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Deepest blue, abyssal, empyreal, for only a sliver moment, like her eyes, her eyes that still gaze at me, through me, from memory, everlasting, the window into heart and soul, and then - gone. And for so long, so long now, nearly 30 years ago. Old grizzled fuck I am now, and yet those piercing, everlasting eyes, the window to heart and soul of She, they still are so, so clear in my withering, diseased mind, revelation and destination and damnation.
Since Lughnasadh 2022, my life
has been total turmoil. The last third of 2022 saw decay around my
entire front - bodily, financially, materially, socially. Yet somehow I
survived and reached the new year, despite all the wretched blood
flooding my vessels, despite suffering still, with ears and throat and
shoulder faltering, insecurity remaining at work, finances winnowed
down to clean my mother's sloppy death and my ailing cars and leaving
very little pecuniary buffer were another catastrophe to depress - and
all that in a flatland place where I rarely belonged but was too scared
to escape. But then - the uncanny. I suddenly and shockingly found
myself debt-free, and my mother's trailer shockingly sold just before
my one reliable car was totaled. And on the eve of the annual Irongate
ritual and being responsible for toting another person, I had to buy
another vehicle, now had the bucks for it, and bought a 4 X 4 that
could roam the snow and mountains. Then with courage buoyed by the
bucks and ride, I finally searched for a home in the mountains, my
place, submitting an offer on a house I felt a little wary of, having
that house swooped out from underneath me, and then finding this one,
perfect, cheaper yet better and owned by lovely people - been so long,
too long since I've cut a rent check to a rentor who's a human being.
So I was seemingly orchestrated to reach my home back in
place.
Then my fucking back the last month.
That shitty L4-5 disc blew on October 14 and again right in the middle
of Samhain, and I've had to consciously monitor every movement
thereafter because I hadn't been in a compromised position at all. The
pain abates when I lay on the bed, but I can't live that way - like a
Jack-'n'-the-Box burger tastes so good, with curly fries and a big-ass
Dr. Pepper, how that "food" then ravages your body far exceeds the
transitory savory enjoyment.
So the Wild day off yesterday, I had to
get out there. I woke, dribbled bitchy doggerel in the journal, threw
down a good breakfast, showered, then rolled to high lands that would
be blocked for months to come from a big storm later in the week. But
the spot I had in mind - the other leg of a trail I hiked earlier this
year - already was inaccessible thanks to some fuck-ass government
agency - probably USFS - blocking the road to trailhead. But I wasn't
going home - no way - and I'd had enough surprises since Lugh '22 to
have a contingency plan. Rooted around in my hiking guide and map book
and found another trail only a few miles away, and, better - actually
ideal - for my mending, fragile back, shorter and with less elevation
change.
Fuck-ass USFS frustrated accessing that
trailhead, too, by removing its sign, though somehow, even through my
annihilated sense of space given my fucked inner ears, I found it. And
uncannily the destination was a lake bearing the name of one of those
gorgeous, ghostly young blonde women who so infatuated me, who was so
warm and kind to me, in those tumultuous high-school years on the
frosty mountain. Even more - on a day that was the anniversary of the
joining of my longest love and I, and right there was a reservoir her
grandfather, such a wonderful man, so full of life well into his 80s,
such an inspiration, loved to fish. Such peculiar alignment of times
and places through 30 years.
Then the challenge - me reaching that
lake without getting lost, and without reverting to my crippled state
of November 1. I gingerly hoisted the light pack to my back and slowly,
meticulously measured each step before letting foot fall, and damn did
I need to because a fair length of trail had been blanketed with a thin
snow that'd fused and solidified to ice. Needing to focus so much on my
body, I couldn't really open myself, couldn't ogle and inhale and
absorb the place as much as I would've liked. Still, she permeated me -
how could she not? She'd been burned through, so many toppled,
charcoaled red firs and lodgepole pines, with deep autumn fallen - all
leaves from alders and aspens shed from skeletonized trees, laying on
the sooty forest floor to melt and then be absorbed by new life. A
biting wind blew, hard, cold, dry, waving the widowmakers, soggy
meadows shifting ever closer to winter with many frozen solid, strong
enough to walk on. Season of death. But not arrived yet, still in
season of dying, which is still surviving and, if taken to potential,
living. Juncos on one last high-elevation feed, little tough-ass
Douglas squirrels and chipmunks bright-eyed and continually chattering,
and, in the main creek, above gravels behind a big log jam, hoards of
brookies, streaking white edges of lower fins swinging in synchrony
just above small, foot-wide teardrop pockets - spawning time. I stopped
and watched 'em, fisher desire burning, and I'd the thought to traipse
back to the car and grab the rod and return, but that would've been so
heartless, like sparring with some dude while he kissed his girl. I
kept hiking.
And I reached the lake, around noon,
back still together. So lovely, snug level campsites all along the
northern edge, boulders rising vertically from the water and perfect
for an exhilarating jump, and the lake small enough to warm enough for
a summer swim that would be refreshing rather than shocking - you could
linger in the water. Even this deep into autumn, surprisingly lush
growths of aquatic plants, suggesting, if deep enough to avoid
winterkill, favorable conditions for growing good trout. I carefully
slid off my pack and sat for a while, gazing at the lake, through the
water, aching to see a fish. I didn't initially - but then I heard one
jump, and then another, and later saw several rises, proof of the
lake's piscine fecundity. So very inviting and promising in the younger
season, though now chilled, skeleton alders ringing the bank in this
older and aging season, swirling, icicle wind whipping the lake surface
to harsh clatter, but the rising trout - surviving to live
still.
Afternoon aging, I hoisted the pack,
again ever so gingerly, and ambled my way back to my ride. By now the
wind had senesced to silence, afternoon settling and gilding the light,
and on straight sections where root and rock were sparse and so I was
less likely to trip and really hurt myself - I, too, in my head would
quiet for a few precious moments, absorbed into the place, a place
still full of life - the green-needled conifers, a bevy of maturing
Western Bluebirds with their mournful chirps, and, in the water, the
brookies still there, a swaying troupe, flowering in the season of
dying. I reached the car surprisingly quickly.
Still some light left - 'bout 90
minutes. I felt I couldn't, with some remaining day, leave without
touching the reservoir with my lure. So I drove the short distance to
the inlet, and slowly, cautiously weaved my way down to the water just
as the sun fell over the western rise. The wind here remained, brisk,
chilling, and big ol' fault-block boulders, some ice-snotted, presented
myriad threats to my back. But among the jagged jumble were several
flat rocks, good casting platforms, and a rise as I was rigging up
signaled promise. I'd a peck on the third cast, but it wasn't enough to
set on. I worked the inlet where the cold water came rushing in, rather
gracefully given my condition - casts fluid, float rig turning over
well with each cast and that with a braid mainline, presentation good
enough to have tempted that one fish to sample. But she was the only
one, and when I reeled up the last time, I'd caught no fish. But as
dusk shifted to night, streaking clouds on the western horizon lit up
in crimson glory against a lime then blue then violet sky, I felt a nod
of assent from he and she and She.
I feared I'd get lost on the short hike
back to my ride, what with the deepening blue of the emerging night.
But enough residual light remained, and enough vestigial sense of
location, that I somehow struck the right trail each time and, like the
hike, reached my ride surprisingly quickly. Carefully doffed my gear,
stowed it, felt relief when the car started easily, and then the
contented ride back to my home in place, on small roads, caked with ice
in some spots, blackened ghosts of verdant cedars and pines and firs
flamed by big fires of only a few years ago, the transformed energy
somehow floating, haunting, the ember of the overdeveloped valley floor
where I once lived clear from the ridge, and I stopped at a Mexican
joint where a beautiful, flowering young woman with sparkling obsidian
eyes and sways and curves of eternity mesmerized me and sent me back
through time to those amazing, abyssal eyes of empyreal blue shading to
violet, to midnight, and then.