Nightly Passage. I go to the ancient barn near the lake's edge and carve a linden log--whittling it down hour after hour, piece by piece, into two canoe paddles. They will be needed for nightly passge to the floating wooden dock in the middle of the lake where a wooden Adirondack chair, enclosed in a fragrant arch of cedar boughs, is created as a small private observatory to view sky stars and water stars. Out of lake mud I write seven letters on the back rungs of the chair. V.I.T.R.I.O.L. Vista interiorem terrae rectificando invenies operae lapidem. (Seek out the lower realms of the earth, perfect them and thou wilt find the philospophers' stone.)

The Skidi Pawnee believed that all events on Earth were in some way connected to celestial events and that the stars were sacred beings who actively sought relationships with their human relatives. -- Gregory Cajete