I walked the same circular path today in the creek bottom three times. The first: a blur, roar of snowmelt in creek, brain jumbling like the rolling of river stones I watched carefully with swim goggles long ago, hearing the stones clack, click, and slow shuffle along the gravel. The second time: the creek is muddy, a Mexican jay follows me at a polite distance, the mind slows to the color of wet, beige grass, a large raindrop hits the bridge of my nose, the remote mountain canyon has a fresh dusting of snow. My head hurts pleasantly. The third time: my life depends on the three million two hundred seventy-seven thousand three hundred and thirty-three pebbles locked into the ground so I don't fall through the thin skin of earth on which there is a large coyote-turd full of Manzanita berries I stepped over twice without noticing it, a piece of ancient chert, a fragment of snakeskin, an owl eye staring from a hole in an Emory oak, the filaments of eternity hanging in the earthly air like the frailest of beacons seen from a ship mortally far out in the sea. |