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blueanddeepblue · 8 years ago

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10/30

In my dream, a giant grizzly has pressed his head into our tent and down onto my chest. His breath is deep and ragged and smells wild, except it's a dream, so there is no smell. Alexis knows something is wrong and calls my name from the sleeping bag next to me. I freeze and hold my breath, a few millimeters of flimsy tent fabric between me and the grizzly's muzzle, pressure building, hoping that my heart doesn't betray me. My heart pounds three times, and then I wake up. ----- Something about the American west denotes bigness and wildness. Weather changes in a breath. Plains stretch out endlessly, only to be hemmed in by bluish peaks even further out. In Wyoming we drive through arid desert arroyos, greenish-yellow hues rippling across the dull, brown gullies, only to climb quickly into mountains surrounded by pines and snow, the sky gone grey and the clouds obscuring the highway's next curve. Later in the same drive, we descend again to the plains, pronghorn stretched out in the grasses basking in sunshine. Fall here means rivulets of gold and red, oaks and maples that indicate hidden streams and trout-riddled rivers cutting through swatches of brown and yellow grasses. The drives are longer now. And the land itself implies reflection. The sky is big too, as they say, and the sunsets seem eternal in our westward push. Rock outcroppings jut out along ridges and at the edges of buttes, and the striated layers mark the passing of eons. The rock was here before man existed and will be long after man has gone. So too, the color of the world. In the Black Hills, Alexis and I look for mountain goats among the boulders. We climb to the highest point in South Dakota, a CCC built fire lookout called Harney Peak. A dam and small retention pond have been built nearby, which helped keep the lookout alive back when the tower was used for such purposes. The structure itself is made of rock and continues up along a sheer cliff face on one side. We push open the wooden door, and inside the wind is held at bay, exposing us to a quiet we didn't know was absent. A heavy steel ladder leads us to a narrow walkway surrounded by 360 degree views that stretch into Montana, Wyoming and Nebraska. The windows at the top are made of plastic, not glass, presumably because stronger winds will inevitably break these windows, and plastic is an easier replacement. Our teeth, our bones, behind the pits of our stomachs fire warning spasms, twinges of fear, the evolutionary hardwiring put in place to keep us from pushing our limits in high places, little bursts of adrenaline every time the wind rattles the tower's windows. I imagine the tower breaking away from the cliff face; I imagine us hurtling through nothing all the way to the flatlands east of the Black Hills. Or I imagine getting stuck in a tree halfway down. I'm not sure which is worse. But the tower holds. It is well built. Harney Peak Lookout tower is comprised of 7,000 surface stones; 15,000 hollow tiles; 200 tons of sand; 32,800 pounds of cement; 500 bricks; 500 pieces of reinforced steel, angle iron and other metal accouterment; 300 iron poles, averaging 25 feet in length; 20 kegs of nails; 1,000 feet of steel cable; 1,300 pounds of steel wire; and 800 feet of railroad track. I imagine the CCC boys from Dolan Camp, young and hopeful, working to overcome the Great Depression, climbing these steep slopes and blasting away rock here, boring into rock there - carving out a safe haven for someone they'd never know. I Imagine them being good Americans - sending part of their paycheck back home at the bequest of their country, for the good of their families. I imagine them being good Protestants and good Lutherans, quoting Psalms to one another before setting out for the day's work: Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea. I'm encouraged by their industriousness. I've hiked here and I look out as a conquerer, part of the same spirit, the same resoluteness that left such an indelible mark on the landscape. I munch on my Cliff Bar, victorious. But I'm not Protestant or Lutheran. Or anything for that matter. But maybe the Quran has it right: And they hewed their dwellings out of the mountains, feeling secure. But the shout seized them in the morning. And that which they had earned did not help them. ----- We drive up into Yellowstone through the snow. Once inside the park we see bison, bear, fox, and elk. The sunset lands on the tops of the mountains and they glow like embers from a neon fire. The sky dances purple and orange and the heavy grey of precipitation. The lake ripples a deep blue out where the wind blows the water into waves, and thin sheets of milky ice float in the shallow bays. We follow the road along the shoreline in awe. Gas and steam hiss from a crack in the earth. The lake and sky are a theatre of color and light; we are specks floating inside a terrarium of mountain and pine and snow and ice and water and cloud and light; we are the settling dust at the beginning of creation; we are fixtures in a miniature, insignificant pieces in a snow-globe shaken by some unseen hand. The earth is bigger and more defiant than we could ever know. Mystery issues forth from every crevice, peers out from behind the corners, stabs out in rays of light between the clouds. Alexis's little car behaves nobly on the snow and ice, guiding us to one of the three open campgrounds at Yellowstone. We find a spot and set up camp in the snow. We build a fire and warm ourselves. Our tent behaves nobly. And our sleeping bags too. We linger as long as we can, cocooned in warmth, before hunger spurs action. We make coffee and eggs, stamping our feet in the cold and trying to blow life into our hands. I've been to Yellowstone before a few times, but never in the cold. The earth is on fire. It smokes and churns and steams. We start at the geyser basin that includes Old Faithful. Alexis bubbles with the same excitement and wonder that she brings to all experiences, her eyes big and blue and beautiful, open and seeking; however, this is her first time to the park, so there is an added electricity, an additional burst of wonder that only a place as bizarre and other-worldly as Yellowstone can summon. There is no place quite like it. I understand, at least theoretically, how volcanic pressures create fissures in the earth, cracks that spew geysers, boiling pots of mud, or dark cavernous holes that spout steam, but to stand in front of Artist Paint Pots or to look down on Grand Prismatic Pool or to hear the roar from Black Dragon's Caldron…these things defy explanation. Experience is different than understanding. ----- We are funny creatures, us humans. We build a park and throw up signs that acknowledge change as the only constant; we erect placards to the previous times when the earth moved, when the geyser blew up unexpectedly, when the hillside gave way to pressure; we pay lip-service to the fact that someday the geyser will blow again, but we build lodges and visitor centers on the living earth and lay out boardwalks over the surface like we were meant to walk there. It's probably this same boldness that enables tourists to get out of their car and point their camera in the face of a bison. It's probably the same look of entitlement that washes over the face of a politician who's about to accept a bribe, that peculiar human trait that makes people think they're an exception to the rule, that helps them believe that they'll beat the odds. But so too, the mountains shall crumble into the sea. ----- I remember, as a kid, taking out the trash after dark had fallen. The dumpster was on the north side of our property, down a stone staircase and up a dirt driveway, maybe 100 hundred yards from the house. I had done this chore before, but something about the dark and having to turn my back on the accumulated clutter beneath the house made me wary. I ran the rest of the way, somehow both highly aware of everything around me while also afraid to look too closely into the darkness. We grow into fear. We wake one day to encounter it, to entertain the idea that the shadows hold something sinister. But in waking, we also encounter a world of mystery. We open our eyes to wonder. If we're careful, if we choose to move consciously, if we choose to look closely at the world around us. ----- In Yellowstone, Alexis and I abandon our plans to backpack. In some ways, this decision is weather related, although it warms up and the snow melts as the week wears on. In other ways, we don't quite feel comfortable in our preparation: our two-season tent, non-waterproof boots, our inexperience in grizzly country. Maybe fatigue is part of it as well. I've been camping and crashing at friend's for over two months now. Alexis and I have been on this journey longer than any of the tours that I went on during my stint as a professional musician, which is no easy feat. I continue to be amazed by the simple nature of our journey, where hardships, indecision, or disparate moods reveal themselves momentarily, only to become insignificant passages that we walk through together. This is a gift. In Montana we camp along Rock Creek. Most of the national forest campgrounds have closed for the season, but there are a few individual, roadside primitive spots left open and we set up for a few nights. Fly fishermen in waders occupy the creek's picturesque bends hoping to catch trout. Our site is nestled in close to the bank, and the constant gurgle of water over rocks both comforts and obscures. We build a fire and drink hot toddies and try to learn songs late into the night, or at least what passes as late when you've become accustomed to letting the sun set your schedule. In the morning, we wake cold and hike across Welcome Creek among the pines and over rock scree and in the quiet radiance that is summer's dying splendor - the grasses gone dry and the long-dead blooms of plants whose names I haven't learned, plants that twist and curl and delicately surrender to the changing of the season. We walk and talk loudly. We stay vigilant for bears. In the afternoon we play cards and warm ourselves in the sun. I set up the hammock and read. A bald eagle makes a pass along the creek. We gather firewood and organize it for the evening. These are moments of respite, easygoing and slow. At night, the sky stays clear, the Milky Way overhead, and at times I lean back from our conversation, from the beautifully whirling way that Alexis speaks, from the fire and the whiskey and the warmth, and I lean my head back and look straight up to see stars and galaxy and darkness in unison, and I think, "How lucky am I?". ----- What is this thread between fear and wonder? Where does it lead? Does fear exist without mystery? Does wonder? What does it feel like to be seized by a shout? So much of our lives are spent in routine, in the rituals that safeguard us from fear: the trips to the coffee shop, the radio DJ on the way home from work, the gym, the peck on the lips as you head out the door. But often we feel most alive when the ritual is interrupted: when the car careens from its lane and time slows to a crawl, when the morning kiss becomes a whirlwind. However, neither ritual, nor routine are the enemies of wakefulness, of living. Instead, I'm convinced that both the roadblock and the way forward exist within. Like a child, we must open our eyes and look in earnest. Can we observe without fear? Can we wonder in joy? Can we engage with the world around us with rapture and glee? Or maybe the child is a poor metaphor here, especially since a child looks to its elders as guideposts and soaks up their insecurities, their idiosyncrasies, their fears. Especially since a child can't articulate or share in the full experience of the world, but only observe, only look forward to joining the ranks of adulthood. Maybe we have to grow beyond innocence and become students of the world, looking and learning, testing out new ideas and asking questions that matter. Or maybe that's not right either. Don't we know that the accumulation of knowledge is also the accumulation of fear? The gathering of an ideology or worldview that, if broken and damaged, would also shake us to our core. Don't we know, that sometimes as students we purport to know the answers already? That we ask questions to make ourselves look good in the eyes of teachers? Colleagues? Don't we fear asking the wrong questions? Maybe all the metaphors are poor. From the self-same well spring fear and wonder, and we are merely passing through. Look. For in looking we see the world. Seek and ye shall find. But we won't find answers, or at least, we'll be sorely disappointed if answers are what we seek. Instead, look at the light on the hills. Look at the color in the cornfield. Listen for the woosh of eagle's wings. Smell the dank richness of rotting wood. Feel the strong embrace of a friend or shiver in the cold that lingers just beyond the fire. See how the rock stands poised on the cliff, defiant towards time and the law of gravity. Listen for the chickadee among the pines and hear how big the chipmunk sounds in the underbrush. And if the chipmunk emerges from the underbrush as a bear, snarling and charging, teeth ragged and neck bristled, then try to meet the bear's eyes with your own and see what rages in its depths. Brace yourself and look straight at it. Look to see if the mountains are indeed crumbling to the sea. Look at how lucky you are to be this close. Try to feel the earth, alive and hissing, beneath you. Try to smell the wildness on its breath. The blood in its fur. Then, goddammit, use your bear spray. ----- Thank you internet…Wikipededia for the metrics on Harney Peak Lookout tower Psalm 46:2 Surah Al-hijr 82-84

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blueanddeepblue · 8 years ago

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10/6

I've seen my dad once in the last seven years. We haven't spoken in the past year and a half. We're not even Facebook friends. When I came home from college one semester with a Rolling Stones CD with the song Bitch on it, he told me either the CD had to go, or I did. Before that, when I left for college, he told me I was throwing away a god-given gift by not playing college basketball. He may have been right about that one. ----- Right now A and I are sitting in the car in the middle of the Sturgeon River National Wilderness in Michigan's Upper Peninsula escaping the weather. Our tent is holding fast; it is both dry and secure, but I've spent too much of the past 24 hours losing to A at gin rummy to want to be trapped in there any longer. Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 15 is playing on the car radio, and we've reached the climax. Earlier, we ate dinner underneath a tarp in the cold and rain. Dinner was absolutely stellar. There were moments before the rain, as I got the fire going and A prepped our dinner, where the sun came out for a rare appearance, shooting light up towards the gold and red of oaks and birches and maples beginning their fall display. Our camp is along a bend in the river five miles down a dirt road, and we're the only campers here for the second night running. The solitude of the forest is immense after the din of tourists at several of our previous Michigan stops. Today when I went to rinse a dish in the river, a Bald Eagle flushed from his perch and A yelled "Up, up, up!" until I heard her above the babble of the rapids and looked to see him rise over the pines and out of sight. ----- I think some small portion of my love for birding is due to my dad. He would always point out hawks as he was driving, ducking his head so he could get a clearer vantage point beneath the windshield. I'm not sure he took much interest in birds in general, but he showed the excitement of a child whenever a hawk made a highway appearance. When he drove, he always had a toothpick to chew on, a holdover from his smoking days, which I never realized was the case until I quit smoking two and a half years ago. On the dashboard, he'd also keep a comb with all the rounded bristles knocked off so to better scratch his head as he drove. I don't remember him ever getting a traffic ticket. And one of his claims to fame was that he was never in a car accident, not even a fender bender. It's hard not to write about him in the past-tense. Sometimes I feel like the part of my life that had him in it was eons ago, and I was a different person. Now, when the family gets together for christmas, it feels whole and healthy, it doesn't feel like there's a missing piece; it feels like a weight has been lifted. But of course, there's this hole that exists, somewhere, even though I know it's better this way. This past week, talking with my uncle, I noticed, how he too, referred to his brother in the past-tense. ----- One of my favorite parts about traveling is the people you encounter. The relationships that A and I have fostered along this trip are of a certain mettle only tempered through the road. In Virginia we see my friend, Ava, and her and Mike's new baby, Onyx. They live on a farm on the bend in a creek near the Appalachian Trail with chickens and a garden and a self-built sauna and diesel powered hot-tub. They are the type of people who inspire you to do. To find ways to improve your life by your own means. To build a treehouse or learn to fly a plane. To live according to your own rules and not be bound by cultural norms. Ava and I met in undergrad, on a study abroad trip in Mexico. I've kept several friends from that study abroad trip, maybe because forging a friendship in a place outside your comfort zone helps you know that miles-between don't really matter. I remember joining Ava and her family one time at a Gary P Nunn concert in Luckenbach, Texas. I remember eating BBQ and dancing and having too many drinks and laughing at it all, every one of us crammed into the same small hotel room afterwards. I remember being struck by how her parents could still talk amicably after divorce. How they could even laugh a little at each other. How experiences could be shared because they were family. Seeing Ava and her own family is beautiful. We eat french toast and drink too much coffee. Mike is already out on the tractor, discussing methods of hauling brush with a neighbor. We leave feeling torn, lingering longer than intended, wishing we could stay to help the small community that's gathered to help cut down trees and make space for Onyx's outdoor play area. In D.C., we meet up with A's friend, Rhonda. We crash on her couch and wander the town, being tourists and visitors. Rhonda shows us the nearby farmer's market, and spoils us with drinks and stories and delicious meals. Years ago, A used to nanny Rhonda's boys, who are 16 and 14 now, all grown up with deep voices and polite manners, as driven and intent as their mother. Rhonda is a burst of constant energy, a whirlwind of goodness.The kind of person who radiates action and fortitude. As most everyone in D.C. does, Rhonda works in government, balancing home life and the nearly impossible demands of her job. In the garden, she found a caterpillar capable of devouring an entire tomato plant in one night. According to the internet, the appropriate remedy for such a pest is to cut it in half with a knife. Rhonda opts to leave him out on the sidewalk in hopes the birds will find him a tasty morsel. On a nearby leaf, a similar caterpillar is discovered, immobile, and riddled with white wasp larvae devouring it from the inside out. The best practice for a caterpillar being devoured from the inside out is to leave it alone, let nature to do its bidding. There is a theme brewing, a pattern; here, too, a father (but not a husband) stays involved with his kids, cajoles them about their homework, takes them rock climbing. ----- Later, in Pennsylvania, we stay two nights with my best friends' mom, Ann, and her husband Rocky. They live on a farm in the hills surrounded by cornfields and little villages with picturesque churches down winding country roads. When the wind blows, the corn rustles like the rattling of hollow bones, like a million wind chimes made of old newspaper. We have dinner on the patio overlooking the garden and the 100 year old barn and the next-door church and cemetery. We eat mussels and caprese and Rocky's own Golumpki recipe. Rocky and Ann regale us with stories of sailing adventures and hiking trips, tales of family and old friends, and opinions on politics and philosophy and life. I tend to wax poetic. Rocky tells good jokes. Evening on the patio turns into night and new bottles of wine keep appearing. It feels like home away from home. The next day we kayak on a nearby lake and lunch by a waterfall. The trip is also beginning to revolve around waterfalls. When we paddle back, there is a kingfisher and a little green heron and I can imagine the lake when the leaves fall. How it turns into a liquid carpet of gold and orange and red that the boat cuts through like a knife. In New York, we eat pho and gawk at passerby. Chinatown flows by, and we're mesmerized once again by the energy and the pace. New York is a city of no limits, no boundaries. In many ways, you are invisible. Always, everywhere, there is someone louder, more stylish, crazier, more artistic, or more outlandish than you. We stop to see A's friend who's opening a gallery. Later, we stay in the Bronx with my friend Jill, whose wife, Jess, is out of the country helping with hurricane relief. We share a dinner and beers and conversation, the three pillars of almost every good interaction. I fall asleep astounded at the goodness of people, at the way my life is surrounded by amazing people, humbled by the hospitality we're shown stop after stop. ----- My dad was 31 when I came along. In pictures from this era he appears rugged and handsome. He wears cut-off jean shorts and waterskis, barefoot, on some Texas lake, maybe even Canyon Lake, where I grew up. His hair is dark and wavy, and his eyes flicker a mystery, belying the thrill of speed, the roar of a powerboat, the splash of the wake against a barreled chest, strong arms. The pictures themselves have the golden tint of years past, the nostalgic glow of easy living. In one set of pictures, he sports a thick mustache and throws a football to friends. He drinks beer from the types of cans that advertisers have brought back into vogue now that enough time has lapsed, now that the trends have come full circle and they can again benefit from the aesthetics of collective memory. I did not know this version of my father. The one who lived easily among friends. The one who drank beer and waterskied and rode motorcycles and found ways to live fast and large. Or maybe I should say I did not often know this version of my father. Maybe these pictures of him are really card tricks, fanciful sleight-of-hand maneuvers that the mind plays on perception. Maybe the amber-tinged version of my dad is a mythology I've constructed, a story I've built up over the years to protect myself, to help explain why he's faded into the background of my life. Instead, I knew the version of my dad who couldn't handle it when the toothpaste wasn't rolled up from the bottom or the laundry didn't make it into the correct bin. The version who pulled us from sunday school because the message wasn't strong enough. Who changed the channel when beer commercials came on. Who had few friends that seemed to last. Who felt slighted and wronged by the world. Whose eyes shot sideways and clouded over with righteousness when he was begging to lose control. This too, is an illusion, a shifting myth tinged by the murkiness of memory. He also laughed at himself, his eyes crinkling at the corners. He took us fishing and played basketball with us, even though he grew up near Detroit, Michigan, where hockey is the sport of nobility, the sport his Texan kids would never quite comprehend. He wrestled on the floor with us or made himself into a launchpad at the pool, hurling us up and out across the water until we imagined ourselves to be birds, spaceships, shooting stars. ----- Here is a partial list of birds that A and I have seen thus far: Black-Throated Green Warbler Yellow Billed Cuckoo White Breasted Nuthatch Pileated Woodpecker Downy Woodpecker Black Buzzard Eastern Wood Peewee American Goldfinch Hooded Warbler Dark Eyed Junco Golden Crowned Kinglet Red Breasted Nuthatch Canada Goose House Sparrow Raven Grey Jay Green Heron Cedar Waxwing Blue Jay Belted Kingfisher Pine Warbler Northern Flicker Red Tailed Hawk Red Bellied Woodpecker Hairy Woodpecker American Robin Wild Turkey Crow Eastern European Starling Great Blue Heron Tufted Titmouse Brewers Blackbird Yellow Rumped Warbler Black Capped Chickadee Brown Thrasher Bald Eagle Wood Duck American Redstart Turkey Vulture White Throated Sparrow Least Flycatcher Ruby Crowned Kinglet Common Loon Hermit Thrush Northern Mockingbird Some of these are new birds, like the Hermit Thrush and American Redstart, birds that flash new color and make us hold our breath, or others that require we lean in to see the subtlety, those that mystify through the mundane. Some are as familiar as friends - a Kinglet among the underbrush. Other times, we jump to our binoculars at the flash of movement among the trees, against the sky, only to be disappointed by another mangy robin, another buzzard riding the thermals along the cliffs. We camp along every single one of the Great Lakes, marveling at the oceans of fresh water, at the gentle pulse of the waves lapping the shore or at the rainbow of color among the rounded stones. We stand underneath the falls at Niagara and on the boat that takes us in closer to where the mist shoots like needles into our eyes, where the sound is deafening as eternal thunder. Along the shores of Lake Michigan, we haul our camp chairs to the beach and look at the Milky Way among the night sky. We drink box wine and watch the fog roll in. Later, we swim in Superior, clear as glass all the way down to our toes. We emerge fresh and alive, reborn. We also run away from the biting flies, layer up to avoid the gnats, the mosquitos. Nature churns on according to its own whims. We're merely visitors here. ----- So much has gone by that I can't cram into this post. So many thoughts and feelings slipped through the cracks. Elusive. Flitted away. Things I glimpsed but that I could not identify. Ways to cinch the threads on this loose narrative. I am sitting in my sister's home in downtown Minneapolis. My niece is building blocks on the living room floor in front of me. I am aware that she is where the secret exists. That the most important person should always be the one right in front of me. That these memories I revisit and these things I chronicle are also fleeting. My sister and her husband have a wonderful family. The nieces share and play together wonderfully. Their home is wonderful and the meals we share around the table are wonderful. It's grey and rainy on the streets right now, but the warmth inside this home seems to stem from something deeper than an efficient central air system. My brothers camped with us in New York. We swam in the lake and fed spiders to the fish below the dock, watching them emerge from the depths like in the best Attenborough documentaries. We hiked around the lake. We watched a sunset explode over the hills behind us. We shared a fire and ate s'mores. We drank beers and swapped stories as the fog rolled in. I'm proud of my little brothers, who are bigger than me and have been for quite some time. I'm proud of their decisions and the people they've become - solid, thoughtful, caring, and articulate. I'm proud of their ability to grow up. Proud of their tenacity and perseverance. Proud of the kindness that seems innate. I'm proud of them. I'm proud of them all. My sister and brother back in Texas who aren't as much a part of this story merely because this trip and their paths have not yet intersected. I'm proud of the family we've become. The people we are. ----- There are no tidy endings here. No clean conclusions. Narratives seek a wrap-up, a way of putting all the pieces back together, but this is real life; it is neither as messy, nor as poetic as I make it seem in this account. I know that Dad is a part of the family we've become. I know that he, too, has much to be proud of. That he, too, should look at his grown children and see their success as part of his own. But I also know that he is broken. As all people share in brokenness. And that his brokenness keeps him from sharing in our success. Keeps him from calling, or writing, or staying meaningfully involved in any of our lives. In Michigan, we met up with Dad's brother and his wife. We kayaked down the Au Sable river and stayed at their home along the shores of Lake Huron. We slept with windows open to the sound of a lapping lake and woke to sunrises made of gold and fire. I wasn't planning on writing any of this. Not really. But somewhere along the dirt roads of the Upper Peninsula, or while passing a ski boat towed by an eager truck, or while walking on a sandy beach of Huron (all of these places of Dad's own childhood, fragments of the stories I remember him telling), or maybe even before all that, maybe before the trip began, I noticed a thread. Somewhere in all this space and beauty, somewhere in the rush of a waterfall, in the purple of a flower, somewhere between hiking-strides or in the sweep of a vista, I noticed a memory that hasn't quite yet finished playing itself out. A memory that is stranger still because it holds no finality, because there is still a chance at redemption, at a happy ending. So I'll put this here, mostly for my own benefit, like a soup simmering on low, to come back to at a later time. When I'm ready. And I'll walk with the realization that life isn't passed on, it's shared. That beauty is right in front of you, inviting you to get down and share with someone, inviting you to pick up the pieces and build something.

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blueanddeepblue · 8 years ago

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The trail starts out wide. A road really. Big enough for both of us to walk side by side. —– The night before, Alexis and I camp at Deep Creek, packed in among families with their mountain bikes and barbecue grills and behemoth tents and their hammocks stacked three-high celebrating Labor Day. We haul out our packs and shift gear around on the picnic table in the dark: sleeping pads and bags, camp stove and pots, emergency first aid kits, camel baks, rope, binoculars. Noted chronicler of Appalachian customs, Horace Kephart, says that “to equip a pedestrian with shelter, bedding, utensils, food, and other necessities, in a pack so light and small that he can carry it without overstrain, is really a fine art.” As connoisseurs of fine art and as people unaccustomed to camping in bear country, Alexis and I sit there looking at the bear canister wondering how to fit a week’s food supply into its small, plastic body. Canister is a deceiving term; it’s more a barrel-shaped lunchbox, smaller than those igloo contraptions your dad took to work throughout your childhood. But by the evening’s end, after all the arrangements, our packs seem lighter and emptier than they should, maybe because we’re not hiking in the desert and we don’t have to carry our water supply. We sleep, hoping that we are pedestrians soundly equipped. After morning coffee, we drive up from Bryson City with fog and mist blanketing the Great Smoky Mountains and shrouding the beginning of the hike in mystery, like a gift waiting to be opened -Alexis and I giddy children. —– The trail starts out wide. A road along a stream. We walk side by side. There is a newness, an excitement. It’s been months since I’ve seen her. But there is also a simple familiarity. We descend a short ways before starting a gradual two day climb towards Clingman’s Dome, the highest point in Tennessee, followed by another three days alongside Forney Creek. Alongside us Noland Creek drops pleasantly over boulders covered with moss and lichen, a background noise that a Texas boy like myself equates more to a waterfall than a creek, as most of the creeks I knew growing up were seasonal at best. It’s late summer in the Smokies and Noland roars softly, like a highway in the distance. We reacquaint ourselves to the rhythm of conversation, to a cadence particular to those who share intimacy. We fall into step. We adjust our packs at the shoulders, on the hips, at the chest, and try to ease out the kinks in our knees, on the lower back, near the nape of the neck. Some conversations are like a collision of atoms. I think that’s what drew me to Alexis in the first place, the way conversation would bounce between topics and stories and big ideas, whirling and spinning closer and closer to answers or revelations, the way talking with her would make my skin feel alive. It’s like that again. And the trail is wide. A road really. We walk side by side and point out the fungi here, a red flower over there, the way the light hits the water through a gap in the trees, the way the rocks make the stream look like blown glass. We hurl atoms step by step. —– Horace Kephart has sad, deep eyes, like a bloodhound, and (at least in most of the pictures that remain of him) a thick mustache. He is thin and wiry, the embodiment of an outdoorsman at the turn of the 19th century, replete with the independent spirit that only a checkered bandana, a short brimmed mountain hat, and a wooden pipe can instill. I first ran into Kephart when reading John Graves’ Goodbye to a River, a wonderfully meandering account of a canoe trip down the Brazos and one of the finest pieces of nature writing that Texas can claim. Graves simply calls him “Ol Kep”. Kephart, a man of dual lives, is probably best remembered for his writings about camping and for advocacy efforts to create what is now known as Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Camping and Woodcraft (1906) is still considered by many as the encyclopedia on outdoor excursions; if you’ve ever wondered about how well certain woods burn, Ol Kep provides a hierarchy for the burn-ability of soft-woods and hard-woods in relation to dryness; if you’ve ever pondered the difference between types of tent canvas, he’ll let you know when to use duck, sea island, or egyptian cotton - he’ll also let you know their respective weights; if you’ve ever debated how to cook possum, he’s got an opinion on that too. Buried within arcane and detailed observations of outdoor living, Kephart also embeds gems of wisdom, truths about the human condition which are still relevant today. —– Along Noland Creek the sun breaks through the trees in rays and makes the leaves glow electric and yellow among the green. We lay out on the rocks in the middle of the stream like lizards soaking it up. We hammock in the afternoon and gather firewood for the evening. Later we eat ramen, and later still we fall asleep to the sound of water rounding out the edges of stone, softening the corners and turning millions of tiny, round rocks into even smaller grains of sand, carrying them to the oceans and blowing them into the deserts across the world. —– Prior to becoming an expert on wilderness places and peoples, Ol Kep was mostly a bookworm. After being the librarian at Cornell, Kephart moved to Italy to purchase and catalog books for a wealthy collector. Somewhere along the way he met and fell in love with a woman from New York and exchanged letters with her. Eventually he moved back to the states, married Laura Mack, had six children with her, became the head librarian at both Yale and in Saint Louis, made advances in classification and library organization, published articles in a myriad of magazines, and had a nervous breakdown. It was the nervous breakdown that led him to western North Carolina, “looking for a big primitive forest where [he] could build up strength anew and indulge [his] lifelong fondness for hunting, fishing and exploring new ground.” Sometimes escape comes at a price, though. He’d never see his wife or children again. But he would know the woods. And he’d know the bottom of a moonshine bottle, which may be what drove him to the woods anyways; it’s hard to predict which way the wind will blow a man, or what path he’ll walk down to find a bit of solace. —– Day two is the longest and hardest of our hike. After climbing to the lookout tower at Clingman’s dome to peer into a fog that covers the 360 view, we start the three and a half miles down to our campsite. The trail grows narrower and rockier as we descend, rock-scree rolling beneath our feet. Darkness falls fast, and clouds darken. We pull out our tarps as the rain falls, at first a gentle pattering, soon a thunderous downpour. We give up on dry shoes and yell out plans for setting up camp in the rain. At our campsite, plans become obsolete. Dinner is abandoned. We try to keep things dry as best as possible, then settle into our tent and wait till morning. We have fifteen hours to go. Grey in the tent slowly becomes black, like a world where color has been drained by an unseen hand turning down a dial, like a plug being pulled in a tub of murky water. —– When Alexis and I met, both of us were going through divorces. Conversation erupted. We talked about relationships and what happened with them when they fell apart. We talked about what it was like to see the person you married and feel like they were a stranger. About how suddenly you feel adrift in something that used to seem so good. She hopped on the back of my motorcycle and we’d go swim or get BBQ. There were things I could share that I couldn’t with anyone else, things that people who aren’t looking at the inside of a crumbling marriage can’t possibly understand and don’t usually want to talk about anyways. It’d be like trying to hang out with a bunch of Red Sox fans and strike up conversations about the Yankee’s bullpen - they’d have opinions and know a lot about baseball, but they’re primarily rooting for the other team. Nobody wants to see a marriage fail, so when it does, it’s hard to find people who want to hear you belabor the finer points of love’s dissolution. Not that my friends aren’t wonderful, they truly are. But I’d already been through several separations with Sarah, already had some of those conversations. But with Alexis, it was more than that. It was intimacy. Not a physical one, nor like the head-over-heels love of the movies. It was the discovery of a shared experience. It was finding someone who was walking through the same thing as you, and who could help you see that it would be okay. It wasn’t always pretty. She was there for long walks with me when the anxiety set in, when I felt my heart rising in my chest, trying to strangle me from within. I was there for her when she couldn’t find the strength to eat, when food seemed strange and alien. There were tears sometimes. There were questions that had no answers: How come you can love someone and then not love them? Is love even supposed to last forever? Who are we anyways and why are we here? Questions that I imagine are a far cry from most first dates, the usual lists of hobbies and favorite movies and where one went to school. But questions that helped me know it was alright. That helped me see the world was still a wonder waiting to be unfurled. That the world would always be a wonder, and that it mattered not if the questions had answers, but only that we asked them. It was also magic. We climbed a hill at my friend’s ranch, a 12 pack of Lone Star in tow, and watched the Persied rain down meteors. We danced in the honky-tonks because sleep wouldn’t come. We walked the streets and felt the lightning in our teeth, in our bones, and we looked for that same light in the hills and the the stars and the flowers and in the water as clear as glass. We jumped in and swam with reckless abandon because it felt good to be alive again. We woke again every day to the newness of it all. And soon, we found that the water was all around us, that wonder had encircled us like a secret cocoon, like a blanket on a winter’s day or a soft breeze in the heat of the afternoon. Link Wray says that living is better than dying, and food tastes better than gold. I still think he’s right. —– Most of Kephart’s life revolved around the corresponding rhythms of writing and booze, with the woods being his sanctuary for both. He worked tirelessly to push for the creation of a National Park in the Appalachians, writing about the people and places that make the region so uniquely fascinating. He became the foremost expert on how to live in those woods, and he championed the simple, yet profound ways that the locals had been living in that region long before he came along. Nestled among bits of information about how to hike or navigate or clean a fish, he fashioned philosophical gems to remind his readers that nowhere, absolutely nowhere, is a man as free as when he lives simply, with a few meager provisions and the willingness to go where the day beckons. Or that man can never truly be lost, as long as he doesn’t lay expectations to where he’ll end up, instead exploring with purpose the path ahead. Kephart lived out his days exploring the woods, finding out everything he could about the world around him. Cataloging because it’s what he did best. Organizing hierarchies and making lists and asking questions about the woods. A cut of the same cloth as Muir or Thoreau or Emerson, climbing trees in a thunderstorm to feel what a tree feels, trying to wrestle life itself out of the chaos of living. Kephart would eventually die in a car wreck on a moonshine run along with a fellow passenger. The driver lived, only to die on the same stretch of road ten years later. —– As Alexis and I walk along Noland Creek, along Forney Creek, in the same woods that Kephart loved, I wonder if the ruins beyond the creek are remnants of one of his makeshift cabins. If that giant elm near the campsite was brought down by a thunderstorm that made ol Kep shudder in his bones. I wonder how many times Kephart, too, marveled at the way the light hits the water and explodes into a thousand tiny suns. After the storm, the sun comes out again. Alexis and I stop in the places where the light lingers through the trees and let the warmth seep into our skin. We traverse several stream-crossings, the water running higher from last night’s rain. The water reaches our calves, our thighs, but we don’t topple. We find sticks that other travelers before us have used to ford the stream, and we reach for each other when the sticks don’t seem to be enough. We reach camp midday and make a clothesline with some paracord that was left at a previous campsite by an accidentally generous occupant. Our clothes and sleeping pads and bags and tents and pillows get strung up to dry. We do yoga and stretch out along the creek, dipping down into the cold water and coming up feeling alive and new, drying out like lizards on the rocks. The following day dawns the same but new: sun among the trees and a slow awakening. The trail ends much like it began, slow and wide. A road really. Big enough for both of us to walk side by side. There is a tunnel that leads back to the road where our car is parked. Inside the tunnel it is cool and dark, and the end of the tunnel frames the woods, making brilliant the greens and browns that we’ve been walking in for the past five days. It’s good to feel Alexis’s hand in mine again. It’s good to see a new road in front of me. It’s good to feel the change of seasons and feel the wind on my face. And it’s fitting that I have a Kephart quote running through my brain: “It is one of the blessings of wilderness life that it shows us how few things we need in order to be perfectly happy.” ------------------------------------------------------ *I’m no historian; this is a rough sketch of Kephart’s life at best. For more info, go here: https://www.wcu.edu/library/digitalcollections/kephart/aboutproject.htm

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blueanddeepblue · 8 years ago

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How do you write everything? How could you sum up the breadth of experience in one fell swoop? How can you pass on what it's like in the moments before dark, hurling down the highway in a metal can with rubber wheels, paying heed to nothing in particular, when the sky in front of you explodes in liquid color, every hue of orange and pink and red and purple the the mind will allow? Can you really explain the sight of such a thing? How it takes your breath away and leaves you in a twisted heap of nothingness out by the forest road? How it unhinges you and sends you careening foolishly out of orbit, like an astronaut untethered out in empty space, knowing that such a view will never be seen in such a way ever again? Most forms of art attempt this careless undertaking: to somehow against all odds capture the essence of a thing, to attempt pinning down that by which definition must remain elusive. Sometimes art tries to replicate the world outside, tries to mirror the world around it, or frame it in a way that provokes thought. But the great art, the stuff that moves me, is the art that leaves me gutted by its immensity, by the bigness of the questions it makes me ask or the longings it stirs up, desires deeper than I knew I could go. But can you write everything? Dylan says the answer is blowing in the wind, and Rothko drove himself mad trying to transmit form, space, and color. Mostly, in the ten days since the eclipse, I've read Annie Dillard and watched birds or played guitar, stringing together campsites in Tennessee and the Carolinas. Birds are decent company, but Dillard is where it's at. Here, she captures the total eclipse experience much better than I tried to last week: "Seeing this black body was like seeing a mushroom cloud. The meaning of the sight overwhelmed its fascination. It obliterated meaning itself. If you were to glance out one day and see a row of mushroom clouds rising on the horizon, you would know at once that what you were seeing, remarkable as it was, was intrinsically not worth remarking. No use running to tell anyone. Significant as this dread sight was, it would not matter a whit. For what is significance? It is significance for people. No people; no significance." I've tried my hand at art. I've dabbled in music and writing and photography, in trying to share something of importance with people outside of my immediate circle, but really in all these things I'm an amateur, a hobbyist, one singular phytoplankton bobbing through a droplet of all the art the world has ever known, with the world itself, in all its forms, the accumulation of oceans, seas, rivers, and lakes. But what did it look like, when the first ray of sunlight came over the horizon, the first time someone realized that they were racing towards an exploding star? In high school my sisters and I would sit out on the trampoline into the night and bounce questions around like bingo numbers, pulling ideas into focus and then tossing them back. Part of my religiosity during those years was due to Christianity's attempt to answer why we ended up here in the first place and what were supposed to do about it; while I don't believe or practice anymore, I still think the best forms of religion seek to wrestle with these questions as opposed to administering prescriptions. But there it is again; how can the marsh be such a color of green? Why does blurring your eyes in a forest at dusk look the same as the vast emptiness of a West Texas sky? Or how can owls fly so silently when ravens whoosh like vacuum cleaners? How hot is it there in the middle of that fire, right there where it's white and blue? Is that color, there in the fire, the same as the sound at the beginning of the universe? These are the questions I can't possibly answer, but I want to try to ask. These are the people I'm drawn to. ----- Two days ago I watched a looper climb an invisible rope up into the canopy. I lay down on the picnic table and used my binoculars as the inchworm wound the invisible rope up into a ball, writhing and contorting himself like an epileptic in a fit. When I first noticed him (and because my morning hikes have been a cautious and ceaseless exercise in attempting to avoid web to the face or an accidental spider breakfast), I at first thought he was caught in a spider's lattice and trying to escape the inevitable by thrashing his way free. His precarious position, between nothingness and seeming nothingness, was in fact defensively strategic. Loopers sense vibrations as they're feeding, and merely being a worm and thereby one of the forests chief protein sources, they are equipped with what can be seen as either a severe shortage, or a few surprising survival tactics; if the vibration signals bird, they often freeze, and hope that their camouflage provides them ample cover, but if the vibration signals predatory insect, the worm throws a silk line and abandons ship, using a longer silk line if it senses a wasp and a shorter one if stinkbug. I watched him climb all the way to the top. He'd pause every so often, presumably to rest, but that is a human assumption. I'm not certain if his task was as arduous as it seemed from my supine vantage point. I thought of Alex Honnold free-climbing El Capitan, and wondered if that was somehow comparable - the inchworm ascending something near 250 times his own body length, in the course of 20/30 minutes. Or maybe this was more akin to an evening commute, the long drive back to the suburbs after a day at the office, a rote task performed simply because the day was nearing completion. Certain wasps have learned that inchworms use this evasive maneuver and have adapted to scour the foliage and find the silken thread, pulling the hapless looper up like a trout at the end of a hungry fisherman's hook. ----- In the waning years of graduate school, my friends and I would don goggles and scour the crystal clear waters of the San Marcos, searching for salamanders and sunfish among the rocks and aquatic wild rice or hunting the invasive suckerfish with spears. When the water level was flowing low enough, I could muster enough courage to explore below the waterfall below Spring Lake, the river's headwaters. I remember John, my roommate at the time, swimming beneath an underwater chandelier made of moving crystal that was ever-changing. I remember the still water beneath it and how the fish were unperturbed by the currents above, how the water down below was calm blue, but how the surface foamed white and would sweep you back downriver. I remember taking it all in until we couldn't hold our breath any longer, until we were forced to admit that this world was not for us, that we were merely visitors, intruders in a place where the magic was beyond our grasp. I remember how John, too, even after he died, held his own magic, in the way that each of us holds our own magic. If only we'll let the sun wake us up, if only we'll unhinge ourselves enough to swim and dance and run with a child's abandon. If only we'll make the climb. ----- The forest is a dizzying place. Growing and dying all in one breath. The geometry is all wrong. We walk along the ground of the forest, but the real action is vertically oriented. The White Breasted Nuthatch scampers up and down trunks looking for easy meals. Squirrels chatter and squabble across highways from tree to tree. Cicadas climb up to shed their skin and mate. I tried to calculate the amount of surface area that exists above the forest floor by laying there in my hammock and imagining a 25ft section of forest laid down and flattened out, every leaf and branch and trunk of every tree in that small section of woods; what goes up and down dwarfs what can cover the ground. Everything green or brown racing towards light. A twist here because a larger tree blocked the way. The fallen warriors who grew taller than their canopy could afford, and the starting gun that their toppling signals for every smaller sapling hoping to fulfill a grander vision. Fall webworms make dirty silken tents where they live and feed and defecate and molt through their various instars on their way to becoming a white moth. Each branch or twig, previously laden with leaves but covered with the caterpillars' silk, takes on the resemblance of a ghastly circus tent, a mummified freak show of wriggling, living, hairy animals with decayed leaves and pieces of the webworm's previous instars strewn through the webbing like floating skulls and withered apparitions. I poked the tent with my knife and watched them squirm over strands away from the opening, deeper into the dragon's lair. The tent itself is visually similar to that of the tent caterpillar, which is in fact, also a moth, but who emerges in early spring and seems to be the cleaner of the two pests, using their tents more like a home, which they build with various rooms that the morning sun warms to varying degrees, insulating them and helping them digest their food, which they cannot do unless it's warm enough. Some researchers have noted a 54 degree difference between the inside of a tent and the forest air surrounding it. Tent caterpillars, as opposed to fall webworms, leave their tent for feeding, excreting pheromone trails behind them like ants to let the other caterpillars know when the good grazing has been found. Because they merely eat the leaves, webworms and tent caterpillars don't do any damage to the trees outside of offending our expectations of what a good, honest tree is supposed to look like. It's impossible to be bored in the forest. It is quiet, and you can slow down to a crawl, but boredom won't find you. Stare at a phone all day, read the news and flip through pictures and articles and like people's posts, and boredom will come for you, an aggressive boredom, the kind that makes you want to toss the screen against the wall and yell "What am I even doing?" Lay in a hammock and look at trees all day and boredom won't find you. Instead you'll be dizzy. ----- Dillard writes that there are two types of waking up; one is like a photographer or painter paying attention to all the minutia of light and framing and subject, honing in on the world around them and examining with scrutiny every detail that can be absorbed. The other type of waking up occurs when you let go of thought entirely, when you step into the flow of the world around you, thoughtless and alert, empty and aware of anything but self - then, you'll awake to have your lungs sucked dry at the sight of an egret flying across a blue sky. When you find someone who wakes up everyday, stay near. ----- Today I'll meet up with Alexis, ending the solo part of my journey. The respite has been nice, albeit sometimes lonely, as solitude often is; however, I'm drawn to exploring new landscapes with this wonderful woman. There are new secrets the world waits to reveal, and old stories that conjure up deep magic. I remember climbing a hill with her and watching the Perseid rain stars down and how each burning rock opened a chasm in my soul, how the bigness of the sky was pierced by the intensity of each question we asked each other that night, how we pricked holes in the fabric of the universe. I remember so many things. Waking will help you remember. LIke the time we walked along the top of a plateau where Native Americans had written petroglyphs on the boulders and the sky held the smell of rain, and we looked for rocks to see if we could hear their stories. Or walking through the neighborhoods of Austin with the sky electric and lightning in our teeth. Now, we both sit on the edge of a transition. And these few months of travel are as much about looking closely as they are about letting go. And I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to walk into this next phase with trust and understanding, with someone whose capacity for beauty holds no limits. ----- Emerge from the forests to find the sky. See the swoop of brilliant white against the green of cord grass and how the blue of the channel is different from the blue of the sky. See how the sunset plays with the boundaries of physics and time, making the water a kaleidoscope snake, but wait, now it is an inky eel. Hear how the kingfisher chatters like the brash ruler he is and smell the morning dew on the Palmetto. Climb even though it is dangerous, even though you have no silken lifeline. Ask to be torn open like a new day, to be opened like a gift for a child, to be woke and woke again. And again.

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blueanddeepblue · 8 years ago

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8/25

My marriage ended three years ago this month. I remember walking away to catch my plane back to Austin. I remember not looking back as I left the park and headed to the subway.

It's funny what one remembers, like watching Planet of the Apes as the plane looped around San Francisco before pointing south.

-----

Sunday I drove into Nashville to view the Great American Eclipse. Longtime friend, bandmate, and pickup basketball compadre David Beck graciously let me stay at his place during the madness. Being in the path of totality, Nashville was predicted to see something shy of a million extra visitors. I'm not sure what it ended up being, but I do know that every gas station and restaurant buzzed with the uncanny energy of a once-in-a-lifetime event. You felt compelled to talk with every cashier or waitress about their plans for the spectacle. The alcohol section in every Kroger looked like three Super Bowls had just occurred, reducing drink options to high gravity beer, various ciders, and (unless my eyes deceived me) the truly undrinkable - Zima. The radio advertised the most popular viewing parties and urged listeners to hurry and scoop up eclipse glasses at select locations.

David and I didn't make plans. We climbed up on the garage roof with his housemate, Katie. We spread out blankets on the hot shingles and put on appropriate eyewear and looked up.

Like so many other people across this country, we marveled at crescent shadows. We gesticulated and cried out as the sun became like a moon. We looked around at the darkness forming at the bottom of the clouds, darkness that looked like rain and heaviness but was really just the absence of light. Like so many other people, we were momentarily joined in the pursuit of the same thing. For one rare day the interest of an entire nation could be held by a singular source of wonder. We waved at the neighbors coming out to join the spectacle, pausing from their work day or their chores or their boredom to see if this whole thing was worth the hype. We joined in singing along with the playlist from the party next door, which was incredibly well-curated and undoubtedly timed to go along with event. We looked around and said to each other, "How cool!?", "Are you seeing this?", "I can't believe it."

That was before totality.

For those outside the direct path of the eclipse, I imagine the whole thing was mostly a communal event, a spectacle. A party for the heavens.

But when the sky went dark, when the moon covered the sun, there was a profound shift from the communal to the personal. The spectacle gave way to something incredibly simple.

I'm not sure I can fully write it, but what follows is an attempt: Birds singing evening songs. Cicadas and crickets in chorus. A blur of a hawk leaving its roost. The darkened sky. The simplest realization of my smallness, of the complete unimportance of the personal self. Street lights electric glow. The sunset that wasn't a sunset, but instead a dimming of the world entire, with a place on the horizon that was the door to another world, a place where light didn't obey the laws or strictures of this universe. The flare around the darkened circle. Totality. Even the blackness of that circle alive and radiating. Wonder and awe bouncing around my body which was no longer a body, but instead a collection of colliding atoms. Here and now. Nothing as absolute as here and now.

I remember people howling and yelling and I remember one of us howling and yelling back. I remember saying something to David or in his direction but not what I said or if he responded. I vaguely remember taking a few pictures. But mostly, nothing was of importance. There was no playlist, no neighbors, no parties, no eclipse even. Just the mechanics of a universe so far beyond comprehension. And I was there too, somehow, amazingly - but stripped of my importance, observing a sun and moon that did not care if I was observing, that did not care who or what was watching, that would continue darkening and un-darkening long after humanity was gone, that would continue darkening and un-darkening even if we had never existed.

I remember the brilliance when the light shot out from behind the darkened circle. It seemed akin to the first light of the world.

Later I learned that the official time of darkness was 1 minute 57 seconds, but the entirety of the world fit within those moments, because time had lost its relevance.

-----

It's great to reach the place where people can conformably slip into a friendship despite time and distance. Something about my thirties seems conducive to developing such friendships, but it wasn't always so easy. David and I shared drinks and stories and played more basketball in the days following the eclipse, enjoying the easiness to our friendship, the familiarity from years of shared experiences.

There was a time however, after touring for years, when our relationship was ragged. Where I felt antagonized by all the little things, super critical of the things that actually make him a wonderful person: the optimism that inundates his every decision, the eagerness to please people and be there for them, the ability to obsess over new passions and enthusiastically explore the whims that come in and out of his life. These qualities had become negatives, things in dark moments that I felt held the band back from success or in lighter moments merely annoyed me. I've found that sharing constant space with someone usually pivots our opinion of them in one of two directions: either it erodes their habits and quirks into a distinct mess of bitterness and resentment that stops you from seeing the good in that person; or it polishes those habits and quirks into something beautiful and smooth, helping us look past the unpleasant edges that every person possesses.

Sometimes, the ability to recognize the difference between compatibility and love is the difference between keeping someone in your life.

In my marriage, I had recognized many times that there were problems, that there existed a tension and a bitterness in spite of love. But I persisted.

A lot of our culture around love is built on this myth - the idea that love is difficult, a struggle. It's in our country songs and our movies about love. It's in our novels and in the casual cliches we offer as passing encouragement. And don't get me wrong, it is a truly difficult undertaking to love someone, to be understanding and to turn towards them time and time again, but I'm learning that to love doesn't mean to languish in love. That there is something simple about good love. That there is a peace and quiet to it. That there is a gentle, easy desire with good love.

-----

For two nights, in Edgar Evins State Park, I had the entire tent campground to myself. A lakeside view with the sunset filtered through the trees. Time slows down and stretches out, disappearing altogether in intervals. In that stillness, in the first perfect weather of the trip, thoughts float through unmitigated by the flow and rhythm of conversation, instead I can reach out choose any given though and turn them over, examining them in my hand like a stone rounded by the river. I wrote a song. I worked on my fire building, using magnesium and a striker instead of matches. I saw a beautiful yellow warbler with a striking black hood. I marveled at the simple joys that have come into my life. At the quiet missing that accompanies one more week of solo camping, until the next leg of the journey, until I have my adventure partner.

-----

Today, at a YMCA in Putnam County, TN, I sit and write. The conversations here are between locals, between people who have seen kids come and go and now have grandkids. People whose once busy lives now revolve around water aerobics and swim class. Gossip and pleasantries abound, but so does real, honest conversation. What it's like to battle cancer. What they learned in the navy. And how after all these years, they've never seen anything like when the sun was covered up by the moon.

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blueanddeepblue · 8 years ago

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Eclipse as observed from a garage rooftop 8.21 Nashville, TN

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blueanddeepblue · 8 years ago

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8/20

My left arm started doing this twitching thing about six weeks ago, pulsing and jumping above the ditch between bicep and forearm. It felt like an irregular heartbeat. Observing it was like being at a stoplight, waiting to turn left, and listening to the sound of your blinker while observing the blinker of the car in front of you.

The twitch was infuriating because I thought it was probably anxiety but couldn't figure out why, couldn't come up with a good reason why my body would be stressing out. Granted, I am going through a major career change, working on getting my teaching certification and transitioning back to education, but everything in my life was wonderful - a summer break with better financial security than I'm accustomed to (it's interesting how dialing music back to the hobby setting will even out the finances), a healthy and wonderful relationship, feeling loved by friends and family.

I'm even in better physical shape than I was for most of my twenties.

-----

Somewhere after Hearne, TX the landscape starts to roll, very gently, waves of green sweeping across the fields on either side of Highway 79. The undulating rhythm of green on green sinks into you, lets you feel the slow and steady pulse of life outside of the city. I was struck by how long it must take for trees to grow up. How patient you'd have to be if you wanted to chart their movements. I was also struck by how fast the grass shoots up after a rain. How vibrant an August green could be.

I camped at Caddo Lake State Park and it was hot and the crickets sang choruses and a family of raccoons was interested if I had any handouts. There, too, the trees stood somber and eternal-seeming and the moss hung down like draperies long abandoned. Time seemed like a traveler who had passed by, forgetting to inflict change or chaos.

At Caddo, I saw a Red Bellied Woodpecker among the trees. And later, in Ouchita National Forest outside of Hot Springs, some Eastern Wood Pewee's in a tiff over some indeterminate slight.

Traveling alone cultivates a sort of slowness, creates space in your head to let the mind chart its own course, as does turning off the gps and letting the road atlas be your guide. There is a calming effect to pulling over and checking the map, choosing routes based on the shape of a road or the names of the towns along the way, or picking a campsite from among the options without knowing how many amenities are available. There is a calming effect when you unplug the phone, a gentle lift of pressure because the glowing screen is no longer counting down each second until you arrive at your destination. A small, almost unrecognizable, but also immensely significant shift in letting the journey shape itself, in letting the destination fade into obscurity, in letting beginning, middle, and end blur into one cohesive thing.

Of course, I still look ahead, still like to know where I'm going to be for the night. Night two I stayed at a roadside campsite in Ouchita National Forest, waking up the next morning to fog along a creek. Fishing seemed like an enjoyable option, until the heat and a talkative camp neighbor made the highway seem more appealing.

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I'm learning that the human bodies we inhabit are poor metaphors for the journey life takes us on. Or maybe, let me try again; the plant kingdom is far superior to the animal kingdom in providing a physical representation for the joys and trials of a life well-lived. The human body is contained, closed-off. Smooth skin covers bones and organs and our limbs our fixed in number. Age merely polishes us. A tree puts down vast root systems and grows limbs that shoot out and twist and writhe through time and break off and fall to the earth. The pine tree carries the color of the fire from a time before, the pinion twists itself in accordance with the wind. When burls form, they often begin at the base of a tree, appearing because the tree has undergone some sort of stress - a fungus or an injury that hardens and contorts like a tumor. Woodworkers prize these irregularities, with the less respectable among them sneaking into national forests to gouge the irregularities out from magnificent redwoods.

They bear scars from the storms. They grow sideways after the flood. When lightning strikes them, they can harbor the embers for days, before igniting the forest around them.

Trees become homes, guardians and keepers of others. Spanish moss hangs from the cypress. Owls find safe-haven in the cavities bored out by time or nature. The rippled bark of the oak becomes a vertical highway for insects searching sustenance or the illusion of safety off the ground. The cicada sheds its skin here. For bears they become scratching posts. Dirt collects in the crevices along the bigger limbs, building up over time until the right combination of wind and luck carry a seed aloft to its sandy branches; I've seen full-sized cactus thirty feet off the ground, blossoming along the a mighty branch of live oak.

Even when they die, trees' bodies transform again. A hollow for a family of raccoons. A cache for the industrious woodpecker.

Our human bodies don't know time the same way a cypress does. Maybe if we lived for 600-1000 years, our bodies would have to grow extra limbs. Maybe when we lost a lover or a friend, that hardness in the pit of the stomach would become a coveted burl. Maybe we could point to our extremities, maybe near the ankle or on your elbow, and say, "Look here, that's from when my grandmother passed away. And over here, thats from when I fell in-love and wasn't expecting it."

Maybe if we lived for 1000 years we wouldn't be in such a hurry to wash the dirt away everyday. Maybe we'd let it linger and see what grows there. Maybe we'd stretch out for new friendships and let old ones grow deeper. Maybe we'd bear the marks of a life well-lived, for living is a hard thing to do sometimes.

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Anxiety doesn't always emerge from distress or trauma. A summer of planning and working to know where the next phase of life goes - a summer of dreaming of a trip with my adventure partner, with someone who I love and miss - these things are good things, but transition also breeds thoughts about the unknown. Maybe I can learn to feel things with the slowness of the cypress. To see where my mind wanders. To let my arm twitch when it wants to twitch. And maybe in doing so, something beautiful emerges.

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blueanddeepblue · 8 years ago

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Today marks the first day of a grand adventure. The first leg of the trip will be solo, with stops at Caddo Lake State Park, Ouchita National Forest, and then onto Nashville to observe the Great American Eclipse. Updates and more thoughtful musings soon.

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