I think we all have our time

when we will return

to a place that was once home

and find ourselves

standing empty handed and new

wondering how we never saw

it that way before.

…

My blistered hands,

sunburnt skin,

and pounding heart

were no concern

of the mighty impermanence

rushing around and over me.

…

When my father talks about time

he draws circles in the air.

One circle

means one year

…

…

In the kind, crepuscular light of the morning,

I have no questions.

As my feet pad along the dirt path--

my body tells me I must worship

so I go.

…

…the peeling away, the shedding that happens on the road tells me the answer to those questions are only in the future. A place I will never go. There is only sunlight to worry about now—how it hits my campsite. Is my tent door facing east? Is my skin getting burnt? These questions put me in my place and permit me to sink into the gaps life allows— some as big as Death Valley…

I visited my cousin in Manhattan last fall and she commented after hearing a story I told of an acid trip that she didn't know if it was good or bad but that she felt like she lived in black and white while I lived in color. She said she was happy--with her job, her fiancé, her friends, herself yet hearing about my life--my adventures, troubles and questions made her question if she was missing something. I told her I didn't know. We both agreed we wouldn't be happy living each other's lives but to say one life is better-- better lived, more full, more deep than the other is impossible. It would require knowing what a good life entails-- a question I believe most philosophy is still pursuing.

I came to the river this morning

to wonder why it took me so long

to listen to the birds.

We have wandered about these mountains

for weeks now,

yet this morning it was as if

I heard their songs

for the first time.

In my return East

the co-emergence of comfort and constriction

makes me wonder if this could ever be home again.

Mushrooms push themselves up before me

reminding me of the roots I grew here.

I stoop to inspect the space under their shelter

and feel my knees digging deeper into the humus

of who I was, am and will be.

Who is to say what is adventure and what is not? I return from the mountains and the whirr of my life scoops me up and whisks me away like salt in the ocean air. Coming home and seeing the glassiness in my father's eyes and the silver turn to white in my mother's hair feels just as much of a race with time that any alpine start I will ever wake to.

…

to love winter

is to live close to death—

to allow loss and stillness to reside within you

without turning from yourself.

…

Here's a little video I made from a road trip Taryn and I took from San Diego to Loreto. The open road, the sea, dear friends, wise and beautiful musicians, adventure, my own body and how she wiggles and moves through the world all have so much to teach me.

…

I walk along the edge

Where the ocean calms

And flows into fluttering lace across the sand.

I am walking east,

Watching the sun surge up among last night’s rain clouds.

I am walking slow.

Moving slow.

…

…Now two years later, the space was still there. Sacred as ever. And yet, now that we are both here, it is full. Full of us in the way light can fill a room. We stand at opposite sides of the room, fearing what we would touch if we were to make it smaller, the space between us.

…

But soon I lose both--

the hurt and the confusion--

myself too.

For the birches ask me to dance

and I cannot refuse.

We twirl and curl like their bark.

And in our intimacy they peel away their skins

just enough for me to see

their delicate, pink insides…

I have been thinking how this is the perfect place to learn. All wisdom can be found here. If you want to be a scientist, practice observation. If you want to be a writer, tell me about the birds and the rocks and the way the sunlight hits your eyelashes in the afternoon sun. If you want to be a doctor, learn the plants. Heal your adventure-mates. Give them cola de caballo tea for their blood and keep their wounds clean and dry from the river. But most of all, if you want to learn to just be, to keep your center when all about you are losing theirs-- Patagonia, these rivers, the glowing sun and soaring wind, can teach you all you must know.

This video is a creation I made on my last solo trip from Tacoma, WA to Los Angles, CA where I met my mom and then continued on to Santa Fe to see my sister. I stayed close to the ocean partly because of fires inland but mostly because the sea was something I needed at the time. Artemisa, my car, and I wiggled along the coast having mate breaks in the company of redwoods, listening to Bomba Estereo and clambering seastacks along the Oregon Coast. It was a beautiful, centering time I will never cease to learn from.

…

I wake every morning

wiggling, itching,

wondering

how they do it--

give way to her rushing commands

without a single lament

for all she asks we leave behind.

…