Date:         Tue, 1 Apr 1997 00:42:54 -0500
From: quiet tink <mbarker@MIT.EDU>
Subject:      FILLER: A Spirit Walkabout, of sorts

I've spent the last few days on what I suppose I might call a spiritual
retreat, or at least a kind of spiritual wandering.  It's not anything
formally organized, but I find that when I get out into a part of the
country where your view goes as far as that and your soul spreads its
wings with Crow and soars, there isn't any way to describe what happens
except as a kind of spiritual opening.  I'll admit, a lot of people
would find driving for hours, sometimes in silence, sometimes with good
old country pounding, while watching the blue sky, the drama of clouds
forming and drifting, the majesty of rock and mountain, the detailed
boredom of scrub and flat, the living world that holds me tenderly at
its center as it breathes and moves around me...some people might not
consider that a religious experience.

    In one of the small towns we went through, I stopped and filled the
car with gas.  Then I went inside and paid.  Something urged me to chat
with the young lady running the register, and I learned that she lived
in town.
    I asked, "So what's it like, living here?"
    Her mouth twisted and her nose wrinkled up.
    "That bad?"
    "Well, there's a few places that are pretty, but it's mostly
boring."
    I looked at her for a moment, then said, "So when are you going to
leave?"
    She looked at the magazine open to the "True Crime" story, tapped
her long fingernails on the counter a couple of times, and shook her
head with a horsetail plume of hair caught up behind.
    "As soon as I can."
    We drove away, and I marveled at the natural beauty of the canyon
surrounding the town.  Small things--a twisted tree fighting on the edge
of a stony lip, a shaky rainbow forming in the late evening clouds--they
all whispered peace to those parts of me that were filled with hurry,
with anxiety, with fear.  I found parts of myself out there, and put
down new roots to anchor me when I return to one of those places that
young lady thinks will make her happy.

Somewhere along the road, I found myself thinking a thought, looking at
the wisp of white clouds up ahead over the mountains just on the
horizon.  Then the sweep of the mountains, the cow stiff-legged ambling
by the side of the road, the hum of the tires, it all mixed in,
stretched that thought, and made it whole.  As we drove into the shade
of the clouds, majestic and towering, that thought thunked me, and I
laughed.

tink