Cool stuff EMF! Admittedly, I'm not so much a fan of spring, because here in oregon it means rain, clouds, and high winds every day from march through mid-june. I'm hyperbolizing obviously, but today was the first day we had sun in nearly two weeks (no joke). In any case, you have no idea how reassuring it is to see someone out there using their knife! With busse I can understand keeping them as safe queens (they're just so purty), but SY knives beg to be used. I've never heard of this tip-first batoning, but now that I see you demonstrate it, I'll have to try it myself.

I agree with you about the outdoors calming me down, it can be amazing. When I'm just up to my neck in school work or teenage drama (you probably know the kinds of things I'm referring to), nothing puts my mind back on track like a day in the woods with Sharp, or going up to my family's place in southern Washington. In fact, I get so relaxed that it is often hard for me to get back into the daily grind of homework afterwards.

to quote a particularly a section of Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Nature" that I particularly love:

"In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, -- no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, -- my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, -- all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God," (Emerson, 18)




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