Paddle and mud bath on sunny warm afternoon

Boy, it’s been a long winter! But today just had it. Billy and I stretched aviary wire over the new chicken yard run. The sun was warm, it all went well, we got the wire tight, ready for the big day on Friday when we’ll tear down the old coop and move the little flock. (The rooster is a pistol; he runs things with a flair, and looks out for his girls. He calls them over for food, picks it up and drops it for them.)

I went for a paddle around 3. Paddling has been generally cold and/or windy, and water cold from Spring winds, but today it was warm, and warmer as I made my way down a channel in the lagoon. Water glassy and green. A seagull was tearing at a dead fish on the bank and didn’t budge when I came within 10 feet. I’ve been appreciating seagulls lately; they’re strong, ultra-resourceful, many quite beautiful, whi=te, yellows, black.

Perfect day for a mud bath. I pulled up to the grassy bank, stripped, got warm in the sun and then plastered myself with the gooey black mud. The stuff is like cream. All over, all body parts I could reach. Stood in the sun a while, the glory of being all alone out in the sunshine, no humanoids in sight. Then washed it off, paddled back to my truck.

There were a dozen kids playing on the mud flats, hooting, running, goofing. No cell phones or video games, just mud and water. They were having so much fun. Perfect day.

About Lloyd Kahn

Lloyd Kahn started building his own home in the early '60s and went on to publish books showing homeowners how they could build their own homes with their own hands. He got his start in publishing by working as the shelter editor of the Whole Earth Catalog with Stewart Brand in the late '60s. He has since authored six highly-graphic books on homemade building, all of which are interrelated. The books, "The Shelter Library Of Building Books," include Shelter, Shelter II (1978), Home Work (2004), Builders of the Pacific Coast (2008), Tiny Homes (2012), and Tiny Homes on the Move (2014). Lloyd operates from Northern California studio built of recycled lumber, set in the midst of a vegetable garden, and hooked into the world via five Mac computers. You can check out videos (one with over 450,000 views) on Lloyd by doing a search on YouTube:

One Response to Paddle and mud bath on sunny warm afternoon

  1. There's nothing like playing in mud. Our most enjoyable days as kids were the days we could talk a parent into letting us make a "river" in the backyard. We'd get the water going and spend hours digging a river through the mud in the yard. We'd make boats out of leaves and sticks and wallow in the mud. Great fun! I'm always happy to see kids enjoying the simple pleasures of life…a river, a beach, a hill, sand castles, mud, sunshine. We just need to get our kids out there; they'll find a way to have fun.

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