Into The Earth

Heading west on a road that is too hurried, I leave tar for woods to search for water. After over half a year of walking I have become a bird that can find a puddle in a land where there was no storm. I hope that I can hold onto this gift when the earth gets flat and dry. Always I hear, and smell water before I see the ribbon of silver and stone wandering through a stand of trees. Trees are cows that are always thirsty. They love to linger at the water's edge talking about summers past, the craziness of man, and the cute young cedar that lives down in the valley that smells of a heady oil that stumble the heart.
When I step out of the thorn and fallen snags, the trees become quiet. They can't help themselves though. In a moment, if I listen, I can hear the highest branches talk about snow that will come in the night. They talk about the wonder of rain, and the flavor of wind. I see their sky roots rake the sky in worry. Their concern falls on me like leaves. More snow.
Following the creek upstream I am brought to the entrance of a cave. I smile till I can feel it in my ears. An adventure. The mouth of the cavern is twelve feet tall, and eight feet wide. As I venture in the height dwindles a little. The width of the passage becomes four to six feet. The creek comes out of the cave in no particular hurry before it wanders off into the woods, barely talking at all. It is a tired rabbit that has no care if it is late.
After I set my gear in the cave on one of the many boulders left eons ago just for that purpose, I am off to gather fire wood before the small fallen limbs that are my main-stay for cooking are all wet and covered in white. I don't burn anything more than a inch in circumfrance, so gathering woods is a stroll more of looking and talking to any critter that shows itself, than a masculine labor to be dreaded. When my hands are full the task is done. Often I wander until the coming of evening can be heard in the roosting song of birds. It is then that I have to part with the antler shed, or bobcat skull that smells like moss, and head to the task of setting up my lodge.
Harley, an older man up the roadside a ways, gave me enough over ripe strawberries to fill my titanium cup. Pancakes tonight. Harley is a georgous soul that I wanted to know the moment he waved to me from his strawberry stand on the back of a red horse trailer. Harley was on the other side of a busy four lane. He could have easily avoided my eyes that are always searching for life, but Harley was searching too. Harley was grandfathers lost, a brother found, and the beauty of a patiently told story all in one man. Along with his grown son, and wife, they went to Florida to fill their trailer with strawberries. After driving back to Tenn., Harley and family would sell flats until the berries were sold out or the fruit insisted on returning to the earth. We talked for hours about living on the road. We talked about Montana. We talked about living before you die. Had I not already known alot of Harley's words, they would have been stones in my belly. Instead, talking to Harley was like praying, only we kept our eyes open so we could remember. It was putting on my glasses to answer the phone.
I hated to leave my new cowboy friend with the sweat stained hat, and sterling buckle on the side. Leaving Harley and his endearing family would never be easy even if we talked till summer. If a cave is lonely, Harley's family was salt on the wound.
With a stomach wrapped tight around twig tea and pancakes; pancakes that are still moving flavor in my mouth, I take off my boots and socks. The water is cold. No. The water is more than that. As the tendons in my feet ratchet their movement under the gentle current that is barely liquid, I must be elsewhere. Closetland. In my head I go to where the water is not. The sun is in my hair. A woman I remember is moving her hand along my face until I am dizzy. Warm sand is melting around my feet on a beach with no name. As I walk in the calf deep water I must go to my feet from step to step just for an instant to feel for razor rock, or glass, and then flee again. My headlamp is mounted to my forehead with a strap so my hands are free. White crayfish rear tail sprint under the water surface. Pale crickets walk the wall on long legs I have never seen before. A rare bat peeks at me, blinks, shudders, and then pulls its body tighter into wing. On I walk, exploring. The cave goes on for a couple of blocks or more. I think Indiania Jones trained here. Someone spray painted 'hell' with an arrow on the wall, pointing deeper into the hollow of stone. When there is a patch of gravel that I can stand on until I can beg the blood back into my screaming feet, I rest. Even as I punish myself in this marvel of creation, I want to go deeper in myself. Off goes the headlamp. There is nothing. Never have I know such liquid dark that saturates pore of matter. A minute moves by. Has it been a hour. Just a little longer I think out loud. I have to say it or it will be lost. Lights on.
My feet that stare at me like angry kids, have taken me to the depth of the cave until I had to crawl, and the back. When I tell my feet that we are going back in to set up sleeping camp on a inner cliff shelf we passed, they twinge and burn, then sulk.





My feet and I do go back deep into the cave. Pot-heads wander in late in the night to get stoned, and can't believe that a man would live in a cave this deep into the earth, even for a night. They pass by me an hour later and fall completely into the water, stand and fall again, barely able to walk back out to the world outside. Snow and rain do come in the night--and the little creek becomes a torrent that I have to walk out through with all of my gear when dawn comes. I am glad for the adventure. All in all, it is good to be top-side again even though it storms on for another day. It is good to learn that a man can still miss a candle in a cave on a winter night, the sound of a flute going into the earth, and water...water always drawing me on.