Caveman of the Bonzai Forest II

This day I was hurting. Something had sapped my energy. I wasn't sure if it was the food I ate, a bug, or having overtaxed my body over the past few weeks. No gas. Sore muscles. A sagging spirit. Also, I had no socks and it was chilly. I'd left them at home, on the bed lined up perfectly to be noticed by me before I took off for town, but I didn't. I wanted to wear sandals. It was sunny and my feet wanted to feel the breeze and the sun. Oh, well, I did have my climbing shoes and they're so old that the fibers have softened and formed to my feet. They know me well, these shoes, we've hiked thousands of miles over rocks, snowdrifts, downed trees, and scree. The wind got under my jeans, just a little, but not enough to bother me.

And so I went feeling a lament, needing someone to talk to but at the same time not wanting to. Sometimes I feel like a rack of bones and I can imagine someone or some force scooping me up and laying me down on the edge of a creek under tall trees cushioned by the sponge of moss and matted straw. And in that imagining, I submit because that is what I am, a rack of tired bones with no sinew left who wants to be left to rest in the softness, listening to the creek for a long, long time. But I kept walking as I always do, knowing that there are things up there that will wake me up, teach me who I am, and who I am not. The wind kicked hard from the west and two women passed me, one whom I knew, but she did not recognize me with my new sunglasses and black hat pulled down tight. I said hi to both, but did not betray myself as I didn't have the strength to chitter.

Once I wound up through and over the boulder-strewn gully that is a steep shortcut to the trail higher up, I was feeling better, not good, but good enough to keep moving. Still, I was in a state where I couldn't pay attention to much, I just kept moving, head bowed forward, eyes soft focused about 20 feet in front of me. I had my camelbak on, but the water, like everything else that day, did not taste good, it had a metallic tinge and I sipped some and spat most of it.

A long, wavy purple cloud, like a prayer flag being whipped west to east, reached toward Tinkantananda, and cut the wobbly setting sun in two. I stopped and took a picture with my cell camera, but it cannot deal with the sunlight and the picture looked like a nuclear blast or a supernova over the desert. I erased it and kept moving, twisting up into the heart of the bonzai forest where it flattens out and rides the ridges above the Pueblo.

Sooner than I expected, I was at my lower sacred spot, the one I stop at when I'm feeling lethargic. It looks out over the velvety juniper and pinon covered meadow of the Pueblo rising toward the base of Tinkantananda and its brothers. Also, to the west through the jiggling branches of the rounded pinons you can see the Pedernal, the flattopped butte sitting south of Ghost Ranch that Georgia O'Keefe made famous in her paintings. 70 miles away on the horizon, it looked like a chunk of dark chocolate covered with a thin layer of raspberry sauce. My hunger sparked for the first time in several hours.

For some reason, when I was approaching the prayer spot, I had a feeling that I would find the sunglasses I had lost two weeks before and given up on. I knew I'd left them there, on a rock, while doing my prayers, but when I came for them the next several days, they were nowhere to be found, not hanging on a tree, sitting on a rock, or tumbled down the slope in the pine fluff. I was dejected for a few days by the image of somebody picking them up and pocketing them. That's not the etiquette or spirit of the trail. But, this time, as I came around the bend near the spot I started scanning the ground, the rocks, the branches. When I stopped on the rock where I do my motionless gratitude prayer, I felt my heart beat for several minutes and then turned left toward a tangle of dark dead branches that I'd looked at 5 or 6 times before with no luck. This time they were there, my sleek black Sunclouds, exactly where I originally thought they'd be. It was as sweet as seeing an old friend, and the fact that I'd just bought new ones that day (Sunclouds, too, but not as comfy on my nose), did not dampen it. A small miracle. Where had they been? Had I not been seeing?

I did my prayers and felt a bottom lip-protruding tenderness toward everything, a sense that things are "given back" or that they "never leave." I mean, I know these are sunglasses, but I really liked them, and they returned to me. It's hard to explain, but it was like forgiveness. It was quiet up there in the bonzai except for the wind. No animals stirred, the ravens were elsewhere. I was left with my heartbeat in my ears and the sun slipping under the purple cloud. I wanted to share this with someone, but it seemed ridiculous thing to tell. Then I thought of Harris, the guy living in the cave another 15 minutes up the trail. I had not seen him since that first time when he told me about the ravens. It had been weeks and I figured he'd moved on, maybe up the hills toward Angel Fire, maybe further east over the Pueblo. I wanted to talk to him. I had a feeling he'd put the sunglasses there for me to find.

The Sunclouds slid on like butter, giving me a synced feeling at bridge of my nose. It was getting dark, but I kept them on as I hit the trail down, and I found myself yelling up into the forest, "Thanks, Harris!"

When I got down, dusk was still hanging on and my legs were shaky. I went to the wooden bridge over the creek that leads to the South Boundary Trail and looked west along the water, listening, smelling the vapor, and noticing the tree shadows dancing on the young moss rising off the banks.