7
The ambience of the RV had definitely shifted. The ride was full of energy, and stories, and deeper philosophical explorations than Miles could possibly have copiloted. And songs. Spaz grabbed Cap’s guitar from the closet and Annie pulled a wooden flute from her knapsack, with which they proceeded to captivate the next two hours with the poetic nonsense of making the world a better place, at least until the overheated initiation of what exactly they’d gotten themselves into.
They loved it. The practiced fluidity with which the crew had fine tuned the entire procedure, the band hardly skipped a beat. They did, however, take a long overdue intermission when the headlights began to flicker across the steep grade of flimsily guarded cliffs, it seemed that the entire rig was losing power, at what would be hard to argue as the most opportune moment.
The light sputtered just long enough for Cap to find a somewhat safe place to throw it in park. He had a few ideas of connections to check, so the pit crew deployed and went to task. Spaz waved a light to warn downhill travelers of the darkened roadside hazard, it seemed Annie knew her way around the machine better than any of them, and pretty quickly she climbed into the front wheel well as the muffled shout of discovery cut through the rumble of blinded horsepower.
“I need a pair of pliers, or channel locks or something, or wire crimpers would be best, it’s a loose terminal on the main power switch.”
Cap was already digging for the tools, vice grips were the first to surface, and it only took a few seconds for their new chief mechanic to emerge with an, “All done.”
They gathered themselves and circled the wagon, which right on cue overheated, stalled, and promptly began to roll down the curvy incline towards certain doom, with only the dog on board.
Before he could think of reacting, Miles leapt through the open door and jumped into the pilot seat, both feet jammed the pedal into the floor as the behemoth was once again brought to a full and complete stop. Before he could take a breath and fully take in how insane the last thirty seconds had been, the cabin was bombarded with fanfare and applause.
“That was freaking awesome! Just like in the movies. And to think that I had been all up in that wheel well. Musta been hanging on in reverse until she gave out, guess I’ll have to thank my lucky stars for cosmic timing.”
Miles stood corrected. Enough energy pumped through him to confirm that he was living, thriving actually, and fully involved in every millisecond of the moment that was now. Even Timps was cheering along.
The rest of the trip was comparatively uneventful. Which is a ridiculous thing to say, considering the substance of each mind altering conversation, and the adjacent jolt to Miles’ fundamental beliefs of the world around him. They were connected to the world around him, it poured through them, some kinda spirit was alive within them that even a skeptic had to take notice. Especially once they made it to the wilderness.
The land was incredible. Breathtaking. Majestic.
“And we could throw one helluva shindig out here folks,” promoted Cap. “It’s this whole side of the mountain, and there’s boulder formations like this all the way down it, so many good places to do stuff, and it all forms a natural amphitheater kind of effect. There’s piñons all over the place, as promised, the only catch is, there’s no water up here, we gotta fetch it from a hand pump down the hill. And then there’s that whole other catch about figuring out how to get the RV the rest of the way up that hill back there.”
They had abandoned the rig halfway up the last dirt road as they neared the very edge of the grid, after having unloaded the trailer in a nine point turnaround maneuver at the corner of second amendment street and private property avenue, after having made a wrong turn amid the dusty fingers of a GPS gray area, after having driven thirty minutes past any trace of pavement, after driving a ways out there already, after having thought that the night’s shenanigans were over once they pulled off the impromptu offloading operation halfway up the steepest mountain pass. He was feeling it. Miles was riding some kinda wave of intuition, the team whipped right along because they weren’t headed somewhere else, they were already there.
And now they were there, almost, and once they managed to navigate the truck around the roadblock, a specialty of Spaz’ apparently, they hooked it up with a tow strap and pulled the chariot to its nest in the hills.
“Wooh, we finally made it,” cheered Timps, as she took off to explore the trails of woodland creatures and the creatures that hunt them.
“Aw, she loves it out here,” exclaimed Annie. “And so do I. It’s right where the mountains meet the desert, and there’s just so much wild to completely absorb your very essence. And all these rocks are extraordinary.”
They really were. All over the place. Each outcropping provided the perfect setting for so many activities, and the first priority was to locate the perfect spot for a fire pit with built-in seating. Cap showed them around the proposed build site, the structure would sit atop a flat shelf of stone mountain, a modestly sized undertaking that Cap reckoned would only take a thousand bags or so.
“And the dirt’ll all come from up here, it’s pretty much the perfect ratio of sand to clay already, lucky us,” he said with an expression that implied air quotes. “We just gotta mix a little water in and she’s good to haul down to the bag factory.”
There was, of course, a little more to it than that, which they came to realize was his customary underestimation of how much time anything would take. They normally doubled his best guess.
The top layer of soil and organic matter had to be scraped away, then the pickaxe could bust a bunch up, which doesn’t begin to convey the effort involved in what is easily the most grueling task of Earthbuilding. Then they shoveled it onto a metal screen that filtered out the clumps, rocks, and roots.
“There can’t be any organic matter in the bags or it’ll decompose to leave empty voids.”
“Now there’s a metaphor about the concrete world attempting to swallow the Earth,” shot Spaz.
“Good one,” Annie chuckled. “How about the other day I saw this paint truck that wanted me to Cover the Earth, and then drove it home with a picture of it happening right there in front of me. It was so gross.”
“I mean,” said Cap. “I struggled a bit about using these poly bags, it’s just more petroleum. Thought about using burlap, which can last if the bricks are the right mix, until I learned that most American burlap is loaded with chemicals. Then I got turned onto these misprinted reject bags, I feel like I’m definitely upcycling the refuse of what you call the colonial world. Plus they’re dirt cheap. Well, not quite.”
“Right on brother, I think you’re doing a pretty good thing here.”
“We’re doing here,” corrected Annie. “Cause we’re definitely staying for a while, right bud?”
“I don’t see how we couldn’t. Seems to be the pretty obvious path to me, as long as we’re welcome.”
Cap simply gave a smile that meant it was already a given.
“Oh good,” she said. “Plus there’s piñons.”
She had called him bud. The fact wasn’t lost on our guy.
The band split up and sussed out their own personal courtyard and campsite. Miles set up an extra tent that Cap had brought along, tucked it into a cove of cornerstone, meanwhile on the other side of camp, the new recruits were posting up next to the tallest boulder on the hill.
“It’s got such a great view from up there,” she convinced Miles when he came over to check it out. “Perfect for morning gratitude and some meditation, or skyscraping yoga, oh this is gonna be so great.”
Miles couldn’t argue.
“We’re not doing the whole tent thing though, just gonna sleep under this perfect little pie slice of most magnificent night sky. Should be plenty dry enough.”
Spaz stepped up from a downhill walkabout, “Pretty sweet, huh dude?”
“It’s so good. I like my spot, but this is something else.”
“And check out over here,” she motioned toward the tower’s center cavity, between what was now apparently two stone giants forming a suitably flat gathering space up top. “We can totally climb in here and hang out, talk about the stars, smoke up or whatever, get romantic and stuff.”
Which we exactly had she meant? The two of them? Or the two of them? The proverbial we of someone else could do it sometime if they wanted to? The royal we of all of the above?
“Ooh, it’s getting dark, we should get that fire going,” she derailed the speculation. “Let’s get Cap.”
They assembled around the most obvious location of centrally heated communion. Annie shared a few words of gratitude for the land, and for safe travels, to the ancestors of this place and to the future generations, because we are but guests within the soil of our ever-evolving mother of a planet. Real poetic stuff, but not rehearsed, then she tossed a small handful of tobacco onto the Earth as Spaz began to stack up a tipi of fallen timber.
“The fire’s an important part of indigenous culture,” he shared as he put one together. “Obviously. I mean, it was crucial for their survival, but there’s more to it than just that. The Sacred Fire. The Peta Wakan. Through it you can build connection, and the spirits are listening, and your tobacco can carry those prayers out into the smoke screen of the universe. Each and every vibrating particle of your heartwave will have an effect on each and every vibrating particle out there, and like drops in the ocean, we are all one connected body made up of infinite individual experiences.”
He lit a dry pine branch and sparks filled the air, each embarking on a unique trajectory through their limited time of existence, and all working together to construct a cohesive mosaic of warm and toasty. He put the blazing limb into the tipi and the flame hopped from twig to twig, the collective energy grew until the entire tower puffed into a burst of ignition.
“Alright, she’s on. Aho, Mitakuye Oyasin.”
Those words, Miles knew them, or had heard them. They were from his mystery woman, who he’d somehow not even thought about until now. He’d been too caught up on the journey to wonder if he’d ever see her again, that felt like something, but now he felt a bit guilty to have so quickly caught eyes for the next girl he met. But she was probably taken anyway, and maybe they knew her, holy cow, maybe they actually knew her.
“This other traveler I met recently used those same words, do you mind if I ask what they mean?”
“Not at all,” assured Spaz. “We love to share all that we know about this kinda stuff. Mitakuye Oyasin, it means we’re all related, or to all my relations. It’s a core philosophy of many indigenous cultures. We’re all here together, one collective organism, all colors and classes of two-leggeds, and the four-leggeds, and six and eight and a hundred and no-leggeds, the fish and winged, the trees and the grass and these stones and those mountains. We’re all in this together, all helping each other to grow the best planet possible, and when that way of life and this Peta Wakan burn belief into your heart, it all seems quite achievable.”
“And you start to feel such a deep appreciation for every drop of life around you, and a responsibility to care for it as you would any other relative. And you begin to feel a maternal connection with our Grandmother Earth, Unci Maka, and you feel her pain as you weep your mourning into her fractured soil. Our mother is sick and we are being called to help her, we must only listen. But for now, we could just listen to Cap play us some old Dead tunes. Whadya say?”
“You mean I gotta follow all that? No pressure or anything.”
“No pressure, just that the entire fate of the world is at your fingertips, no pressure though.”
“Well, if that’s all.”
He launched into a ten minute Sugaree, by the time he wound it back to the hook, some percussion doodads had found their way to the fire, and a harmonica. They went on for an hour, so two or three songs maybe, trading around the reins and taking the ship in new directions, though Miles mainly manned the egg shaker.
She led the most beautiful song that was easy enough to slip into. Once everyone was locked into the repeating verses, she began to intermingle the lines an coaxed out new meanings and nuances that told an even deeper story.
As it all wrapped up with a spontaneous fadeout, she shared that, “It’s about the solstice, on one level at least. About the Earth’s journey from the sun, and the darkness we travel through, and how the sun is just around the corner ready to wake up the world. Or it could all describe the shorter, more tangible cycle of night to day, keeping the fire burning through the coldest nights. Or on another more astrological scale, it could be about the twenty-six thousand year cycle of the Earth’s wobble, and the deep sleep phase that our planet must go through, before the light once again fills every little corner with love. Or it could relate to any number of embedded life cycles in-between. Or it could just be some silly rainbow song that sounds pretty around a fire,” she smiled another big one. “And with that, gentlemen, I do believe that it’s come time for my own light cycle to enter its darkness phase on this darkest of new moons. I’m going to bed.”
And with that, she hopped down from her perch and passed hugs all around, mumbled some nighttime something to Spaz, tossed another pinch of tobacco into the fire, and flitted across rocktops into the previously noted darkness.
She was something, alright. Confident in herself but open to the world, delicate like jasmine but tough as nails, positive through the worst of it all and excited about sharing her change with anyone she could. Her voice held notes of such sincerity, and to hear her sing, oh man. But Miles wasn’t here for that anyway, he still had to find himself, so what did any of it even matter?
So then Cap rattles off with, “Well brother, she’s something, alright. How long you been riding with her?”
“Oh, a pretty good while now. Been fairly inseparable for the last year or so, wandered all over the place together. She’s a good one, you can believe that.”
Okay, so that definitely means they’re a couple, for sure, unless maybe they’re just really close travel buddies. But who cares?
Again with Cap, “So, are you two romantically involved, or just really close travel buddies?”
“Um, I guess I’d say somewhere in-between.”
“I don’t mean to pry, just curious is all.”
“No, it’s totally cool man. I think we’re all here to share in each other’s journey, so I love to share my own. We’ve been what you’d call romantically involved for almost a year, but it’s a little something other than that.
In a previous life, I wasn’t the most respectful to the women in it, and by previous, I mean only four or five years ago. I was under the spell of colonial indoctrination, which includes a healthy dose of womanizing and objectification, with a side order of male superiority. It wasn’t all the time, I could be quite sweet too, but I felt entitled to something, which went for every other aspect of my ignorance as well.
So anyway, now I’ve been on this life changing spiritual quest ever since camp, and part of that has included a lot of self-reflection about the negative energy I’ve pushed into the lives of others. Who knows how even the seemingly miniscule actions of hurt may affect another human spirit?
So then I’m out on the hill fasting and praying, and I realize that I need to take a vow of celibacy as I rewire myself, spend that time asking for healing in their lives, and working to find my own by moving on from here in a good way, hoping to share this story with other brothers who have lost what it means to hold someone truly sacred.
So then I cut all my hair off and pledged myself to myself, until I can tie it back again, and immediately I began to feel the most sincere relationships with women that I ever had, because I had no subconscious motives and I truly wanted to know their hearts. And then a few months later, me and Annie started hanging out a lot more, and sweetheart feelings swirled, but this abstinence thing was for real, which meant we couldn’t get too worked up, but we’ve managed to find a happy medium of intimacy and space, at least until I can pull this mess out of the way.
She’s my person, you know, and we’ve gotten so deeply connected through the experience, created so many subtle memories of our love affair before we’ve even ventured to another level. Why be in a rush to be somewhere else, when we’re both right here now? I guess I’m what you’d call monogamously celibate.”
“Monogamous celibacy, now there’s a new one for me, kinda sounds like my first marriage though,” laughed Cap. “A hit with all the millennials, I assume.”
“I kinda doubt the kids are rapping about it these days, but it works pretty good for us. It’s given us room to truly know each other, in an entirely new way that neither of us could have ever imagined. It’s a pretty beautiful thing.”
Miles wondered how he had not predicted the whole monogamous celibacy shtick.
“Well good on ya mate, sounds like you’re right on track. And this fire’s a beauty too, been looking forward to this for months, but I think I’ve gotta call it. Goodnight boys.”
The sentiment was reflected in the road worn faces of the sleepy firetenders as the three of them smothered the dwindling blaze, but not before Miles tossed in a pinch of his own comments to the universe.
“Alright then fellas,” said Cap. “Everybody have a good night of not getting any, we got a big day ahead of us tomorrow.”