Friday, May 31, 2013

The sweet smell holds the strongest memory

On Wednesday I went with my youngest daughter to Luukki lake, as she wanted to try swimming for the first time this year. There is a big field of grass by the lake, and while going to the lake we saw some people in a very strange-looking activity.

There were half a dozen people of which half were dragging a meter-long wooden stick along the ground, in a squating position, very very slowly. This looked like a strange kind of tai chi. There were 30 cm tall markers with colored ribbons here and there, 20-30 meters from each other, and the squatters were slowly moving between these markers.

I heard someone say something like "Now I feel it will be found", and thought that perhaps this was some occult thing, such as geomancy, looking for underground water for placing a well.

When we returned it turned out that there were a couple of dogs sniffing the ground between the markers. So, this was exercise for dogs - search dogs or tracking dogs - and the people with sticks had been marking the ground for the dogs to follow the scent. Oh well, my original thoughts were much more exciting!

These photographs were taken last weekend. Birch! Birch! Birch! Birch! I do love these trees.

(Posting title is from the poem Smoke in Our Hair by Ofelia Zepeda.)

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