A voice on the wind falls silent.... I tell this story every day, with my body, in endless gesture. The keyboard, in translation, becomes a language in stillness, and I lose focus. Consider a blur of keys along the roadside. It is hard to collect them, to form thought and word. To make space for the future in the here and now.
What I mean to say is, when all is said and done, the last month or so will make it's way to the page. For now however, I can only offer sketches, possibly vingnettes. If I stopped to write now, to really write... the required stillness would betray my current sense of motion.
And while I am certain that the two paragraphs above will require some puzzling out., it's all I have to say for myself. I fell behind, living more than writing. I have to start in the here and now. It's too much.
I am in Oregon. My bike is parked in Pueblo, Colorado at the home of Mona and Bill... a coupla' old time bike tourists, settled and neat in their kindness. Today they might be sitting at an outdoor cafe. They are not afraid of leisure.
I flew back to this city. I flew back to this nest. I was meant to leave days ago, but I couldn't bring myself to go. The community I have been starved for has grown thick and fierce in my absence. There is nothing like leaving to make you appreciate the place you have chosen to call home. There are gardens to eat from, Rainier cherry trees in bloom all along the sidewalk. There are city chickens and humans with bones and feathers and creatures rattling their hearts like so much wisdom.
In Utah, after days of mistaking Mormons for queers, I followed a genuine, 100 percent dyke into the desert. Lisa lived and worked at the Boulder Outdoor Survival School. I was meant to leave in the morning, but I did not. The boy I had begun traveling with the day before, conquering fierce hills, singing "eye of the tiger" and meeting a 14% grade, woke and left me behind. There was a primitive skills gathering about to start, and I decided to stay.
So here I am now in Portland, and I know how to make all of my medicines out of plants from the desert southwest. Tinctures of chapparal and juniper sit on a friends countertop, waiting to be administered for some infection or imbalance. I now find myself eyeing the weeds and rooted things in this rainy city, wondering who will teach me their names, their properties....
We are waiting to move into the forest. So many of us now. It seems that everyone I love is either growing an urban garden or re-wilding... learning how to live without the benefit, the crippling sweetness that we call "the grid". The strawberries we grow are the sweetest. I weight the differences, a house, or a parcel of land. A well, or a rainwater catchement. I know where I want to be. Where I will end up.
Still, the city has me wrapped around her finger. The sweet summer air rolling in, stirring the juices for this weekends Solstice. We dance, we plant, we are at once superficial and deeply grounded. We do not just love these things that we have come to believe in... we wear them on our bodies. Tattoos of animals and plants, forests and vines.... these are the traits that compel us together. We weed out the uncertain, we thrive on intensity. We drink a LOT of coffee.
Welcome home.
Still, I have a journey to attend to. So off I go, in just a few more short days.... To cross the old world certainty of Kansas on two little wheels. To ride at night under the hot June sky, and sleep mornings in the shade, seek cover from the sun. There will be a fight between my body and the insects, and the insects will begin to flavor my experience, the heat to flavor my judgement. I have started listening to music again.
The silence of the road eventually pushed and intertia into my body. Elevation sickness became a daily reality. In the blood red desert I found myself sobbing at the side of the road. Only 4,000 feet, and increasing, I know that there is an inherent weakness. The heat didn't help at all. I have humbled myself.
In the canyons, a couple prepares a descent into the "black hole". The sign at the entrance to this descent warns them not to try. This slot canyon will lead them deep into the earth.... so deep that they cannot see the sky, despite the crack in the earth above them. So deep that in the 90 degree heat the water will run just shy of freezing. I leave them behind, and when I hear what sounds like water rushing through a tight space... like thunder in the earth... I imagine flash flooding, the killer of canyoneers, and mutter a prayer for the wildly brave.
In the Rocky Mountains, I am attending a traditional Tibetan Tsog Feast. The chanting loses me, and the whole experience feels wildly Catholic, reminding me that our western perspective on Eastern religion is just that; a perspective. They pass around trays of bacon, and although this is ceremonial, to me it is breakfast.
Canon City, Colorado is closer to more prisons at once that any city in the nation (I believe this to be correct, but to call it fact would require confirmation). I am informed that no one here locks their cars, because it's expensive to fix locks when a car is broken into... I stay in a hotel.
I have a photograph of a peak I climbed successfully, and alone. Beginning this journey, one peak would have meant nothing to me. Leaving the mountains, every summit is a miracle....
...
In Kansas, I should be able to collect wild foods. I have been studying mustard greens, and wild fruits have started to make their way back. This will help me save money. When the sky does not threaten rain, I will take to the cornfields, and not bother with my tent. I insist on becoming less afraid of humans.
