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Crested Deer and Barberry

Dreamed 2022/7/8 by Wayan

Deer with B&W feathercrests. Dream sketch by Wayan. Click to enlarge.


Are the hunters still on my trail? I hike up slopes clad in deep pinewoods--wooded for now, but maybe not for long; I cross a muddy logging road. Wilderness threatened--like me.

Reach a creek. As I drink, a family of dappled brown deer come down a steep bank to drink too. Strange--they're crested like woodpeckers or jays, with black and white feathers. Wary of me--til they see I eat plants, like them. I wasn't even thinking, just found a spiral leaf I unconsciously knew was edible--waterleaf, I think--and chewed one.

The deer-jays calm me down. Hike higher in the hills. Colder. Barren; leafless brush, the bare twigs brittle dry & black, as if it all just thawed after a hard winter.

On the ground I spot a purple-black oval pod, 2 cm long, 1 wide. Again, quite by instinct, I pick it up and eat it. That distinctive sour-bitter-astringent taste tells me it's a medicinal plant, a strong tonic my body likes. I think it's called Oregongrape. Wait, there's a more common name, related to the Latin name, but I can't recall either one. Nags me. And how the hell did it get here, in this dead zone?

Only now do I notice an apparently dead bush--skeletal. But with a few more dark, sour, bitter ovals. Soon as the killing frosts are over, these roots and seeds are ready for rebirth.

NOTES IN THE MORNING



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