… an early start gets me to my Pocket Road trail perch by 07:30 AM… the climb is equivalent to 45 flights of stairs… i stop a couple of times to let my heart rate slow… i sit listening to the stream flowing over rocks and into pools, still unable to precisely describe the sound… hiss, burble, gurgle is the best i can do so far… the water snake slithers by… are all paths through the wood vestigial snakes?… ouroboros, i think no, they are more linear in nature, but then, i think my thinking is too narrow, that water falls on the mountain, flows down to the river, then to the sea, where it rises up to the sky and returns to the top of the mountain to start again… i think for a minute that the snake is always going clockwise, but what is wrong with starting at the mouth and following the arc to the tail?…