hike your own hike*

Fighting rising panic, I throw myself into tall grass, pleading with gravity and making deals with blue sky.  Cicada songs rise like breath that I can feel in my chest and throat.  These days, precious few days, my hair hangs loose in a tangle of leaves and bits of twigs and dreams.  Long days filled with flights of inexorable wanderlust punctuated by tides and trees, storms of lightning and wind, streaking, streaming stars, rocky cliffs, mountains, bears, snakes, and wide golden eyes considering me quietly from perches in the night. 

I joke that I have to be dragged back kicking and screaming but it's just barely a joke.  Cool days and nights, early leaves with color, oaks dropping acorns, all indisputable evidence that these days that owe their substance and mystery to spontaneity and wildness are coming to a swift end.  There is never a thing I can do to prepare myself for the loss of freedom.  It will be replaced by the security of routine, the comforts of home ... and dreams and anticipation of next summer.  

*Thanks to "Ava", and to "True Lax God," for leaving these sound bits of wisdom in the trail register at Byrd's Nest No.Three.  They kept me company in my thoughts for many AT miles and the many more since.