traveler's tale draft 1

I am going for a walk. I clip my iPod to my shirt, tie my white and blue sneakers, head out the door.

I would much rather be watching television. My walking habit is to start thinking--I get bored with the road, bored of the houses--and I start thinking of fights I could have or awards I could win. The walk moves in one small circle, no matter how far I go.

But I need to exercise, so I wait until the sun settles and plug up my ears with music, loud enough so I can't hear my thoughts, even if they begin.

I don't know these roads, which helps. I take the first left turn. I'll listen to half an NPR show, then I'll know to turn around, and so I'll walk an hour, long enough to mean something to my body and not so long I can't watch more TV.

Up, up, the road tilts. A good song comes on, music meant for 4/4 dancing and it gets me up the hill. Then down, down, down, which I'll probably have to go back up.

I turn left again, down a private way. I'm listening to a radio documentary on Midwestern malls. A dog, a German shepherd, barks from his yard. He sniffs my hand and tries to play but he's too big for me so I keep on. On private roads I fear the homeowners will yell from their windows, "Get off my land!" but that's never happened yet.

A trail bolts left and I take it into the woods. A familiar satisfaction fills me--on the trail again, in the woods, covered by leafy canopy. In spiderwebs and mosquitoes. Chipmunks yelling. Deer tracks. Moss. Swamp. All kinds of trees.

The trail ascends steeply and I pull my ear phones off. Thoughts flood--someone could strangle me with this iPod cord, it would be so easy, so neat--but I imagine my escape and the danger passes. The trail seems real and maintained, though you never know; history's old deer trails turned wagon roads turn back into deer paths in this land behind people's new houses.

And so does this one. I notice how the grass thickens and bends in from the edges, how the trail is no longer a straight line, how the opening is just wide enough for 4 skinny legs. I stumble over deadfall--someone logged here once--and I'm graceless as a drunk, loud enough to pass for a bear, scaring even the chipmunks into silence. I don't care. In the woods, there's no one around and when I crack and trip, I just might make no sound. And besides, behind the pricker bushes snagging my loose brown pants are blackberries and raspberries. Ripe.

I stoop and pluck and pop them into my mouth, succulent and small. I know I'm stealing from the bears but right now I'm a bear, too, swarming the hillside with my big paws, berry juice down my chin.

I walk and eat, unsnag and eat. It's so muggy I'm sweating and fogging my own glasses, because as the sun sets I'm staying hotter than the air.

The trail forks up and down. I take up, and it disappears. I should walk faster. It's getting dark. but I can't; there are berries. I am free.

But you're lost. And this, I realize, is also true. I've bushwhacked way past north and south, with hazing cloud covering sunset, and my original trail long gone.

Instinct, instinct. Except, I don't know if I believe in instinct anymore. I wonder if we are only collections of stories we don't even remember and the weight of them tips invisibly to one side, and we think something's bad, or teeters another way, and we think something's good, and we trust this rigged seesaw masquerading as innate wisdom to lead us well.

But try choosing Lamictal over Prozac; try choosing Northampton over Boston; try to love your family and yourself. Try to eat because you're hungry and not because you are scared. Try doing it all alone with your own single mind. Rightness and wrongness crumble then, and everything tastes like ash.

I choose left: the trail disappears. I choose right: the trail disappears. It's getting darker and I'm half scared and half proud and all happy to be here. My best choice, my instincts insist it exists, is to go down.

Crash, slip, slide, hop, shuffle. Glacial rock, swamp, fern. Even if I find a road, how will I know which one it is? A road is no guarantee.

The first fireflies light, little beacons, indifferent. I think I see a rise--a house! How will I explain if they catch me skulking in their yard? I mustn't let them see me. I circle wide and to the right. A horn honks a hundred yards ahead--a road. After the deepest woods, where I could have wandered all night, alone and afraid of what the woods might be, it's lovely to hear. Traffic!

But I wasn't afraid. I have never been afraid out here, in my wilderness. Some people go to Gaspe, or Montana. Either way, the mind is the same. The tent; the sea. I am in infinity in the cross-section of backlot property lines. Give me enough time out here and I'll forget I'm me.

The fireflies light a 1000 different paths through the swamp below the road. Each step is a lost shoe, a snake. I'm slurping through it when two women, 50 yards ahead and 30 feet up, appear, talking about boyfriends. They are fat. And loud. I crouch and freeze. If they are anything like me they'll never look this far into the woods, even as one sharp glance would expose me--Here I am! Watching you! A silent sneak!--but they continue. I wait until their voices fade.

Who is watching me?

My shoe is stuck. My personal trainer will not be pleased. I haul it out and the suction echoes along the little valley. More slurping and I clamber the bank, to the road--which road? My road--I smell the linden blooms and I see the all-square house.

Up, up, up again. I dream of winning money. I dream of radio interviews. When I retie my right show, the mud sloughs off like lace is losing a floppy old skin.

My own skin dries tight, the sickle moon hovers between telephone wires. A woman calls her dog; a cluster of men lean against the open hood of a truck. I am returned. Maybe this is why I don't go for walks--I turn them into adventures. I lose myself. I walk. I get scratched up. Later, I find ticks.

But in the woods, inside me, the fireflies replace the blackberries, and we're light that can't help but flash, tart and sweet and brief.