tcmauer

March 31

Patience, patience, slow.

I’m walking out to Hole-in-the-Rock road today which will lead to Escalante and my first off day since I started, three weeks ago. My ankle is sore, and the trekking pole I bent in yesterday’s fall comes to resemble my body, my life. It performed the task of holding up my shelter last night, and it digs into the ground when I need an extra push up a steep hill, but it’s been changed by the journey. Life has marked it, and named it mortal. It holds an expiry date, but in the meantime it does just fine. The trekking pole just seems happy to be here.

On days where I’m hitching into town I want to rush, burn through the trail, get to a bed and precious precious wifi. I repeat the mantra: patience patience slow. Lets see what this place, named Coyote Gulch, has to say.

It says: Long stream, long stream, walk through. Water spill wide and thin. Drink and eat and rock turn red. Sand roll in current and burrow and bury and make canyon. Water’s shadow on wall: timely daguerrotype. Dont worry, dont worry, dont worry. Here is a place, even just a place, go from place to place. Be in place, and stay. Place. Live in trial, live in peace. Say: that which made this made you, so you are rock and you are water. When challanges arise, find that part of you that is rock, and let it be so. When fear comes close, find that part of you that is water and let it be so. All is a reunion. Go beyond, you can go beyond. Beyond.

I sit by the side of the road in early afternoon and a bunch of girls from the University of Utah give me a ride into town. They said they were giving names to rocks, which is an excellent pastime.