On why we make tea.
Late summer, turning to fall, along a bend of the Manistee River south of Buckley, MI, I saw the woodland in a new way.
Logs were angled to shed water and grasses grew thick beneath them. Fungi were plucked cleanly, their parent hardwoods arranged with care to hold shade through the day.
Beneath a sprawling canopy of cedar roots, I began to imagine a folk — not as creatures of myth, but as a way of being — who live close to their flame and closer still to their woods.
This folk would understand that creation is not separate from environment — that to make something is to echo what already exists.
Their creations would bear songs of the season, memories of the soil, the tone of plant, herb, and fungi; the communion of bees and flower, the conversation among roots and leaves.
Their creations would speak softly of these things .
What might such a folk make? I think tea is a think they might make.
Imagine a folk that live for the slowness of creation, not that which they create; a grounding brought by the ritual of making earthly things.
I imagine their fires kept low, rarely allowed to flare. A steep as a conversation, not an extraction - the first sip is seldom the final word.
We imagine.
