For what must have been an eternity I knelt at the edge of the forest and prayed to become a tree. When at last I found the strength to crane my neck skyward, my eyes met eons of old earth above me, winding outward into perpetuity in and out of itself in every direction. From the canopy above spilled a symphony of colors coalescing into a somberness that wept for its mother, the soil, to whom it would all return. I watched in my mind’s eye at what might have been my own leaves tumbling earthbound as I knelt and drank, and the longer I knelt the deeper I drank, and the deeper I drank the more I thought of how rapidly the summer could be snuffed out into thin air, by the first overcast scene or by the lonesome cawing of a crow bent on the breeze.
All in an instant, aware of the season’s heaving.
All have their own wheel to spin
I’d slept for weeks there behind the tool shed, backed neatly away in a manzanita grove with my feet aimed downhill towards the rising sun. I lived quietly in the bed of the truck, not bothering with tarp nor tent until late October when overdue rain promised to dampen the canyon. I ate simple meals and kept my bedroll strewn artlessly in the back of the Frontier, exposed to the falling leaves and debris which collected in neat tangles in my hair or on my Melly and cap. I slept snugly smiling with dust on my legs and a warmth that penetrated my very soul, listening to foxes laugh in the twilight and with the sweetnesses of summer’s final secrets being whispered in my ear fainter and fainter each night. Every day however, I would wander further. And each day, a few new words would be allowed to me. I formed them each slowly, memorizing the contours of the syllables as thought became sound. In this way, I began to relearn the language of the wild. All that it required was patience, as anything truly does.
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