Both Feet on the Earth. Walking
The women walk. On this day we walk through grassy meadows and soft pale sand at a neighboring ranch, trails dense with brush and branch, the muck where cattle trod, the shoulders of mud that slope into a vernal pool. We stop to ponder a pond whose surface is distinctly bifurcated into a section of clear glassy water and one of chartreuse algae as vivid as paint, an oddly dissonant composition, weirdly beautiful. There is a dead coyote on the ground, its fur still healthy and thick, its stomach bloated in death, flies just beginning to investigate. Behind a barbed wire fence stands a shed from a century ago, sagging slightly at the seams, its door hinge rusted, a small square of window dark with dust, the exterior timber turned green, gray, and russet, a testament to how time and weather can transform wood into art. There are wildflowers in abundance: bushes of purple lupine, cream cups, blue-eyed grass, and baby blue eyes in an electric blue imbued with violet, an incomparably delicious color, a color that delights and invites, and we drink it in.
But mostly we walk. We walk and we talk, and we are a small parade, a flotilla on foot, an irregular procession that breaks into sub-groups and rearranges itself but generally flows and follows course. We are a river of sound: voice and footfall, crunch of gravel, airborne wisps of laughter. Once, I stopped and only listened, and I heard the sound like a murmur of poetry, and it embraced me like a shawl. Yes, it encircled me, and I felt a communal comfort, even when language blurred and merged into music.
On this day, I listened with intent whenever I could. I was curious about what specific subjects came up in conversation, and whether there were themes––call it cheap sociology on the trail. But if you want to know what women talk about…or at least what these women talked about on this particular day…the subjects included flowers (mostly appreciation of their beauty, but also forays into plant identification); books; caregiving; the usual Boomer mentions of knees, hips, aches and remedies; and unexpected profundity, such as wonders versus miracles, or are these one and the same?
We walk segments with different ladies, then move on to someone else. I call it speed-dating. There’s nothing intentional about it, but this is how it tends to be. At one point, I found myself walking alongside KC, and we were discussing writing, memoir in particular, and to some extent, our own family histories. I am of the belief that writing somehow keeps the people I have loved alive on the page, or that the process of writing helps me to make or find meaning in all that ensued. KC mentioned a book called The Years by Annie Ernaux.
“Here’s a passage that is particularly significant to me,” she said, pulling out her phone and reading it as we walked:
Everything will be erased in a second. The dictionary of words amassed between cradle and deathbed, eliminated. All there will be is silence and no words to say it. Nothing will come out of the open mouth, neither I nor me. Language will continue to put the world into words. In conversation around a holiday table, we will be nothing but a first name, increasingly faceless, until we vanish into the vast anonymity of a distant generation.
For a moment, I didn’t know what to say. “Wow. That’s dark,” is all I managed.
I recognize that once the last living person who remembers us dies, we are essentially obliterated, but this passage seemed imbued with futility, so troubling to someone who is married to words and committed to the hope/belief that they can transcend time, speaking across generations, shedding light, mattering. Maybe this is my religion, my way of coping, an arbitrary doctrine I’ve invented to soothe myself. But it’s what I do. We all vanish, but until then, I try to pay attention, I try to document, I try to believe that there is an after. I salvage the gold from the heaps of hurt and tell myself there is a lesson, and the story is a progression, and it continues beyond me, even in my anonymity.
I don’t think KC disagrees. I think we were just exploring ideas. We have talked now and then about the loss of people we have loved, and our discovery that the best way to deal with grief is to turn it outward, manifested as compassion, or kindness, or service. When my brother died, for example, I decided to become a teacher. I wanted to extend the impact of his life. I wanted some good things to happen because he lived, and in so doing, keep his spirit alive, whatever that means. It helped a little.
You wouldn’t think this was the type of conversation taking place in the midst of this merry procession of hikers, but we really do range from the frivolous to the profound. There’s venting, too, and advice-giving, and many expressions of gratitude. And there is a palpable sense of mutual caring and camaraderie. We have become a tribe, looking out for one another, governed by an instinct to ease the path if possible, quietly amazed that we are here together in this unlikely world.
Today, on what would have been my beloved father’s 113th birthday, a fragment of a letter from him turned up. Coincidence? I think not. I was scrolling through my photo archive in search of a specific image, and I came upon this excerpt on lined paper in his familiar writing. Apparently, the letter is in the safe deposit box at our bank, and I had taken a photo of it with my phone last time I was there. The visible words were these:
… Cyn, I am very tired and I don’t know how much sense this all makes. I won’t even proofread it because I may tear it up and I know I must write… Few things in life are constant, the rocks that endure the winds of time...the struggles of man against man––not always with a sword but often with weapons like the smiles of deceit, and the lies of the cunning. How best to meet everyone in this arena and yet not lose this precious gift of nature that ordains us each an individual? It is possible to have both feet on the earth and still keep your head in the clouds. I believe in this.
“It is possible to have both feet on the earth and still keep your head in the clouds.”
That is what my father is telling me today, on his birthday, right now. I shall heed his words and inscribe them on my heart, and I hear his voice clearly because he wrote it down.
“I know I must write…” he said.
This daughter is the same.
Back to the hike, we dodged mud and fresh cow piles, steering clear of the cattle, stopping to take pictures of oddities and each other. And as my speed date with KC concluded, we also talked about bearing witness, acknowledging Mary Oliver’s credo:
Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
Isn’t this exactly what we women are doing? We share a love for this world, with its mystery and weirdness and breathtaking beauty. We saunter and sigh, we sweat and kvetch and climb to a shady space beneath the oak trees where we sit on the ground and dine on whatever morsels we’ve put into our backpacks, fleetingly resembling ladies in a painting of a 19th century garden picnic, in our own way elegant, in broad-brimmed hats and functional attire, passing around strawberries and dried persimmons and malted milk chocolate robin’s eggs.
We are well aware of the troubles beyond this idyllic place. There’s a shadow on every heart these days, but it’s all the more reason to be outside, in the hills and backcountry and mountains and meadows, observing things growing and quietly continuing, the things that will sustain us, the flowers and trees. We are grateful to be here, walking. Passing through, trudging along, a little community in motion. We need one another, and we know it. The challenges will never stop coming, and the losses accrue, and none of us is young, but we pool our wisdom and propose our theories and point out the marvels, and we steady one another in a wobbly way, but constant.
As for me, this world keeps breaking my heart, but I can never stop loving it, both feet on earth, walking. Until I vanish.
