Wide Eyes

The blanket that I have been given by the Hunting Horse family has become my fire blanket just as the nights have put a thin skin on my water bottles. When the mornings begin below 30 degrees, ( already have too many pock marks on my good fleece sweater) I can now get as close as I want to the morning fire that boils my water and takes the stiffness out of my hands without the cotton showing any ill effect. The stay with the Kiowa family passed too quickly though I still hear them pray over me in calm smooth words asking for a safe journey. Before I looked at stacks of family pictures, and shared enough of my stories in trade, I was packing up my flute minus one western red-tail primary feather, and stowing two warm pieces of fry bread to eat on some far distant plains. People have become very kind in this part of the state. It is as if they wince when they see me and the length of my shadow moving down a long highway in front of my steps. They know this road comes from no-place near, and is heading to someplace far. It is rare for people to stop out here where there appears to be more eagles that trees. Still, some people do stop and hand me a few dollars, water, even a poem. The faces of hard punks soften and grow real when we share a few words. Something better inside of them is remembered.

I have cooked my dinner on the dried dung of cattle to prepare myself for the time ahead when these few remaining trees wander off behind me too. The resulting fire is smokey and weak. The dry dung biscuts boil water and brown a flapjack if time is of little concern. Thankfully, out here time is a rolling tinder waiting on the wind or spark, and then it moves just a little when the day shifts toward that evening bend in the sky.
No longer can I just sleep with the slender likes of trees. Two nights ago killer winds and the first ice drove me out of my tent into a dry river bed to sleep between stones on the belly of a waterless hole. The winds blew at over 50 mph. It was 2:30 a.m. when exhaustion over came me and I was sure all would be lost if I held camp. I was forced to shove everything into CrowDog and then tackle my own tent so it did not feed the barbed wire fence sitting just down wind with its jagged mouth open. I had leaned against the inner wall of my tent with earplugs in my ears as long as I could stand it. With the growing gusts my weight was becoming nolonger enough to hold the fort down. When I pulled out the earplugs all that I could hear was the train of wind rolling down to me. I opened the tent door I saw death doing a crazy dance around the place where the fire was, around where everything was. Winds pushing everything it could carry roared from over the top of the bluff directly toward my camp. My mission became saving as much as I could and running for it. I lost a few things but in the end I saved more than I believed I could. Even the tent, stuffed into my clothes, survived. What is remarkable is how soundly I slept in that dry riverbed without a tent over me as the whole world untied blew past. I thought about lions, boar, and wished them well as I closed my eyes smelling good sweet earth and the fallen leaves until I smelled nothing until morning. I awoke covered in a thin layer of ice. The wind was still dancing as it had remained doing until another night came. Only ten miles away, I took refuge in an old barn with a metal roof that clamoured for attention with every shift of the wind. On a bed of dried and partially powdered cow dung I set my tent inside a barn with only three sides remaining. In my little fire box I pampered a little cone of flame to turn the water over for tea. I spent the early hours of dark standing in the big doorway that was once a wall. I looked out at a far away town twinkle and blinking at me in the freezing night. Sipping a weak tea and listened to the still angry wind looking for a bed to settle in I was thankful for the three walls that would let my tent rest without stakes or tearing walls. I watched the animals move past that were forgeting they were animals as the wind made them into creatures that just wanted to find their way home. No mouth worried to eat. No belly wanted to hunt. We were all just walking for a shelter away from the world where everything falls, and all the worry of the world blowing in our ears.