a long time since I've really stretched.

It's sunny and warm, but the grass is damp. In fact the hill slope is soft under the grass: when I walk down, exploring, a piece a foot wide tears out. I feel guilty and pat it back in place. The slope is somewhat terraced, steep rings alternating with narrow shelves... old cow paths? The turf I tore out slides down into a puddle on the next ledge down. The hollow that formed the puddle seems to be an older wound in the hillside, replanted with bricks of live sod. But there are gaps and holes. I break up the piece I tore out and replant half, arranging it so the grass-roots will soon spread to fill the whole hole. But I plant the other half in the old wound's gaps. I want the hill to heal.

Is this park in Nepal? The locals are resigned to a certain amount of erosion due to tourists--they resent it, but need the income.

I meet a blonde about twenty years old, who looks a bit like Uma Thurman, but with a short upper lip, exposing her upper teeth like an eager beaver. A bit funny-looking, but still cute. She says she's trying to save endangered butterfly habitat. Apparently monarchs and other species nest in caves and sheltered little hollows, and their habitat is being polluted by people who toss their trash into any convenient hole. She goes around our picnic hill cleaning up little grottos and wounds in the turf... But she gets madder and madder at the litter she finds (nearly all of it chocolate wrappers).

Now she wants to fill up or seal off the caves so people can't throw their trash in--forgetting this'll block access for the butterflies she wants to protect! She's doing more damage than the litterers!

Like the snake Ouroboros, her idealism has gone round to eat itself.

NOTE

I knew as soon as I woke that the caves she wanted to seal off were lobes of my brain, and the butterflies and trash were... memories. One set she loves, one set she dismisses as trash. Memories that she, with the very best of intentions, wants to seal off!

WARNING! Sealing off memories won't clean the mind, but impoverish it. If you want butterflies, better learn to live with trash.

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