6/11/20
I laze under a huge ponderosa.
Ten a.m. sun blazes, but here, cool air swirls around me.
Meadow grass waves. Bird notes shape a chorus.
I will sit here as long as I want.
I quit looking at my watch as soon as I left the trailhead. Instead, my eyes trace David Canyon’s far wall, the Manzano Mountains’ northern peaks; flit from woodpecker to chickadee, high bough to forest floor.
Then I sit till I’m sat out.
I walk the dusty track. Long stretches of naked meadow between pines. Wildflowers cup a side trail. A UFO-like structure squats in the grass. Water tank?
The ponderosas come closer together, closer, and a rock grotto appears. Lavender butterflies the size of a fingernail dance at my feet.
The last crossroads. I sit again.
Two chipmunks dart from a tangle of growth. They chase each other around a tree trunk, touch noses. One scampers into a field. The other huddles in a rock, munches something it’s saved there.
To watch a thought unfurl, curl in on itself.
To observe a scene.
To have canyon walls block the messages’ internal ping.
To move until I’m wilted.
I have stayed off the trails and in my neighborhood to help stop the spread of Covid-19.
It was the best decision I could come to. I stuck with it for two and a half months. And then I could feel myself forgetting feeling, synapses sputtering.
So slowly, carefully, early in the morning, in the middle of the week, with multiple backup destinations in case the trailhead was crowded, with a mask, within 25 miles of home, I go back out.
I sit, and see, and hear.
Time has collapsed in on itself.
I spend what I can here.
Hike length: 5 miles
Difficulty: moderate
Trail traffic: almost none
Wildlife spotted/heard: crows, doves, chickadees, mountain bluebird, blue jay, nuthatch, redheaded woodpecker, horny toad, lizards, chipmunks, butterflies, beetles, grasshoppers, vulture
Woman Seeks Elevation 