20:50 - Saturday, Oct. 08, 2005
c v s (drug)
Something like a year ago, Chell told us that every pine tree in the forest smelled either like chocolate, strawberry, or vanilla. Chell has also said things like the wheel is still currency in Guam and that it is possible to milk a man if he tries hard enough, so nobody believed him, even after we all smelled different pines and thought, privately, that he was right but that we must just be super susceptible to the power of suggestion.
On the way down from our hike, we started gathering, the four of us, around random pines, smelling them, and then chanting "one... two... three... CHOCOLATE!" or whatever it was.
We always shouted the same thing, except Andrew shouted out strawberry sometimes when the rest of us shouted vanilla. Nobody ever messed up chocolate though. Chocolate was solid. It made us hungry.
I remembered that today and went around smelling every pine I found within a short radius. The group was walking too fast for me to do it like I wanted, though. There was this whole thing about reaching the peak of Flagstaff mountain, whereas I would have been satisfied wandering around the foothills with my nose to pine bark, screaming "CHOCOLATE!" at passing hikers.
As a matter of fact, a perfectly satisfactory way to spend a day for me would be spreading this knowledge to everyone on a specific trail and knowing that, in their heads, this monologue is going:
"Uhhh, what the fuck. Who is that? Why is she talking to me? There is no way trees smell like Neapolitan ice cream. But if I don't try it she's never going to shut up. Umm. Hmmm. Shit. That DOES smell totally like vanilla. Wait, let me try it again. Vanilla. Wow. But no, no, if she hadn't just told me it was gonna smell like vanilla it probably wouldn't. Whatever. I'll just pretend like that was a mindblowing discovery and walk on."
And then, when they're out of sight, they will stop, furtively look around them, then lean into another pine, too curious to bear it, and smell strawberry. And then vanilla again. And then chocolate. And soon everybody will be amazed.

P.S. Nick made pine needle tea for breakfast today by putting pine needles in the steeping portion of his teapot. It tasted like pears.

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