Shining Time

There can be no harder way to sit still than to write about the joys of a journey; to chew each day from journals ten inches deep with all of the people that were once strangers, coming to life again. Once I can get myself to sit still and write, I am excitedly turning each page, sinking again into the cypress swamp while I portage CrowDog over my head to save myself redundant miles of road, skin out a frog that is as big as a plate as I give thanks for his buttery legs, or make camp under your field of apple wood knowing your trees will erase the cumulus clouds of my cook fire. As soon as I start reading, my feet(feet that once complained for the loss of all luxury)get to where they can barely be contained in the crib that is the space under this desk; heart joins feet, lungs inflate as if preparing to sing, and I am certain that I am only strong enough to write a little while longer before I am a once again life simplified and buoyant under a backpack with a world filled with possibilities known only to the living, running for the door with my favorite dirty hat girdled under my chin by cord.
Two weeks. In two weeks I am gone from Minnesota, a Minnesota I have grown to love, pulling a wagon east (with a jeep)to Massachusetts to reconstitute some kind of life from boxes of memories, a motorcycle, Airstream, and a truck I am afraid will drink too much. In two weeks I say good-bye to Basecamp with completion in our eyes, and a unique sadness smooth and proud on our faces. From Maine to Louisiana, Louisiana to the Arizona border of Four Corners, north to Montana, west to the Oregon coast of Newport, and lastly a wandering line up to Cape Flattery and the end of well over eight thousand miles of walking. Basecamp and I have kept our promises to each other that will forbid us from ever truly being lives unrelated again. It is summed up in the one word that is in calligraphy in the white gold ring she gave me when the walk was completed..."Always."
Life is a funny creature. There is no figuring the depth or marvel of its plan. With Alexcia and her new husband Paul, I prepare to head east. We share dinners, go to plays at the Guthrie Theater, and thus begins a new chapter in this wonderful life. In the end (that is really the beginning), Alexcia and I are allowed to be the cherished friends we were alway meant to be outside of parental constraints, and this is all the joy in the world.