Into green lush summer

On June 29, I drove from Fort Worth to Little Rock, only about 6 hours. But I left on the late side because of the inspiring visit to The Modern, so I arrived in Little Rock near sunset. All along the way, the surroundings just got greener and greener, and I could smell more vegetation on the heavy humid air. After so many years in Phoenix, these habitats seem unbelievably lush and overgrown to me. 

It was a peaceful, spacious, wide open day of driving, with some spattering rain showers along the way. I reserved a room at a weird little fancy hotel outside Little Rock called The Burgundy. One of the essential tricks on this trip was using Booking dot com to get rooms at deep discounts. Many of the hotels where I stayed were otherwise way beyond my budget. 

In the close Arkansas night, I went out to capture some of the sounds, especially of the katydids, a sound from my childhood in Pennsylvania. It was a maximalist symphony, evoking so many memories of summer nights in temperate climates with giant trees full of life. 

This was also an important moment because I realized there were certain synaesthetic aspects to the trip that I could document with sound and video, not just stills. I may have gone overboard a little with that, as a series of dashcam "soundtrack" videos I took on my travels clocks in at more than 2 hours long. (More about that later).

Another remarkably Plutonian sight along the nightwalk in Little Rock was a dead bird being eaten by Limax maximus, horror movie style slugs (Content warning: giant slugs eating dead bird):

While finding out more about these huge striped beasts, I found this description of how they mate:

"The mating habits of Limax maximus are considered unusual among slugs: the hermaphrodite slugs court, usually for hours, by circling and licking each other. After this, the slugs will climb into a tree or other high area and then, entwined together, lower themselves on a thick string of mucus, evert their white translucent mating organs (penises) from their gonopores (openings on the right side of the head), entwine these organs, and exchange sperm. Both participants will later lay hundreds of eggs."

All of it perfectly resonant. 

When I awoke in the early morning the next day, with only Nashville to make by nightfall, a mere 5 hours away, the world was grey and bathed in water from rains. I could feel my skin inhaling the moisture and whispering little thank yous. My mood met this wet and warm world and a few more tightly closed buds began to open in my chest.