“He’s gonna get cold!”

…yelped Alicia as his shrunken wizard’s hat tumbled to the ground.

Today’s email brings a change of pace from my usual mutterings and musings on marketing, mindset, persuasion, assorted spells & wizardry…

Instead, I want to yap about a bunch of nuts I found while getting weird in the California Redwoods.

And awwway we goooo…

Last weekend in the middle of our road trip from Lake Tahoe through the California Redwoods (reeeeaal fucking thick trees), and up the dazzling (albeit often foggy) Oregon Coast, Alicia, her brother, and myself stopped to spend an afternoon chewing on magic mushys as we wandered along an abandoned road-turned-trail in the midst of the Redwoods.

I must admit, unlike prior intergalactic adventures, this wasn’t meant to be a particularly therapeutic mushroom trip.

Our main purpose was to immerse ourselves deep in the glorious nature, group bonding, and simply to have some goodnatured fun.

And what fun we had…

In a similar fashion to how I let squirrels guide me on a walk the last time I ate mushrooms, we let the woods lead us on our forested, ferny adventure.

The result being we wandered up the path, exploring hollowed out trees, ancient benches, fallen trees, and a whole lotta stunning scenery.

Whenever somewhere captured our interest, we’d stop, explore, talk, and enjoy our surroundings.

Somewhere along the way we found an acorn, fallen in the dirt, with a stem resembling a shrunken wizard’s hat. Which, of course, was delightfully amusing.

Much to our collective dismay, I broke its “hat” off, which was simply tragic, as Alicia proclaimed with worry, “Oh, he’s gonna get cold!”

God forbid our fallen friend become chilly.

Diligently holding our little lost nut’s hat in place to keep him warm, I decided we needed to find a proper place to leave the acorn, rather than tossing it back onto the ground, where he’d most assuredly freeze his nuts off.

If you’ve read The Name of the Wind or it’s accompanying novella, The Slow Regard of Silent Things, you’ll be familiar with the quirks of Auri

If you’re not familiar with either story, Auri is fringe character, obsessed with ensuring that everything in her home is in just the right place.

(Note: if you HAVEN’T read The Name of The Wind, I suggest you rectify that sorry state of affairs immediately. It’s by far the best piece of fiction I’ve ever read, and has had a large influence on my writing, as well as The Sorcerers Guild)

Anyway—carrying our nutty friend up the road, I was determined to find just the place to leave our little sorcerous acorn.

And find just the place I did.

Eventually we came to a large fallen tree, with its thick slabs of ribbed bark acting as shelves. After poking around some, I found the perfect little ledge to leave our shivering nut.

However, as Auri would have thought, he looked rather lonely sitting on his shelf all by his lonesome, and not quite in his proper place.

So we scoured the area looking for his “family.”

We found two more nuts (wizard hats included, and a tiny pinecone to complete our little woodsy family.

Here’s our crew of sorcerous nuts:

Would ya look at how bloody cute they are?

We even found the village idiot (a nut cracked nearly in two). However, in true village idiot fashion, he slipped off the ledge, and fell into the depths of the fallen tree.

Finally, with our nut family complete, everyone in their proper place, and the mushrooms clearing our system we made our way back down the road, and headed on our way.

And so ends the wondrous, amusing tale of the nutty little family we created and left behind in the forest for the next group of people who decide to get weird in the Redwoods.

Until tomorrow…

Yours sorcerously,

Alexander Mullan