Time is of the Essence

Cold sweat collects between my shoulder blades pressed against the light weight of the navy blue backpack I carry with me through the Gulch. Within are the few essentials I will require to spend the remainder of my weekend here. A collection of foodstuffs, 4 liters of water, sleeping bag, and writing utensils. I wear a pair of worn leather boots, tan synthetic pants, green wool coat, and bright yellow rain jacket. I carry in my pockets one small blade, a compact multi tool, lighters and matches.

I squeeze my clumsy, backpack exaggerated profile between bold, noble oak tree, cedar adorned with curving hairs, over ornamented nandina, short lived rattlebox, and fountain like yucca shrubs clambering for prestige beneath the calm shadows of their elders, through thorn vines stretching desperately from the uppermost balconies of the gulch toward the flowing waters below like a babe who reaches instinctively for a mother’s aching teat. The persistent density of life here seems almost to enfold me in physical embrace.

Perhaps half an hour has passed, and my destination looms before me in contest between decay and hospitality. The abandoned cabin is a curious eruption sprouting from the floor of the gulch. I step inside from the collapsed porch and shrug off my backpack with a creak onto the splintered wooden planks of the cabin floor. The structure is not a sizeable affair. Squalid congregations of leaves sprawl lazily on the floor having glided through the space where, presumably, a roof once lounged.

This is escape. Escape from the city and its plump children with sweaty teeth, from the coarse deposits of perfectly constructed angles, from the grinding gears of the grid that greedily swallow the last tender mouthfuls of untamed land.

Here, natural chaos reigns. Dead leaves crawl like crabs over the humpbacked land splashed by plummeting rain. The guttural howl of thunder and wicked bright blade of lightning threaten in their primacy to rend a deep crimson wound upon the helplessly exposed sky suspended above. The intoxicating, haunting hum of rolling water sprints down the valley like the cold steel of an involuntary shiver that lunges with flexed toes across your spine. Water droplet trembles down the limestone slopes of vertical cliff face like whiskey bathing the throat of an unshaven drunk. Chaos. Hushed, instinctual chaos.

The rain has stopped, and night descended. The sun slumbers, leaving the moon-luminous custodian of the night-silvered command over the stars.

I stand looming, transfixed by the waters below me. Watchful eyes hide in these tides. Numinous moon flake winks impulsively from the shifting balconies of sinuous water wrinkle. The shallow flux flirtatiously winds through stamped, tangled rock and noodled root of the gulch’s maw with the sure stroke of an old lover. The untidy tropics of the heart become fluent in the bloom of moon breaking water.

Between rising waves of wind and wake are heard the rapturous spasms of a well-bred fire that beckon me easily back to the cabin. I listen to my fire pop, crack, and groan, and I am sure that only one more effort must be needed from the conflagration to spurt forth a low, wood sweet voice to harmonize with my own. Silken spark and hiccupped ash peer through flexed, hooked cords of flame engaged in wild rehearsal. With each fresh log the blaze clenches, squeals and arches its back with satisfaction in a display of lyrical improvisation. I nod off to sleep gazing through fire. There is something of trouble and strain splintering within the sensitive flexibility of the concluding flames as they shrink, clutching ever dearer to mother ember.

I wake to the happy flit of birds chirping, and soon have 3 eggs sizzling over a tall fire. Smoke rises to greet the restless, sun echoing foliage above. The leaves dance quietly in whispered mirth as they are traced by the quivering stride of cascading mist. The simple mind of the fire cultivates a voyage through strange seas of thought in my evening rest.

A potent impression exudes like dark molasses through the cold dark mud in the depths beneath my consciousness. The opening of awareness dawns from the nakedly twitching head of the forest chuckling. Time seems a haze. It lurks the cobblestone streets of my mind’s grey wrinkles. It is morning mist: a cloud that in bleary eyed torpor tripped on a slippery patch of sky and fell weightlessly to earth. We remember the past, imagine the future, and least of all, we live in an ever changing present. I am an undistinguished occasion in this valley’s verdant history. Were I to live patiently in this abandoned cabin until my hair grays and I perish, my spirit would slide away with no sound of splash. There would be only darkness received, like a ripple in velvet, the final happy sigh.