You know- living on the road you learn how to love many places.
You don’t need to own it for it to feel like home after just a short while.
The way the light falls through the trees and hits
the lizards my dog loves to harass,
and the deer that come peaking around at dawn.
The clouds and all the stories they tell swimming on by through the ever moody sky.
You begin to love many places and your heart is bigger for it.
It hurts sometimes to leave,
but all it does is remind me that love comes from presence not ownership, control or all the other colonial concepts that have dominated western thinking around love and land.
I love the red rock formations,
the sunsets,
the way the air feels when it hits your face through the canyons,
the loose sandy rock between your hands as you climb a spire.
I love the vast expanse of sky and
how expressive it is when a new mood rolls in,
and the little bushes that work so hard to live
with their little leaves that hid from the scorching sun.
The gravity defying canyons,
each rock leaning on the last propping up millions of years of history.
I love the harsh mountain sides of the Rockies,
holding in it so much life you would likely miss
if you weren’t there, clutching that hill side.
I love the limestone hills of Texas,
and water that feels like gold in a place where dollars mean control.
I love the valleys and bluffs of southern Wyoming,
the sunsets you truly feel,
and the way there is movement in everything you see.
I love many places, deeply.
Some days as I sit on a mountain top
with cold air rushing through my hair and the clouds dancing,
I miss the warmth of that red rock sun encasing the desert's heart.
But you know what I never miss,
I never miss me.
Because somewhere between here and there and nowhere
I learned to love the cracks the water runs down,
and the sky when it opens up,
and the air when it feels the heaviest.
And somewhere along the way you learn to love the harshest parts of you. And when you start to love those demons the world starts to feel less scary.
You love solitude, and company, and comfort and pain,
because you know you can love what you can’t control.
And goodbyes mean something different when you know you're a visitor in this world.
