When the Mountains Close

I've been sculpting an idea which has slowly turned into a plan since November 2010.
Step 1: go to Rochester, live with Laura
Step 2: get a job
Step 3: live simply and with frugality in order to pay off your student loans asap
Step 4: make a little extra money
Step 5: September 1, 2011: embark on a one month odyssey in the Adirondack Mountains. Alone.

Today is Thursday, September 1, 2011. The air is thick and cool following a morning thunder shower. My foot aches from stepping on a nail yesterday afternoon while running from the noise in my head. I swear I can smell the grass, sweet and bitter, dirt mixed with dew, clorophyl covered in raindrops. If not for the lightness of the sky and the coffee by my side I would believe the crickets that dusk is falling and night is almost come.

I'm more than 250 miles from the Adirondack Park with no plans for departure.

People change, sometimes, without realizing it. One morning you wake up no longer wanting to be a teacher, a student, a mother. Maybe one day you crave spinach at every meal when the day before just the thought of anything green drove you to the candy isle.

A month ago I took a shower, forgetting to bring clean clothes in from my trunk before I got in. Dripping and dazed, I walked across the gravel to my car, feet bare, wrapped in a towel that wasn't mine. I popped the trunk and stared- a mass of colored fabrics lay in a heap, nothing to distinguih the worn from the unworn except memories in the form of snapshots of where I'd been, what I'd done. I took clean underwear from the cardboard box to the right and a new rubber hairband from the box to the left. I grabbed deoderant from the center console, flipflops from the passenger side floor, browning bananas from the back seat. Before getting dressed I lit incense, turned on Paul Cardall, and washed the dishes in the sink. I put away the jars I brought in from my car in a Gevalia box the night before- soynuts, muesli, honey, peanut butter, organic animal crackers, and started a loaf of bread in the bread machine.

I want a home. I want to retrieve my underwear from a drawer. I want to make you cake and hot cocoa, tea and cookies, potroast and venison stew. I want to be missed when I'm not at church on Sunday morning. I want to find six people to help me move a free piano into my own place.

Place. I want a sense of place, my own place, a sense of purpose, a meaning other than watching numbers grow and checking off adventures. The thoughts of signing a lease, taking a job, moving a bed into a building scare me. The fear is real, but it's smothered in excitement, anticipation of what might happen if I dare to create a place for roots to sink...
it's been years; it's been too long.