Please Don"t Save Me

When I write of hardship, or the full taste of blood from a branch raking my mouth just after dark as I break into a forest only to find a flat where another bear has buried a quarter of deer carcus centered on the only free earth without prickly pear cactus; when I tell you about rattlesnakes I fill my cookpot with when all other food is spent, or the sound of pumas being loud in their soundlessness just outside the zip-lock wall of my tent, I am not asking you for a rope to help me escape. I am telling you what the ocean smells like knowing you are surrounded by sand. I am telling you that I have ridden beyond the horizon and have not fallen into space. We all laughed at the beliefs of ancient great explorers in elementary school, and then we grew up to believe the modern equivalant as we riddled our lives in harnesses to avoid walking into the unknown, the unpaved. I have talked to many people that have never crossed the state line of their homeland...and they are proud of it. They were not young, and I wonder then if they ever were. Then I remember pieces of myself not long ago removed to understand. It is hard to leave the predictability of a life gone static and safe. I am rarely safe.
A year ago on, early on in this walkabout, I was often asked how I 'got permission' to leave job, home, responsibilities that every man of forty years carries... as well as the 21st century life with its furious grip of the established norm. I was not asked by people that smile alot. At first I was angered by their beliefs, or was it their stab at my implied irresponsibility that makes me lie awake sometimes late in my humble brown tent rumenating over all the things I wish I had said?. Permission? Rolling the fotage backwards in my thoughts I reflect on whether or not I have ever been given permission to color outside the lines. Who took away our souls, our feeding of a hunger that roams outside the settlement of every man I ever met? Who cut the tendons above our heels and then demanded us to whisper when we knew we should be roaring? We watch Legends of the Fall and then go out and mow the lawn in flowered shorts thinking about a time in history when wild places still existed.

Trucks with ludicriously large knobby tires have bulldoged past me through many of these southern states, mufflers cut, modified to choke out in a voice that rattles plates on distant dinner tables like Harley Davidsons on parade: their perpetual longing for attention. Driver's just cutting in their first facial hair believe they are wild and on top of the world. When they pass me on the open road miles from where the sidewalks has given up and died into red dust they will stomp on the gas pedal as if they are about to shoot into space, and they do this infuriating act just for me. I wear just one earplug all the time for just such stupidity...and then it accured to me after months of muttering to myself in distain that they are saying that they are real men too, warriors. They are showing that they are saddled on their fierce steed and I am comparably little in there world; that I am a trite detail moving toward nothing...... until they are honest and alone late in their night of nights and years come to them, then they will don their pack named something other than CrowDog. and thump out to where the wild things are even if only in their minds. They too will follow whatever voice it is that separates them from the good intention of their flock, and for a little while, until sleep comes in and settles beside them, they will tilt ther hat against the sun and consider lions in the pale blue of sagebrush with purple bone branches. Silver bullets of ideas will be slid into their pistol cylinders as they chew a thin cigar they never light. They will not lie awake bored and glazed over until sleep finally moseys into their inner room. They will not have to roar their engine to be seen as a unstopable trumpet of life. They will grin through their tired happy eyes knowing, tomorrow they will brave on, answering that voice inside their head that is theirs alone. For just a little while in this 'sold our souls to the company store' world we can be free to cut our names into a tree in our mind's eye that will not blemish over or die. We can be walking with every explorer that has walked before us. We will throw down the dice each morning knowing that is is no matter what edge hangs on a blade of grass, or if one die falls on two dots or five, we are investing the talents the Master left us to care for. All may be lost and we'll still win. We will not bury our talents in the earth, under hard packed dirt and mouth fulls of 'Yes sir, sorry sir. I will try harder tomorrow." Only then will steriod trucks drive past me slowly and smile instead of stomping their feet on the excellerator.
Please don't save me. I am trying to remember things deep in my bones that used to keep me awake too. Out here I am home.