I can close my eyes still and see myself driving in second gear up the long, windy gravel road with nothing in my peripheral sight except whiskey brown horses, evergreen iced mountains, magpies perched on cattle guards. Downshift once more and I was home, in the woods greeted by vibrant stellar jay's and the resident cow moose.
Another time would've been when my life was pink dust and dried bones. The time when I walked three times a week, the Navajo cuffs on my wrist clinking together beneath a turquoise sky, to fetch a divine lemon souffle, rich and warm and sweet-tart like the love I was in.
Or how about the time when I sat alone on an island in a country that was not my own. I was the new American girl there by herself sitting on a dock. I was told to sit there and wait, that a water taxi would come get me and bring me home later that afternoon. One hour gone by, two hours gone by... I sat with crossed legs at the mouth of the Caribbean Sea and counted frigates in the golden sky as the sun set, my nerves beginning to resemble barnacles because there was nothing more I could do. And just as the sun vanished behind the sea I saw the boat, a speck of sand on life's most beautiful rug coming toward me.
I could keep going because I've lived in more places than these three, but those are different tales for another day.
Now, life is not as quiet for me with children grabbing at my thighs day and night. For one who has preferred to live a life in quiet solitude, I have very little quiet or solitude. But I do find it in my days, only it's more about the moments, the small things.
This past week with extended family in tow we toured through hairpin switchbacks, watched an osprey soar above twelve thousand feet - and did that get me wondering. Best of all, we walked into the woods. It was not quiet - with thirteen people in our group quiet is of little importance, but I instantly recognized something familiar as we walked forward. I saw myself, and in a glimpse I saw how much better she is now.
