|
...in Seattle
neighborhoods. There is a long,
circuitous route that I have walked
for over a decade, starting at close
to the highest point in Seattle and
winding down a long road to Lake
Washington, then meandering up a
long hill and back to my truck. We
had a lot of snow last week and it's
mostly gone, which has left
thousands of puddles of water around
the city. As I walked I couldn't
help but remember what a puddle of
water was to me as a boy living in
Dumas and Amarillo on the dusty
Texas plains. We'd go months without
rain sometimes and so when it
finally came, the ground was so dry
that it would not soak in right
away. There would be puddles and
rivulets rushing down the gutter.
These were rivers and lakes to me.
You could not keep me in the house
when there were rivers running down
the streets of our prairie town. I
was out there standing in the
current, my toes flexing, my heart
pounding at the excitement of what
water felt like, what it looked
like, the way it distorted stones
and items lying in it and the way it
reflected the sky. Anything that
stood beyond it was captured by it,
reflected back to me in duplicate,
only shinier and more shimmering
than the actual object.
As I hiked
today I let myself remember my
childhood. One way to remember who
you were is to simply be who you are
now, and notice how you feel right
this moment. If you ever try this
you will notice that when you pause
to notice how you feel, at the very
core of that part of you is the same
being you were as a little boy or
little girl. It's a wonder really,
that this could be, but it's true.
You are still the same inside your
most perfect being. It's only that
we gradually began to think that we
lost all that. We grieved for our
lost innocence, but actually, we
never really lost it. We just
learned to think about it and
dissect it and define it. And so we
lost the experience of being it.
 Every
puddle I saw today I imagined
looking at as the boy I once was. I
stood looking into it, noticing the
stones you could see in it, or the
ripples across it's surface that the
bitter wind was whipping across the
land. In my boyhood no puddle was
immune to having a board thrown into
it and me standing on it and
pretending to be a pirate on his
stolen ship or a Mohawk warrior in
his canoe. It didn't have to be
fresh water, either. Once in
Amarillo, we lived next to a machine
shop. They poured nasty, oily
solvent-water out the back door into
a ditch. It was heavenly. I found a
greasy wooden pallet and though the
water was too shallow to actually
float it with me on it, I found a
high place in the ground beneath the
water and as it rocked with my
weight I would swipe my sword and
holler out what I thought one of the
Three Muskateers might announce in a
sword fight. "Take that, scoundrel!"
That little pond of petroleum was
blood red when I was through
wreaking havoc.
While I have
never known a time when I was not a
lover of water, there have been a
few short periods of my life when I
was not a walker. Actually, I think
the only time was maybe in my late
teens into my early twenties. In
those days you drive everywhere
because you've waited so long to get
your own car and be free to drive
it, that you don't like to go back
to the drudgery of hoofing it. It
feels beneath you. I was living in
Fort Worth and some friends from
Amarillo had moved two blocks away
on my same street, Purington. Even
at 23, I could not justify driving
to their house, so I began to walk
to their house and back most days.
The way home was always slightly
more hazy due to the effects of
marijuana. (second hand smoke) To my
surprise, the ground and sidewalk
were fascinating to me. Childhood
had been so recent that all the
memories of walking to school in
first grade, in third and fifth and
all through Junior High came pouring
out. The detail of a stick on the
sidewalk, the smell of fresh cut
grass, a caterpillar crossing the
concrete, all those things came back
to me and I decided I would never
again forget the joy of walking, the
pure pleasure of being able to go
where I want on my own two feet.
 I
was hiking along a river trail with
my friend Brian a few days ago.
There was still snow and the going
was a little precarious. But the
woods were magnificent with their
patches of snow and the rust colored
leaves and grasses peaking out in
the bare spots. The tall trunks were
spindly and slender and in their
upper branches were hundreds of
black crows calling out. I looked at
Brian and said, "Walking is my
favorite thing to do in the world."
He seemed surprised, even though he
too walks nearly every day. "I just
feel so much gratitude and peace
when I walk."
After I
reached the top of the long hill
today, a little sweaty in my
windbreaker and hat, I took them off
and walked the last mile on flat
ground with the wind behind me. The
chill wind felt good to me now and I
wanted to dry out before I reached
my truck. In the last couple of
months before my sweet pup died last
summer, this was a route I would
take with her most Sundays. I would
carry her on my right forearm, close
to my chest and where I could talk
to her and even lift her little
being up every so often and kiss the
back of her head. I held my arm as
if I were carrying her, spoke a few
words in case she can still hear me,
and made the motion to kiss her
little head. I felt grateful for her
life, for the time I was allowed to
have her as my friend, and for the
miles and miles and miles we'd
walked around Seattle and the
beautiful places in the Pacific
Northwest.
I stood
looking into a very beautiful puddle
with a few leaves sunk in it and
some mossy rocks shimmering beneath
the surface. I thought of how water
has been my soul's love. How I hear
water in my melodies, allowing the
notes to meander and flow in the
ways of a trickling stream. And I
realized how much I aspire for my
whole life to be like water. I wish
my compassion to be as ever flowing
as a river. I wish for my patience
to be as eternal as the steady
ripples lapping the shore of a
mountain lake. I wish for my love to
be as permeating and steady as rain
soaking into the earth, seeking
every possible pore and crevasse to
enter and nurture life. And I wish
for my forgiveness to be as healing
and natural as the fragrance of
spring rain, reawakening buds and
roots and seeds and bringing
memories of how life was when I was
young and filled with all that
wonder. I know that child is still
inside me. He is me.
If you should
spot a man standing next to a little
puddle of rain water, one arm tucked
up against his chest almost as if he
was holding onto something precious,
talking and chuckling and staring
into the depths of that miracle
water, it's probably me.
Your friend in
windy Seattle,
~Michael
As always,
anything I post on FaceBook is yours
to share, post, print out and toss
into the wind.
|