Last Snow

What was promised has made the field outside white again. I still sleep in the tepee tent by the open window on white carpeting so I felt the weather coming in, felt the lite down bag begin to work at keeping me unaware of cold falling down. Writing the book is learning new skills, and abandoning trails that lead in circles, over paths I didn't intend to take. For a week I walked around this desk and drew maps holding pictures of where we met. It wasn't until I told an old acquaintance about my journey in three sentences and saw her eyes glaze over that I knew I had to sit down and capture what it was that I experienced before time erased the details and stunted the passion. When we finally realize we are going to die we sometimes become the most worthy of living
Everyday I am with you now as journals are gleaned and poured over and I am so thankful, still sitting on that stripped roof beside pallets of shingles watching dog eared tar paper talking to the wind while you compare your road to mine until we are both longing, and yet know we have chosen our roads well. I can't carry every act or gesture into print and this is some level of sadness, as if you'll think I don't remember your couch and waking to your children staring inches from my face, as if you didn't open your Mexican pantry and tend to me with sardines and hash while your tractor froze to the field.
In a week I go to Iowa to speak to seven classes at a school in the town of Nevada. What is not in print, what you can't know is that you'll be there too. Not a hand is raised or a question taken in that doesn't make me reach back to the time when I was in your town, and slept under your sky. Already I have talked to many schools across America and it still takes me days to come down again. To talk about ones passion is to smile until the face hurts. There will be another journey. For now I cut, paste and remember laughing with Amish children, and the joy of eating a whole coconut custard pie while sitting in a snow bank watching your buggy trot past.