A BUCKET OF PINECONES

Getting ready for new fires in the just-cleaned woodstove, went at evening to fill the bucket with pinecones from the shed, out to the big bag of them still left from the ones I picked up on Little Pine Beach a couple years ago, my feet going quiet out back trying not to startle the two young does nibbling at the big meadow across the road as I saw from the big side window a few moments before-- I don’t think they can see me here, and I’m downbreeze, but they might hear me, so I try to sound like a bunch of pinecones in a big bag in a shed.

Then trying even harder to stay quiet while slowly pouring out those years-dry pinecones that whisper as they go out of a big chunky bag into the old iron bucket just waiting to be noise, and then in that autumn evening light the surprise to me, so far from expecting the beauty that comes tumbling into the reddish bucket in the silvers, russets and other dun colors left behind by pine seeds long gone into the world; purpose fulfilled, the pinecones are still reaching-- openness their new beauty, they gather together without fuss, arrange themselves in elegance; I add some more on top, they’re still perfectly arranged. Then I add a handful more, just to see. You cannot mess up a bunch of pinecones.

Simple, sleek power they are, gathered there in a bucket in a twilight, fallen altogether in ancient understanding. One must take the time they call for, gaze at their perfection, try to see how they do it, being mostly space, but are we not the same-- it is something that knows us well, some ancient thing, far older than eyes, that life has made and light has painted, a glimpse from a now at what is always, about light and seeds, about hearts and moments, about deep stirrings of time in evenings of lives... pinecones in a bucket.

ON LITTLE PINE BEACH

On Wednesday afternoon I took the beach-hungry beasties to our favorite secret beach, called by us Little Pine Beach, where on that ultrafine calm blue feather-clouded day the four of us got out of the car at the end of the long narrow road to the sand and water about a hundred meters or so away. When I turned around after getting my bag from the trunk, there in the far distance, arms raised in glee, were three tiny silhouettes already screamsplashing into the calm water...

I headed at a slow pace along the hundred meters or so to the beach, and when I was almost there remembered the beach mat in the trunk so turned and walked the hundred meters or so back to the car, got the mat and walked the hundred meters or so back to the beach where I realized that since school was in session, the season does not begin for about another month and there WAS NOBODY ELSE THERE WE HAD THE ENTIRE BEACH TO OURSELVES!

As I spread the mat amidst the joy I couldn't help but notice that beneath the many little pines were strewn about seven million pine cones, perfectly seasoned for starting fires in a woodstove, and there's only one household I know of around here that has any such need for pine cones. Everybody else uses nuclear power. Even better, these were free pine cones, with no meltdown.

But no way would (or could) I ask the girls out of the water when the swimming was perfect, even to gather also perfect pine cones just lying there waiting to be claimed by this lucky winner of the Pine Cone Lottery. No questions from the press, please. So I alone jumped right on the pine cones, but I only had my small back pack and a little plastic bag of the kind they make that holds maybe two pine cones, go figure. And it would rain before I could get back here on the weekend... What's that old saying about Lord, thy pine cone-covered beach is so vast etc.--

So I walked the hundred meters or so back to the car and was lucky to find some large plastic bags that we sometimes have in the car for wild vegs, fruits and herbs, walked the hundred or so meters back to the beach and commenced harvesting pine cones by ones twos and threes in the mango gold of the late afternoon as the girls splashed in the shallows and a powerboat roared aimlessly back and forth offshore, playing music of the kind that requires volume to offset some central emptiness, the roarers seeking in the midst of nature's beauty to somehow drown out her insistent presence in a dull version of fun that seeks distraction from what it will not see and does not want to understand. Unlike the girls, who in their bigger world were fashioning beach toys and houses from bamboo and sandpiles, having deep fun with water and earth-- no boat, no motor, no fuel, no blasting along the surface, no costly layers of separation from what is, bottom line, the ancient part of ourselves.

And so as the girls played in all that majesty I bent to my task about 500 times, wandering not bent/bent/not bent/bent along the shore beneath the pines, gathering only the finest cones - one becomes a pine cone gourmet of sorts after a few years - strewn there by the hurricane of a few days ago and normally soon raked away and burned by the beachkeepers, but the season hasn't begun so I was doing them something of a favor, and I must say I haven't seen such a fine crop of pine cones in all my years here, they were that golden amber of the fresh unweathered kind-- I got 8 big bulging bags full.

Later, after a cooling loll on the shady sand, as it approached time to leave - me wearing my white hemp pants, orange NYC t-shirt under white shirt w/long sleeves rolled and straw cowboy hat with the silver concho on the front - I gathered up three big bulging bags of pinecones in each hand and headed back the hundred meters or so to the car through the narrow alley. On the way, I passed three young Japanese males heading for the beach, who, upon beholding way out here in the middle of nowhere - japanopublicly speaking - a tall, long-white-haired elder gaijin striding along in white pants, white shirt, orange NYC tee and conchoed straw cowboy hat, carrying... three big bags full of pine cones in each hand... it changed their worldview somewhat.

When I walked back the hundred yards or so to the beach to get the other bags of pine cones and carry them the hundred yards or so back to the car before coming back the hundred yards or so to the beach to gather up the girls and their stuff and walk the hundred yards or so back to the car to head home, I saw the young men still standing there on the sunset beach like the enigma in a De Chirico painting with some loud rap music drifting over the water, puzzled to have come to a long beautiful beach empty but for three little girls, and additionally puzzled at major pine cone haulage by a strange foreigner from NYC... It was an odd day, I could sense them concluding at their unsought insight into the inspirational sources of the surrealists. It got even more surreal when I took the three little girls away with me.

Life can get interesting on Little Pine Beach.

PINECONING

If you're going pineconing (gathering a lot of pine cones), it's best to be accompanied by three young grandgirls. The grandies are especially handy if you're in your late sixties, when walking along scanning the ground while bending over and straightening up 600 times per hour or so doesn't hold much interest.

I can gather pine cones as well as the next elder guy, though, so I can get the job done when it comes to the crunch, but I'd rather stand and from the vantage of my full height direct the young ones (six hands!) to the best clusters of pinecones. They gather them so well because no one understands and appreciates pinecones like little kids do, new lives who can clearly see the magic in those little woody fireworky things. The little hands gather them up like treasure for no reason at all, so its a double delight to be doing it for a purpose that pleases loving grownups! Look how many I have in my bag! Bottom line though, they don't even need a purpose; they just need pine cones. Alas, I'm only daydreaming; the grandies are up north this time. How they would have loved it!

As it happened, Echo and I were still a bit early for pineconing, though not nearly as early as we were last week; quite a few more of the spiky wights had been brought down by the night wind. We use pinecones, as I've pointed out in previous pine cone excursion posts, as firestarters in our winter woodstove. They're beautiful, practical, functional and best of all, free. No. Best of all they give you an excuse to visit the near-empty beaches along this side of the Lake and walk beneath the old pine trees in the autumn wind.

The few kids from the city who are with their families at the pine beaches this time of year, especially the little girls (they love to gather free stuff and neaten the beach at the same time), who fill bags with pinecones, then at the end of the day as they head for the car to go home with their bags of treasure are told to dump them, because what in the world is a parent going to do with bags full of pinecones in a small apartment in the city?

So it happened that when we got to Omimaiko, the mother lode of pineconing, there was a girl there about 10 years old beneath the pines unhappily emptying her bag of hard-earned pinecones, kneeling on the sand and taking each bit of magic out of her big full bag, looking at it and tossing it over either shoulder or somewhere out in front of her, apparently trying to be mother nature by recreating a natural scattering, all the while talking to herself or perhaps to the pinecones she was having to surrender so unhappily-- she was delighted therefore when grownup Echo approached her with her own pine cone bag and, asking the why of it, said she would take the pinecones home herself, if that was ok.

And so we set to the largely pleasant task. Generally it's only kids - who still have that pure sense of amazement - that gather pinecones, though now and then there's an adult who sets out to gather pinecones for some legitimate, adultifiable reason (usually rooted in amazement, nonetheless). As the adult proceeds at the task, however, he becomes to a surprising extent the kid he used to be, the kid for whom pinecones were the jewels they really are, and worth gathering for that reason alone! How could he ever have forgotten that?