The Ordinary Times

our mother the mountain.

you think you know yourself, and then you go to a cabin in the woods, nestled between white mountains and glacier run off. you take a couple hits off a nicely rolled spliff complete with all the tender loving care that should go into one of those things, and you decide to find yourself. the cabin is too small for the things beneath your skin and the soaring of your thoughts so you lace up your boots and step outside, off the porch, onto the cold frozen ground.

the owner of the place is standing guard, his frosty old coat speckled with morning dew a thousand times over, but his gaze as strong as you remembered from the night before. he takes his time finding the perfect handshake, half buried in the pine needles at the base of any tree, and then gently carries it in his mouth to your grasp for throwing. you are obliged to do this for some amount of time, or at least until you notice there isn’t a single sound except for your breathing and his, and the occasional swish of a doe tail. he looks up at you, past you, toward the sky, and he knows that you are closer to the stars than you were before. you stare back at his weathered face and see that both of his eyes hold planets he keeps secret because if the trip lasted too long you may decide to stay.

then you keep moving, towards the water and the open spaces. there are many branches fallen around your feet and still falling, but they aren’t coming from the trees, they’re coming from your eyes. you decide that fallen log up ahead is the best place to rest, and write with these wooden sticks you have grown. you pull out your pad and your paper and set that jug of water you didn’t realize you had been carrying at your feet. there isn’t a thing around you can see that will bother you, and you begin. every so often a tiny boat on the shoreline rumbles, just a murmur, words of bait and cast. the only other sound is the one your mind makes, of the place you thought you belonged until you left it.

its funny how out there, surrounded by elk scat and tumbleweeds and howling wind, you are able to walk as tall as ever. the weight isn’t there anymore, it hasn’t been for at least 300 miles. later you’ll return to the cabin where your friends are, and you’ll jab at the roaring fire and laugh into it’s flames because none of you care about much of anything at all. but for now its just you, and the water, and the life thats living even though you can’t see it.