“I wake early maybe 5, as the eastern light begins to lift across the wilderness slopes of my mountain home. In this place not understanding the geography yet, I’m a nervous newcomer, , opening doors in darkened doorways to let frigid air wash over me, my ears swiftly tuning to local ravines & ditches, the ringing of spring’s garbled tongues, and the race of water as it falls off elevation at every gap & cliff, cleft and wetland muck, and the land thrums. A dead end beyond the mailbox; a culvert, bridge & turnaround, while the old track continues, ragged & twisted. Hard not to feel it’s urgent, to rise as silently with feet as without to meet the dawn. Easter, after all, is this. Smartly outfitted with options such as ice cleats, just in case. But the ruts fit my ratty attire, worn rubber boots crunching crisply into someone’s former prints, a day before. Where they come into the trail or leave it, takes my full attention, because they might know something I don’t, which is why I follow the two of them & their dog as the whole frozen, slushy mess heads off trail, up an even steeper incline. No one would go this way, I think, who hadn’t already tested the tangent’s efficacy to achieve some end. But was their end, my end? This is often our dilemma. We think we’re cool for a long time before we realize we’ve gone astray, betrayed ourselves. I’ve half a sense about these things, which is enough to finally part ways with yesterday’s bread crumbs. Today, high up on the forest plateau, huffing & cursing their left turn, I go right. I can hear the rush of bigger falls, and find a place to slide down in, clinging to saplings, making landfall onto motionless rocks, wading from there. The last of the snow leaves an indelible mark. And melts, I suppose, like what’s left of my heart. It’s a quicker traipse home. Relieved to be reaching familiar ground, a fork, and dip where there isn’t a bridge, but a stream crossing & sign posting the boundary, I’ve one last stumble. What’s this? A beautiful bird call that makes me look up: just a robin fluttering, to sit on a low branch. Then it’s mate, and both stare. At me, pants wet, one foot breached, clambering the embankment to a near-crawl. Stopped in my unsuitable Easter gear, in an arrested pose of rebirth, remembering why I never took any oath, to be other than that - what I am.”
