A Walk at Night, In the Galiuros

Fewer words now. Fewer dreams, too. The fears encroach as shadows and questions, unknowns to
blunder into like chasms that open between cliff faces, difficult to see -- and difficult to fall into unless one is going blindly down canyon. Or into the night.

At night there is clarity of mind. I begin to breathe and feel the long day. Many long days exhale, exhume themselves and take shape as I hike up the road. They are crisp and sad-looking, like old garments hung on clothes hangers. They do not fit anymore. Not here, in the crisp cool evening by the mustard tufts and lavender, by the volcanic tuff and scraggly, wind-thrashed juniper. Old days gone by. They can be learned from, can't they? And mended and tailored to fit this night.

Nothing dramatic here. Just a friend in pace with me. A trust that is born of familiarity, broken trust, and redemption. Perhaps that is the truth in the long-ago love of mine that was named God. That we are all of us looking for redemption. Not because we have all sinned, no. But because we have all lost ourselves and, on going finding, have hurt each other. That is the longing. Forgive me. Accept me whole. Love me whole.

I walk up into these hills to a quiet saddle. The wind has gone to rest. Stars are out. A first quarter moon spreads its sallow lonely stain over the surrounding constellations. I do not know them. But I can love strangers, too.

Moon, forever chasing the path of the sun, never to catch her.

"I trust you," I tell my friend, who may be asleep for all the sleeping bag stirs. How did it happen, this intimacy?

Sometimes, a meteor falls through the sky and I am full of breath at the wonder. I squint and follow a satellite's turning -- brightening, fading journey -- ever, always. And I close my eyes, remembering the way the upper canyon, west of us, looked after the rain event came and shredded the path, boulders pulverized to chalky dust. Wasteland. And pockets of new growth, as slender and secret as shut eyelids, returning -- ever, always. I let go and my spirit goes to rest with the wind, to seek after what cannot be found.

Fewer undertakings. Fewer words. But there is quiet trust and love here. And redemption.