Untethered

I like how you see your sister whenever

you happen upon the majestic hawk

who is wise and free

like her

I had a dream I was flying

It felt more like falling

and  I woke up shaking

My fate is unknown

out of my control

and the only guarantee

We see her soar above

the swamp-green lake

beautiful in its familiarity

I can't understand what it really is to fly

Is it a flight for survival?

She must spot the swimmers and the scurriers

more easily from up there

Is it a flight for enjoyment?

If she was tethered, it'd be the no-need-to-pedal sensation

after the climb of her life

I hope all living things experience awe

It's hard to imagine not

from way up there

when we get to experience it down here

just looking up at her wide wings

wondering

Making an Investment

You've taught me a lot about

the importance

of a sturdy pair of shoes

and since I'm on the subject

of making an investment

(sore feet is a price

none of us like to pay

since it keeps us off

the trails

the court

and the pavement)

Tucson, almost spring, 1985

to Rabbit Mountain before

the next unwelcome snowstorm

mucking up our streets

March 16, 2022

Two children who love you too much

to ever leave you out of anything

one in London with a pretty girl

and one just counting down the stressful moments

until her next margarita

Thank you for the sturdiest shoes.

Thank you for wearing them, and

thank you for tying mine.

All of the Beautiful Places

When it's early spring 

and people flock to sunny

slabs of rock,

I think about how truly we all

want the same things.

I think about the man who said, "There are

too many people,

far too many people,"

and how he was one of us,

easing out of the darkness

of winter,

seeking some picture-worthy adventure,

or hoping he might be

the only one who needed

to see something beautiful.

I like thinking about all of the beautiful places

he must have seen in his lifetime so far.

I realized

I love sharing

with my fellow humans

whether I know them or not.

I think my biggest hope

is that we all see something beautiful

every day.

For example,

in the canyons there are 

emerald rivers that flow to towns where 

people smile and 

take the time to care

for one another.

I'm so thankful

for all of the beautiful places.

Purple

 I'd like nothing more than to tell another

story about you

instead of drawing the bare-wintered

Whomping Willow

listening two chapters later than the time

you yet again said something so cleverly

defensible it stopped me in my tracks,

laughing

You apologized because you knew

I never thought of it that way

I wished you didn't feel the need to

apologize

carrying with you the charm

only a student can bring their teacher

for steering the narrative in an actually

interesting direction

What does it matter admiring someone

if you attempt to control their narrative

gatekeeping longed-for letters

spying from the bushes

violet pudding on the floor

trapped in a home that's not a home

all in the name of security

keeping someone safe

who just wants to be free

Poems for my Thoughts (and a lot of thoughts first) on our 2020 Colorado Trail Adventure

Do I have to lead with the rodent? It's hard to shake his insidious presence. As if walking 115.5 miles with monster packs over 8 days and the subsequent layers of grime on our own skin wasn't enough. Adam and I finished a glorious trek through the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness this past Friday. The first leg included some great friends, a midpoint was facilitated by my wonderful family in Salida, and the final leg featured a push through the most difficult and beautiful terrain I've ever experienced. But seriously, WHATEVER, if after all of that we had to encounter what we did when I opened the glove compartment of my Aunt Kay's RAV4, "Rava." As ALS was robbing her of physical adventure, she sold me her favorite car...and she would be so pleased with the experiences Rava has made possible for us! But still. This was a bit much.

First of all, I was pretty pitiful on our last day. Adam had a data book and phone app clearly mapping out our mileage and elevation fluctuations for days 1-7, but our last day back to Rava was "off-the-grid," if you will. Signs for "Browns Pass" pointed us roughly in the right direction, despite an uncleared avalanche zone full of tree-hopping and expletives. It's fine. Expletives can be motivating, and we made it through. So, after a longer-than-anticipated hike out on Friday, we (at long last!) came upon our dusty Rava, fully equipped to deliver our depleted souls to cheeseburgers and cocktails at the Buena Viking/Deerhammer Distillery in Buena Vista. We only had to withhold for a brief conversation of self-congratulation with a proud 65-year-old at the river, where we attempted to assuage some of our putrid stench with biodegradable soap. The man was taken to self-congratulation upon noticing Adam's "Sub-Forty" Fortitude 10K T-shirt. Again, it's fine - I'm just not terribly admiring of self-congratulatory people, and I was so ready for that cheeseburger. I'm pretty pleased with my inventive way of shaking him: "Well, enjoy your hike!"

Back at Rava, sudsed feet and all, I popped open the glove compartment - where I'd stashed a fanny pack full of COVID-19 necessities (a mask and hand sanitizer). The pile of tissues was fairly explosive in appearance, with a powdery-black residue of sorts, and what we eventually realized were tiny specks of rodent shit. "...what the FUCK?!" was, naturally, my first vocalization. Adam was messing around with all of the usual messy aftermaths of a weeklong backpacking venture. It was so disorienting, to piece together the bits of information as my exhausted brain was able to process them. First: "Did some crazy ass people break into our car to play some disgusting trick? Why didn't they take anything of actual value? Why did they just take a crap in some tissues and leave it in my glove compartment?" Once we realized, of course, some little chipmunk-piece-of-shit was the culprit, it was difficult to decide whether to admire the little fellow or feel completely and utterly violated. The box of tissues was in our back seat, on the floor. He (or she, or THEM, heaven forbid) somehow ventured into the car, through an airvent or God knows what, and determined the glove compartment was a cozy enough nook...only to determine, by gum, where are the nesting materials?! It GATHERED from the back seat in a ferocious tear, and BROUGHT tissues into the glove compartment, where it SHIT ALL OVER and LIVED in there while we walked for 8 straight days. And he was no where to be found! Hantavirus symptoms make themselves known in 1-8 weeks following exposure, so we'll see how that develops.

The thing is, it was a really amazing trip. I dropped my phone on our second to-last-day and cried somewhat pathetically about it (we're addicted to the damn things, after all). It just seemed so stupid. I pulled it out and shouted at Adam, "Stop! It looks like Mordor here!" and the darn thing slipped right through my fingers onto Mount Doom itself. And the rodent infestation, well, let me tell you - Rava is as clean as she's ever been under my ownership (Aunt Kay always kept her spotless and I have a mind to do so as well, rodents be damned). After burgers and libations and a state of calm I'm quite proud of, considering the circumstances, we noticed Rava's hood latch had inexplicably busted.  We tied her down with some copper wire at the advice of a kind, rugged woman in Fairplay and have an appointment at the Toyota dealership to get it fixed next week. Obstacles. We felt like hobbits out there from day 1, but I wasn't expecting so much to go wrong when we finally finished the actual hike. The hike, now! That's the real story.

See, it DID look like Mordor.

Around our fourth or fifth mountain pass last Thursday (I don't know, maybe the first one with a slick snowfield and bitch-slap of a wind tunnel at the top), I started mulling over the fact that we'd seen a lot of astoundingly beautiful mountain vistas in the previous six days of hiking. It was starting to feel like I'd eaten a fourth or fifth helping of pie...too much of a good thing? "Oh, look, another luscious green valley below, with azure mountain lakes, and majestic snowcapped peaks surrounding us in all directions, ENOUGH ALREADY!" The Colorado Trail has a way of revealing just how tremendously spoiled I really am. But I wasn't the only one. Last Thursday, we met a couple of men from Cortez setting up Cottonwood Pass around 4 in the afternoon, out of water, wondering where they would camp that night. Thru-hikers like seeing each other toting packs. It's pretty communal. It's also obnoxiously elitist, as we're all feeling stupidly superior to any "day hikers" we see, us in our far smellier conditions, river-washed-but-still-filthy garments hanging to dry for all to see. In any case, we naturally stopped to chat to these two guys for a few minutes, them heading up the pass and us heading down. Adam: "Hey! Going all the way to Durango? Right on! Us, no, we're just doing the loop. Yep. Yeah, we started at Segment 13, went up from . . . Marshall Pass . . . now we're . . . skipped 1 and most of . . . finishing out back at Silver Creek Trailhead tomorrow." (Adam is my complete and total tour guide, my wonderful life partner who I love with all my heart, and without him I would surely perish in the elements. I seriously have no idea how we made it back to the car.)

Anyway, these guys, they had already conquered Lake Ann Pass when we saw them trucking up Cottonwood, and this is something I do know: Adam and I completed, in reverse order, Segments 3-5 and part of 2 on the Collegiate West Loop of the Colorado and Continental Divide Trails. Lake Ann Pass is part of Segment 2, which we dodged in order to get back to our car. It's also possibly the most difficult pass on the loop. When I know a little something, I chime in to the conversation, as best I can: "We're sad to miss the view of Lake Ann! Heard it's one of the most beautiful passes on the loop." They just scoffed, "Oh, yeah, people told us, 'Just wait until you see Lake Ann from up there, it's stunning!' It's not stunning. [Hand gesture to acknowledge the fact that the four of us are currently standing in the middle of some fairly stunning mountain scenery] It's all the same." Oh, how we understood. We were finishing up Segment 3 at Cottonwood that day (which is actually the beginning of Segment 3, but per our backwards direction, it was ending), and after trudging up and down six mountain passes above 12,000 feet for 10 hours, with roughly 2 hours still to go before viable campsites, the vistas start to take a sinister shape to the filthy and exhausted thru-hiker. Are we supposed to just keep being astounded by nature ALL DAY? Impossible.

Oh, come on. What is wrong with all of us? It's all the SAME?! It's ridiculous how lucky any of us physically capable of covering those distances and climbing to those wide and glorious expanses of mountain majesty are to be simply doing what we are doing. In retrospect, I am ashamed that I couldn't muster a little verbal respect (even one "ooh!" or "ahh!") for the peaks with the strongest winds that day, the ones that had me somehow clinging to my hat as well as my hiking poles and staring at my obscenely weathered boots with each amazingly small and labored step took. But instead, those ones made me cry ugly tears and scream at the top of my lungs, "I HATE MOUNTAINS!" If you've met my husband, you might be intrigued to learn he was even yelling a little something up there (but I started it, after all, and it's sort of hard to stay positive when your hiking companion has decided to become inconsolable in the most difficult push of the day).

But honestly, I'm so thankful for it all. I'm not completely happy with the part of myself that has to crumple pathetically and sometimes irately when things are tough, and I'm sure Adam isn't either, but we chose each other and we chose that trail and we both are better for it. Once we'd get lower in elevation and a hillside blocked the wind for a few moments (before the next climb), I'd mutter apologies and excuses for my irrational outbursts, and when the end of our final trek to the car (day 8 and miles 103.7 to 115.5 of hiking with packs) was near, I asked Adam how he kept his composure so well. "Because we don't have any other choice, do we? We have to keep going." About my method of coping, he said, "Well, that's how you get through it. It's ok." Then I asked him why it was different for him with unexpected traffic delays, and I still don't really understand his answer, but it's nice to know he's not unflappable.

There are so many things I could say about the Colorado Trail. I've gone with Adam and followed where he leads like a silly little duckling for a portion of five summers now, gradually becoming grittier and more like those "real" thru-hikers we see every year (out there utterly filthy and enjoying it, for God's sake!). Our first trip was disastrous. We took a summer off. Then, joined by a very special friend and a very special dog, a true wolf pack was forged and we'll all be forever bonded by the trail. Pictures are funny, so delusive - telling the tiniest fraction of a story possible. Every year we've had mishaps. Every year we've had reasons to apologize to each other. I'll share an album of photos from this year's exceedingly panoramic and smile-filled journey and it will be fun to scroll through them; it will be nice for anyone who cares to see where we went and what it looked like on the surface...but only our wolf pack understands, truly, the emergency bathroom break in a hail storm and subsequent camaraderie that comes from traveling, in so much pain, with a group of people obligated to sharing that kind of information with one another (it's hard to keep secrets out there).

Every night slept outside this year (7 of the 8, since one was spent luxuriously in a retro motel in Salida), I wrote a crappy little poem that I'd like to share anyway, and these will be the last words I share - in writing, at least - about our Colorado Trail experience this year:

Night One:

Sore

Bodies start

Stop

Again

Pulled down to the Earth

by the things I need

Have you ever wondered

why we're allowed to tread

not lightly

upon everything?

It's like getting up

so painfully

from the ground

and thinking you deserve

some goddamn attention already.

Night Two:

Pleasant Surprise

That kind of rollercoaster

that smells like Christmas

took us for an easier ride

than anticipated, considering

it didn't have any wheels.

Changes in the sky,

a welcome chance meeting,

giving thanks to all things

we cannot control --

and through all 

our misconceptions

with the weather,

there was plenty for all

to eat.

There was plenty for all

to feel.

Night Three:

Outside

I've been sitting here for several minutes

trying (not very hard) 

to turn my attention outwards

of myself -- 

but I've been plagued

for all times.

Is it the same for you?

Does the chirping of the birds

have any other impact

than sweet singing in the evening, 

perhaps an early wake-up call,

or

in any case,

just what you needed?

(Sigh)

You again. 

[Night Four = No Poetry, I guess, because I finally had a shower!]

Night Five:

Natural Habitat

Since the river is ceaseless,

we'll be able to carry on.

The ant intruding on my under-shoe

certainly had other plans.

The greenery's well-quenched and

quivering with the slightest breeze.

Does an unleashed dog

love anything more

than a trail seeped 

in unfamiliar smells?

I've never been here before,

but the flatness of the Earth

and the nearness of the water

of course contends my right

to pee all over the perimeter.

Night Six:

Tent 

The moment the sky

goes from blue

to white

to black --

I missed it.

I've been hiding out

listening

instead of seeing.

What I don't feel anymore

is any expectation

for this night

(whether I'll feel cleansed,

or cold,

or scared that it might never end,

and that darn sky --

without my realizing --

turned to gold.)

Night Seven:

Holding On

People aren't beautiful

like trees are

and when it come to obstacles

in my path

I'm sure I prefer those

I don't end up conversing with.

It's not that conversing

is unpleasant --

it's just so much more complicated

than stepping

under, over, or around.

Today's screaming hillside

hid behind my hat

which I clutched in hopes

of not leaving

any more of me

in this perfect place

(skin-chapped wanderlust).

Fixed it remained --

one less obstacle

to getting home.

Oh, How We Impact One Another

Today I thought about how it's true
that all we really have is ourselves,
and that made me feel lonely.
Self-centeredness feels as inevitable
as it is embarrassing.

Back when I had voices inside my head
attached to inanimate objects,
it was a little better.
Figurines never hurt my feelings.
My mom told me that she listened
to what I was saying,
pretending she was asleep on the couch.
It doesn't feel like a violation
because I don't remember what I said.

I don't remember if I made up happy endings.
I don't remember if I made up any endings at all,
but I remember using greeting cards
on the dining room table
like vessels on a national speedway.

Have you ever thrown away a letter?
I have.
Is there anything worse?

The letters I've kept,
I never re-read. The letters I've sent,
I never remember. 

What They Taught Me

Three years ago, I met a group of 6th grade students: fresh-faced, wide-eyed, new-to-the-school and appropriately terrified. I had the privilege of being their ally for the three tumultuous years in adolescence that we call middle school. I know my job title, but that's really how I feel: I got to be their ally. Together, we got through middle school. Middle school! How many people do you know who would want to relive that era of life? These kids are some of the most earnest, kind, and creative individuals I've ever met. They'll never realize all they taught me; they'll never realize what a profoundly positive impact they had on my life. Because of these kids, I can fathom a career in teaching as a longterm ideal.

My students taught me about perspective. They taught me how to slow down, rephrase, and consider a sentence's value far beyond its grammatical pitfalls. They taught me about communication in its most authentic form: the sharing of thoughts, feelings, and ideas. Sometimes we problem-solved and sometimes we let ourselves feel frustrated. They showed me the advantages and outright necessity of scheduled breaks.

They inspired me to watch all of the films in the Marvel franchise without even trying to (kids don't really care if you like what they like or not; how refreshing is that?). They inadvertently taught me to ask for help, which I hate doing; however, one thing my students love is to be of service to others. (They absolutely live for it, so it was never an inconvenience to them to set up my projector when all of the adults in the building were too busy.)

They helped me understand my own irritation at the assertion, "Oh, you must be so patient," regarding my chosen profession. They helped me to see how the tables are quite possibly turned more often than not; it is the kids who must have patience with the adults who have forgotten what it feels like to be a kid. They taught me how to be supportive in a world full of new sets of rules, seven periods a day.

I'm so incredibly humbled by what I get to go to work every day to do. I feel there is a disproportionate amount of thanks given in the universe to teachers and all they do for their students, compared with students and all they do for their teachers. It's a common phrase, "That's a tough kid to work with." What about the fact that my students had to work with me, a perfectionistic introvert with single-minded views on the best ways to accomplish tasks? What about all of the various personalities students have to learn to appease daily in order to have success in their school day? It's hard work being a teacher, but it's hard work being a student, too. I couldn't be more proud of the unique and spirited group of young people finishing 8th grade in quarantine next week - the young people who taught me about humility, empathy, and Ant-Man. I will never forget them. Thank you, thank you, thank you to my wonderful students.