Erudition

“One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am — a reluctant enthusiast…a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So, get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for awhile and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; you will outlive the bastards.” — Edward Abbey

This body is not mine. This body is a million billion memories muddled together by time. This body is borrowed carbon that encrusts an ancient rock. I am but the echo of the organisms that writhed before. And like all that came before, death shall be my sacred rite. Today this matter’s me, tomorrow something else, but forever it belongs to Earth. I am but an impermanent rendition. I am but another piece of home.

An emaciated spine of granite runs down my back. It juts up into a wild blue sky. Decorated with piney stubble, each vertebra is peaked with the baren white of bone. I was born molten and flowing across this western crucible. My senses reached hungrily outward and into the beauty of the indifferent wilderness. And as I took in the grandeur, the grandeur took in me. My shape was molded by the mountains, branded by the mesas, tempered by the blizzards, and quenched in the currents of the spring. Its muddy runoff coated me. Ponderosa saplings are rooted in my sleeves. I’ve since left the place that orchestrated me.

I abandoned my home in search of what I knew not. What I found was ugliness, creatures hypnotized by ivory immortality. I stumbled into an esoteric wasteland. I found self-righteous hypocrites blind to the beauty of human flaws. I saw arrogant beasts lay proud claim to solitude. They made a wretched mess of important work. They thought themselves to be titans. All I beheld was pointless squabbles. They severed every sinew connecting them to sanity. I watched the process of their withering; they set a rabid madness free. I looked at so much filth I could not see. At last, I cried “Enough!” This was not the world that orchestrated me.

For all the rancor I found, I made one pure discovery; this is not my place. This place is not me. I extoll the ephemeral. Soon it will set me free. I will return wonderfully weathered to the land that’s laid its claim on me. I will ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while, and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space.