She writes, or dictates to me, after an offering of western bluebird feathers and juniper berries from my pockets,

Rocky Mountain treasure
Through the open glades
No one has seen them
except you and me.

And she steals my heart and buries it in a small treasure box or a bag, whichever she chooses this time to keep her foundlings. She tells stories to the time of rain falling, and flowers opening and shutting. I cannot keep up.

Working on a current project of live oak wood as hard as steel, I notice my hands get very tight upon closing them tightly. I like the calluses and I am sad that the sanding and planing and planing and sanding is over. There will be more projects after this one, however. I will try to stay in shape.

I have moved into a storage unit. I am waiting for garage bands to play on the weekends. Perhaps I am there at the wrong times for such happy company. The environment is very anonymous, and secrets are kept inside numbered steel doors in neat rows, as if it were really that easy.

A favorite gift.

The worst wishes are the ones that are there for the taking, and they still seem unreachable. Paths are revealed by obvious markers, and the hopes and ideas wrapped in their wish clothing flutter in the softest of breaths of air, like the seeds of a giant roadside dandelion.

Rocks stare at us, dumbfounded by our stupidity and by our unmoving feet. Why don't we just run in there and pluck a wish from the ceiling of the low cave? Why can we not dash into the shadow, grab the prize, and run, smiling and laughing and filled with boundless joy and excitement, back into the sun where we can celebrate our dreams by making them manifest?

The disappointment of the waiting landscape is mountainous.

What is it that you want? Perhaps for someone to be interested in what I want. I just asked you. Then maybe the answer is to be asked what it is I wish, and then the working towards that. The going to. The going to what? The going to is the content, the reaching

do you remember walking
postholing
through the snow
deep, even though we were on the trail through the trees
my world black and green and white and blue, and so perfect in its simplicity

do you remember walking
(up, up up we go)
higher and higher
(all the way to the top,
     all the way to the top)
and we were burdened with our toys for wonderful locomotion down
and we were lifted with the goal of reaching the point of the
beginning
of the
descent

and I said

don't you see those little white moths? are there little white moths here? do you not see them?

and you smiled
and said
let's have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

and we sat down and had a snack.

the moths went away, sadly. but I remember them.

I remember them and the memory makes me smile easily.

Big spaces and open roads only confirm what I already know, regarding my inability to find comfort in this conventional lifestyle that has taken over. The tent is a solid home, in that big and little hearts all sleep as one, and that one heart tends to rise and set with the sun as a new and stronger animal. I have little desire to watch games from the sidelines, but enjoy seeing the black and blue knees of my cactus-poked children as we play games with rocks and jackrabbits.

No better school exists than the mythology in the stars, the direction of the winds, and the roll of the ocean. And no better playground exists than puddles and piles of rocks. 

Hide and seek games in Santa Elena Canyon, however, can result in the worry that something could have gone wrong.

Everyone is found.

Things we find:

tracks
wonder
little animal
oyster fossils
a running man, looking to make sure of the empty hands of two strangers
paths
more rocks, that we love
daughter, wild girl
an embrace as an answer, fierce and not one to forget
an apology
a river
sun and shade
heat and cold
something blocking the throat, making it hard to swallow, with eyes about to spill over
quiet hand holding
slow steps

Those swarms that hang over my head, in the corners... they are not hornets gathering to wage war. Instead, they are unattended things with promises of such certain and exhilarating happiness. Their darkness and hardness is from the staleness of neglect and makes them impossible to forget. The shadows they create on the soul's walls make a misery much like a nightmare.

It is time to begin sewing again.