Rain Waking

Sulpher, OK.

The day begins with rain. It is not angry rain. Listening to the popping of drops hitting the tight fabric of my nylon tepee I remember my food sack is hanging in the tree deep in the woods. The wind is the angry brother of the rain; angry because he is cold and I have not noticed him. When I walk across the hilltop field I feel the wind going though my pockets. I feel the wind going through my clothes. The blanket that I shoulder tells me that I need to wake my morning fire.
No bear came in the night. I am thankful for it was dark when I treed my food bundle. Even a young bear could have shimmied to reach my biscuts, cold meat, dried hard corn, dried fruit, nuts and most valued--my coffee beans, and then I would only have fire for breakfast.
The fire wakes easily with a few twigs of a thorn tree and a few pages from the paperback western that kept me awake in my tentland until midnight. The forest belittles the wind into a soft voice coming from the field. The sputter of rain does nothing to the small wood fire in my stove. A curl of sweet smoke crawls into my blanket as I wait for the smooth boil of water for my Frenchpress. I mash the coffee beans with the end of a stick in my cup while I watch the trees for a glint of fur, flesh or feathers. Nothing moves that the wind doesn't provoke. Still, I watch as is my habit, as is my need. As I wait the four minutes for the coffee beans to soak in the boiled water I feed the flames that I usually let fade to ash at this point. It is in the high 30's making the little fire a pleasant life to have an arm reach away, talking softly while it eats. The smell of the burnt hawthorn discusses with a quiet part of my brain the approach of another winter's and it's cold hand. A pileated woodpecker calls a haunting Ge-ge-ge-ge-ge from above me. Though I have heard it a thousand times, I listen as if it is the first time it nudged my ear. Looking around I think about how this is my life now. My face does not have to grin. Everything about me is moving in the inner light of being just exactly where I am. I am not on the road worring over yesterday's miles. I am not turning a knob to let some other world cover up the voice of my life happening all around me to tell me what I need to buy to be happy, or complete. I am on my knees in an ocean of small brown oak leaves, boyant in smoke remembering things that I could not know that smooth out my heart. This is my life now.

A mile away from camp, I am walking with my kit on my shoulders. In the grass is a chilled unopened beer. Smiling, I wash the can with my canteen and swollow the can in three gulps. It is not the Foster's beer that I found on the roadside as I backpacked The Ring Of Kerry in Ireland. It is not the Bush beer that I found in a ditch in New Jersey just before Halloween. This is a fresh gift that I drink fast so I am not standing on a morning road with CrowDog on my back as I drink a exceptionally rare recovered beer while drivers honk and stare. A bandana cut from a found sheet is tied under my chin to keep my head warm. Winter gear hasn't arrived yet. Six feet away I find a like new wool/fleece winter hat that I'll wash in the town of Sulpher when I arrive. My insides shine. Another half mile passes. The wind has abated so I put my wide brim hat back on. A black sedan hurries to a stop. My eyes squint at the windows but the sun is out reflecting the sky on the car glass. A window opens. "Are you the one," asks a young woman squinting back at me.
Shrugging something that looks like a yes I ask,"The man walking...?"
"Yes,the man walking across America that we heard on the radio." She is bubbling that I am the walker to the packed carload of young women that are crawling over the front seat to yell out to me even though they have their own doors and windows. "Could we take a picture with you?"
Pictures click that I will never see, and I get one arm hugs that move my mind more than the cold beer that I worry is still on my breath. They say that they will pray for me. I feel they will. There is no comparing finding a hug on the side of the road with finding a cold beer. All day I will feel the simple embraces that feed that hollow that bleeds us all when truely isolated. I have already forgotten the beer, mostly.