I kneel in the woods, because I've found orchids again - now nearly finished, but they're here - on Lynn Peak. I hear a rustle, my mind flashes cougar so I turn up around quickly. One second, two seconds, my eyes finally focus and scan the woods and then it all begins to spin in a low blood pressure spiral.

I put my hand out onto the bark of an old growth cedar. I close my eyes and let the tree move through me from roots to crown. My head begins to throb with the pressure of energy overflowing, spilling through the slight curved opening of my loosely closed eyes.

The sun is still early and low in the sky, and I am the first on the trail. Spiderwebs follow behind me, gossamer silver strands tangled into my hair, around my knees. I break open a grand fir cone: the resin is fragrant citrus. I slip a seed into my mouth and let it seep into my tongue, into my sinuses.

I will become you from the inside out. Later I'll taste it all, the earth will crumble into my mouth and yours. Pine, fir and hemlock, cedar and swordferns, growing from my hands and my head, reaching towards the sunlight, sending roots and holdfasts down into the earth, granite, solid beneath us all.