We went deep into the mountain where we breathed coal smoke, and when we came back up the sky was a disarming blue and we searched for gold in the river. I sat on a bench in the town in the sky and ate an ice cream cone and crossed my legs and thought that Thoreau was right, and that we are only ourselves when we’re far away, and that I would spend the rest of my life trying to recapture those moments–a hawk circling above a naked tree, a black so deep you cannot penetrate it, a thousand years of weeping water.
“In wilderness is the preservation of the world” and I was young and stupid and my heart was broken and everything meant something. Youth idealizes each sweet moment and suspends it in amber; I was no different, although I thought I was.
It is still all I want, an open sky and a house on a mountain and a pair of dogs and solace so that I can begin to try and understand the world. I am awkward and flimsy and an utter disappointment. I will vanish and it will be the kinder thing, because a part of me has always loved tragedy, and I’d rather be a ghost on the side of a desert road, thumb up, suitcase in hand, than take up space in this frozen city.