Before and After

Part I - Before Hiking up Divisadero

Hyperventilating. Sitting heat pounding my head in the window of the cafe. I'm overdressed for sun. Snow deceives in all its creaminess, and piles, banks, ice flats in the shade, frozen sandy grains mushed around on the sidewalks. It has been so cold that 33 degrees with unfiltered sun, high desert sun, feels pleasant, temperate, relieving; the thermal underwear washed and put away for the next run of snow and frigidity. Something is bothering me. The sun is not enough. The Holidays do not remove the underlying sense of obligation, the runaway, the knot, the fear, the disengagement, the clutter, disorganization; the failure of the light to linger long enough to allow me to breathe, the taking away of that breath, or what's left when the snowy world is squashed into darkness, no moon, two planets teasing. I'm rendered weak, heavy-hoofed, incredulous, doomed, wondering if I'm infected, if my house has toxic air, if I'll ever again feel vibrant and quick-minded.

Part II - Post Hike

I saw the sun dip behind Ogelvie's on the Plaza and knew there was no time to lose. A rush of tourists came in the World Cup as I gathered up my book, notebook and New Yorker and ducked out, saying goodbye to Genvieve. The coffee went down, so luxurious, velvety and supercharged. My eyes had that Popeye pop so I felt I could saw things apart by just looking at them long enough (and not that long). I got in the Honda and zipped around the Plaza taking Ranchitos to the light at Paseo and through the one-way at Quesnel over to Kit Carson. The horses who inhabit the open field of sage behind the usually muddy but now snowed over municpal parking lot huddled along the fence line sticking their noses out to the road. Going east into the world of massive, ancient cottonwoods, I noticed the snow getting deeper, slopped high on picnic tables and abandoned cars (mostly old Lincolns and Dusters). Up and up into the first line of foothills, I wound around and above a heavily wooded narrow valley filled with old stone and adobe houses, and abandoned log cabins. Passing the junction (Santa Fe south, Angel Fire east), I entered the national forest and two bends down the road pulled a U-ee and parked behind a 4-Runner in the compacted ice-snow just in front of the trailhead for Divisadero. It was already evening down by the creek in the bottom of the canyon and the cold air was settling in. But I could see the fire-yellow sunlight against the pinons and granite outcroppings halfway up the frontside slope. That was my first goal, get up into the band of light. I took off at a fast trot, my Sorels digging in toe first in the tamped snow of the trail. The footing was better than I thought it would be. Uneven, stucco ice had reformed on the surface where the top layer of snow had melted in the intense sun of the mid afternoon. I moved quickly, my legs and lungs excited to be on the trail, more excited than for anything else I had done or thought about all day. Coming along the first shelf of the trail, I noticed that the snow had melted off of the south facing rocks sticking out of the chest of the mountain. I put my face against a smooth rock and it warmed my cheek. Amazing how the sun penetrates beneath the snow and into the heart of the rock so that it radiates heat out to the surface and melts the snow as if it were a griddle. I thought about how the good builders who work with the earth and its elements face houses to the south, windows picking up the sun, adobe and pumice-filled walls absorbing the heat and passing it inside while also melting a swath around the house. Even at 9,000' elevation, you can grow root vegetables and lettuces into October, through the early snows, as long as you plant them on the south side of a house sitting on a ridge or in a meadow open to the full brunt of the sun. It made me smile, thinking of carrots and onions and redleaf lettuce. Moving on, I passed a few people on their way down, everyone smiling with the vigor and chill. A little higher up, after the first bend that overlooks Taos, now looking like Whoville with its smoke-spewing chimneys and it's white cloak covering what was just a month ago a tattered burlap patchwork, I ran into a woman who runs a writing group that a friend had invited me into. It was fate, and we chatted, me introducing myself as a friend of a friend, and she smiling broadly, saying she was going to be traveling but that when she came back she'd love to have me write with the ladies (it's, for now, an all female group). Good, good. I always meet writers on this mountain. It is the writer trail. It is the one John Nichols hikes every day, and others, no less diligent although lesser known. Now my nostrils are flaring, and I know that that coffee and that moment in the window, burning up, writing the burn, the discomfort, and that gaggle of tourists Texas-two steppin into the tiny cafe, drove me out to get on this trail and move my ass, see a writer, feel a rock, flex my calf muscles, breathe and snort, and just disappear back into the bulk and fling of it. And my mind is thinking in my body, where it's supposed to be, where I understand what I can't reach when I'm jotting down "to do" lists, worrying about phone calls, thinking about the lottery, feeling the lack. Next thing I know I'm in the sunlight and yet it's getting colder, it's the last, faint rays, but that doesn't matter, what matters is that I know I'll have enough light to get up to my sacred spot. The crows aren't around, I notice. I'm looking up where they usually circle; nothing but darkening blue sky. Up near the top of the knobs you can see that the snow hasn't melted at all, it's all powder, and a bluish color due to the depth. I get to the spot and drop into the bonzai pinons, the bases drifted around with tufts of snow, and I find a compacted hole stepped into by others earlier. The edge of the hole is above my knees, but it's the perfect open view spot for the sacred mountain now turning aquamarine. I take off my hat, my jacket, my sweater and underlayer, and do my prayers for guidance and gratefulness to the mountain, stretching my trunk left, middle and right, and then bowing deeply in prayer to the four directions. There is no cold on my skin, I'm heated like the rocks from inside and it takes a while for the skin to lose its warmth. I stand there after the prayer, deep in the snow, only the sound of a tiny breeze in the trees. Before I feel any cold, I put the layers back on and I'm heading down, the sun already below the horizon. The sky is vibrating like liquid with neon being shone from the bottom of it, like celluloid. When I get back to the front side of the mountain Venus sparkles to the south holding the paper crescent moon on a string, a 45 degree angle, Venus up, the moon down, and they softly tingle in the pixelated crangrape of dusk. It's getting darker, darker, but the eyes can see everything, maybe more than in the full light; my eyes are dancing, they are in the zone like legs can be when you're in a running rhythm and the endorphins are madly releasing. I see that the snow is now the color of a licorice Necco wafer, with a hint of dusty purple over slate. I'm dancing, turning in circles, hopping off of rocks, sliding down the snow to cut off the switchbacks. I'm thinking that the snow is luxurious and inviting. I am drawn to sleep in it. I've always been drawn to sleep in the woods, parallel to the moon shadow of an oak or a birch or an aspen, in powdery snow, deep, deep, cushiony and quiet. It hits me that it is about death. It is a way that I would want to die, and it would be ok, there in the snow, in the soft, being absorbed into that womb. And I think that there are a lot of people who come to Taos, some unhinged, dancing their own dances that they've danced for so many miles, for so many people, and they've come here to die, not immediately, but eventually. And it doesn't always end up well, softly in the chosen snow, or by a running creek in the soft weeds, but nonetheless it is ok, they are here to launch and they are not judged for it.