Camping Notes, Sherwood, WI., III

Smoke lingers, chicken fingers.

5:17AM

Sitting in the woods having a conversation with a bear, or maybe a tree. Either way, it has explained to me exactly why the Packers would go 9-7 this season. It -- the bear or tree -- is making sound sense, despite the 39 straight hours of liver battery I've been engaged in. I asked it if the story was true that Flambeau Field was in the middle of a lake of fire, and if the Meat Puppets ever played there. The bear or tree passed me back the pipe and asked if I'd been smoking something other than what was in it.

5:31AM

I hear thunder from the thousand stars above. In a great lean, the trees have bent to whisper a secret to me: "Everything is a rose. Everything is a rose. Everything is a rose...."

5:47AM

Walk to the lake carried on a pillow of quiet. I can see my heartbeat in the mist of my breath; it corrugates the black air and forms steps I am almost positive I could climb. I can see these steps in the moonlight as they drift aloft. Where are they going? Are steps ever going somewhere, or have they always already arrived? Can one step be a link to a destination, or is it just a suggestion of a direction?

This is my thought, here by the lake, freezing, frankly. I am one step. I am somewhere between the gossamer lifts of my breaths and the earth-carved stone of the Black Hills. I am a step of resilient meat, as willing to give way as to carry. I can suggest a direction, or I can take you there. Think of me as a very short ladder on your way, willing to take you from where you are to where you belong.

6:01AM

Time to chase the darkness into the tent...light without sleep ages a body forever. Somewhere out there, over the past days, I have left steps.

I have left steps all over where we belong.

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