You Gave Me This

I read a letter from Adam that just arrived via e-mail, a man that I met on the Natchez Trace (www.fromflyoverland.com). Words are funny creatures. We all pretend they don't matter; sticks and stones and all that. But we are older now and know better. We feel the sticks, ducking stones without even thinking. The same is true for words of support, of recognition, kindness...hope. I feel it erase the wear of miles, soften the lines now softly mapping my traveled face. Thank you Adam for taking the time to lace my shoes, to tell me that you still hear me walking. That somehow it all matters. Maybe four months remain of this journey. Maybe. On the Salmon River I talk to the maroon headed ducks and we discuss the winter coming down before they wing tip across white water and river stone leaving me swirling my coffee cup in bank sand waiting for my fingers to wake to a cold retarded level of functioning.
Maybe that is the secret of it all; telling those that matter that they do....and it always has been. Thanks Adam...for walking with me in pictures from the Natahez Trace, wanderings in entries in old journal pages that'll be re-worked soon into a book, memories with that old red thread of kindred spirit linking us into the future lives of one another, into a constant pulse that makes up the blood of who we are; a coming home to self.