Exulting Somewhat

Yesterday Monte and I acquiesced to playfulness. Our favorite neighbors from the planet of the young suggested a walk to a secret cave, and we found ourselves saying yes, setting aside various tasks and walking, oh so wisely, into a morning that would never come again.

The day was veiled in white wisps of coastal fog, the hills were streaked with mustard, and a hooded oriole, deliciously bright yellow, perched briefly on the honeysuckle shrub as though to encourage us further, then vanished into the mist. I followed Monte past the buzzing macadamia orchard that is still dripping drunkenly with blossom, past citrus trees heavy with oranges and lemons, past an exotic-looking loquat tree bursting with glossy leaves and beginning to yield fruit that nobody wants. It felt so good to be stepping out together into this extravaganza of a world. I was swinging my walking stick like a baton (steer clear of me and my walking stick) and had that jaunty feeling of being ten years old again, ten years old on a Saturday, with my best friend.

We met our fellow adventurers up the canyon near a certain oak tree and we walked a steady uphill, and the littlest of us, a 7-year-old named Etta, asked repeatedly how much further we had to go, but she did fine.

Swirls of fog, thickets of green, a field dotted with white mariposa lilies, sculpted sandstone, a raptor soaring in the sky…a tricky descent down a narrow sketchy parting of rock and chaparral…and there was a cave, as promised. We entered.

We seated ourselves on sand as soft as talcum powder. Canyon wrens were singing my favorite song, and that’s canyon wrens, plural, for there were several, flying in and out of an opening in a wall of rock, and we witnessed with delight, feeling honored.

Etta opened her pack and we dined mostly on marshmallows, but we were feasting on the beauty of the world through a cave window, and no one was hungry at all.

We talked memories and stories, of course, as humans tend to do. Monte recalled long ago bike rides around here that were extraordinary feats of skill and fitness, and it’s almost hard to believe what those guys did, but at one point I mentioned how sad it is when so many of our narratives begin with the phrase “I used to…”

I thought about the phrases that define and limit us, the phrases that expand us.

I’ve been reading and re-reading Stanley Kunitz’s poem The Layers this week in preparation for a poetry reading in town on Saturday, and words from that were rolling through my head. I have walked through many lives, some of them my own. How shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses? I am not done with my changes.

Carey pointed to herself and said, “I should…”

Then she pointed to Etta and said, “I will…”

But then we looked about and said, “We are.”