It'llbeokay

Sometimes I write things out - pages and pages of words strung together - and then, disregarding the hours it took to write them and make them visible, I press 3 keys and make it all disappear.  CTRL+A, DEL. And just like that: a white blank page.

I have always been told to keep all of my writing, to read through it every once in a while and remind myself of what the muses have urged me to create - to remind myself of the things I have felt and the words I have used to describe them. I cannot bring myself to do it though. I see an error, confusion, bland wording, cliche ideas: poor writing. And then CTRL+A, DEL. And it is all gone. I can kill a poem - strangle it furiously, as if the life I squeeze from it would enter me, and watch as it crumples in front of me, a lifeless pathetic thing. And with the swipe of 3 keys the evidence vanishes. No less of a criminal, but still my secret remains hidden.

When I can't find words to write, or when there are too many catapulting throughout my head, I go into the woods. I like walking on still days, when the snow falls straight down and every noise is magnified, but today as I walked I relished in the wind - the turmoil around me as trees creaked and groaned under the strain, the freedom I felt in the way my hair whipped around me. I could feel each gust of wind force its way into each of my pores, bringing with it an unparalleled clarity. This is why I am here.

Something in my mind is churning. Words, images, memories: tumbling and colliding, today in a hard, violent way. My mind instinctively pushes back, too eager to hold onto the image of the ideal to face whatever painful conclusion I have already, on some level, come to. I quicken my pace.  The trail steadily inclines for a total of 7.5 miles before reaching a steep scree slope that extends a quarter mile further. At that point there is a lip which drops down into Lodge Pole Lake - named for the lanky trees which surround it. It's a beautiful lake that gets next to zero traffic this time of year. The snow has already set in many of the mountains, and I am sure the last couple miles of the trail would be blanketed in white. But I am only hiking until the first river crossing anyway; 5 miles in the trail drops back down to the river it follows and a large fallen tree, about 2 feet in diameter, serves as a bridge from bank to bank. The occasional adventurous soul can be seen boating up the river to this point, for it is known for its deep, mellow water and superb trout fishing. It is here that I have my sites set on.

My legs begin to tingle as I feel a subtle burn creeping up. I have gone past the point of walking and am nearly at a running pace now. How fitting of you - literally running from your problems. "I'M NOT RUNNING!!" the words are thrown from my mouth before I have even realized it. I stop in the middle of the trail, picturing my words as they vibrate through the air, present only for a moment, and then vanish entirely. That's the interesting thing about spoken words - by the time you speak the second word there is nothing of the first one left. My legs pulsate beneath me, strong and capable but tired all the same. 

You are still running.

It's more of a whisper this time - a softer, kinder voice. The voice a mother would use in consoling her child, "There, there now sweetheart. I know it's hard now, but it will all be over soon."
I tilt my head back and stare up at the sky. My own breath is visible in front of me, heavy from the unexpected run. I wait until my breathing has slowed, then close my eyes and let my mind catch up to me, bracing for what painful truth will surely come with it.

The first image in my head is that of his face - smiling, laughing. He is happy, and because of that I know I, surely just outside the edges of the frame, am too. And then I watch as his face changes. It morphs into frustration and then anger and then nothing at all: an expressionless face stares at me. And I am saddened by it. Not the me that is now, but the me that exists at the same time as the image of this face. The me that is now feels something different from sadness, something that is less despair and more resignation. If it could be made into a food it would be both bitter and salty. And I would eat it all the same. Because it is mine to carry, to own, to experience.

The image is swept away and replaced by a series of phone calls, all of which are made by me in tears. I cannot hear the words I am saying to the person on the other end, but I can feel them - deep inside of me - and a wave of emotions comes over me. Worry, confusion, doubt, insecurity. The me that is in the image feels these too. But the me that is now, though feeling them, feels also a distinct thought "These feelings are not an accurate description, but rather your perception" and this thought is felt with such conviction that the me that is now no longer feels any of those emotions. I feel, instead, the same sort of sadness as I did when the man's face was in my head.

I know what this series of images means. I know it in my mind, in my heart. It pulsates through me in sync with the pulsing of my worked muscles, in sync with the red and white blood cells that are coursing through my veins.

And I know now that I have felt it, now that I have let myself see the truth, I cannot sit idly by. I can no longer stay on this raft as it meanders down the river, because I see now that this is not my boat - not my river - not my journey. And now, scary though it may be, I must jump out, swim ashore, and begin the hike: to a different boat in a different river.

I open my eyes again, surprised to find that I am still standing, still breathing. It'llbeokayIt'llbeokayIt'llbeokay. I run those words through my head like a prayer - needing them to be true.

Again overwhelmed by what this all means, I push forward up the trail. Even amid the turmoil in my head I am taken aback by the beauty of what surrounds me, the connectedness I feel from within me to this world. Buddhism has a saying about it: "The gods are in the mountains, and though you may not be near to them they are always near to you." Being out here alone and in the wild has always felt that way to me. There is an unexplainable and undeniable truth that exists in the solitude of the mountains. And when I am out here I am one step nearer to it.

One step at a time, thinking of the beauty around me rather than the sadness within me, I continue my march up the trail. As I round a corner the trail starts to slowly descend, the noise of the river growing louder with each step. I know there are only two more turns until I arrive at my final destination. The thought ever so slightly deflates me. I don't want to go back. I don't want to face my reality.

You can't stay here forever.

Again I get defensive - stubborn - towards that voice. Maybe I can stay out here. Build a shelter, live off the land, never talk to another human all my life. But even as I think this, I know it is not what I will do. I will go back. I will look my life in the eyes and then I will grab it, tenderly though assertively, and pull it into my arms. There it will be cradled as I carry it, entirely on my own, until I can find that river that surely must be out there - that boat that sits on the shore, waiting for a captain, its captain.

I pick up my pace once more - unwilling to let my apprehension hold me back - and round the last bend of the trail. The river rushes by, indifferent to the small, human worries I'm projecting into the air around it. I walk to the edge where the log lays and raise one foot and then the other onto it. Walking only halfway across, I sit and let my feet dangle above the coursing water below. It'llbeokayIt'llbeokayIt'llbeokay. I chant it through my mind until it becomes to me what the songs of ancient peoples were to them - a truth. My heart rate slows as I close my eyes and breathe deeply - allowing the sounds of my immediate surroundings to take up residence in my mind. Birds chirping, water moving, a splash - possibly the rise of a fish? - and another sound I cannot place. Almost like that of water lapping on the shore, but something makes me think it is not. It is a sound that does not resonate at the same frequency as its environment, does not have a part in the melody of nature. I open my eyes and look behind me, down river, and see a small fishing boat pulled onto the bank - water licking at its metal sides. There is no fisherman in sight, but I assume he took his boat only as far as the river would allow - the log blocking any access up further - then went on foot after that.

This is why you are here

I hear it in the waves of the water, in the wind blowing through the trees, in the birds chirping around me. A reminder that, though this one has reached its end, there will always be more rivers, more boats, more adventures.