48
I know what you’re thinking, cause only a gutter punk would be reading this kind of filth, and I’ll have you know that Miles was a perfect gentleman. The walls may have shaken a little dirt loose, but that night was not the one you’ve been hungrily turning pages for, guess you’ll just have to wait for dessert like the rest of us.
There was a lot of smashing and grabbing, and a fair amount of diddling, but the most impressive part, was how the seventeen member gang banged out a row’s worth of picking and tamping in less time than a steamy cup of percolation.
It was a lot bigger, this one, maybe thirty feet across, an undertaking, but the bag to person ratio was well below the national average. It would be able to serve the whole community if shit hit the fan, a woodfired kitchen attached to one end, a cast iron stove on the other, and the entire backside was dug into the hill, the thermal mass of the fallout shelter would surely defend against a nuclear winter.
Just as Levi has speculated, the workflow of Earthbagging was seamless as more hands plugged in, everyone found their niche and the creation evolved, their finesse was refined and by the half moon they were neck deep in it.
Spaz squared off the love triangle, they became the tightest knit of best friend couples, rocking the Earthhouse with heated rounds of euchre and p’shaw. They’d officially entered harvest season, and there was plenty of ground scores for anyone interested enough to pick a peck of piñons.
“Such an incredible abundance,” squealed Annie.
“I know,” chimed Spaz. “It’s like you find a tree that looks like it’s about to pop, and then you look at the ground and there’s a good bit, but then as you zoom in, you realize that each little spot is completely saturated with life. That’s not just boring old dirt we’re seeing, it’s a patchwork of full blooded piñons.”
“It’s about like any other fractal of nature,” Tiana correlated. “From one perspective, there are a bunch of singleminded components of life, then you stand up and find an expansive sea of interactivity, and once you decide to look above you, you understand the common unity of their ancestral roots.”
“And if you can manage to climb to the top,” realized Miles. “You’d discover that each tree is just a little piece of a greater composition.”
“And on and on and on, into the deepest reaches of the universe,” nodded Tiana.
“And we’re the nuts,” drew Annie.
“I’d say,” Spaz agreed.
“We’re all unique in our individual patterns,” she continued with a convincing ignorance to his irrelevance. “All on a different trajectory, with different environmental conditions depending on where we land, each playing our personalized part in the kaleidoscope of life, but at the same time, we’re all so drastically similar because we are one and the same.”
“Our destinies may take us in every direction,” Tiana picked up. “Packed with everything we need to succeed on our own, but we should never forget that the fate of our source is the most vital concern, as it links us to every future generation of our brothers and sisters.”
“You mean we shouldn’t cut down the tree to build a tribute to the most popular piñon?” asked Spaz.
“Probably not,” laughed Tiana. “Nor should we poison her, as we extract every drop of sap because we want to drive around town in our fancy piñon costumes.”
“Or even worse,” Annie topped it off. “Because we want to hoard as many scraps of paper as we can, rubbish that has no actual cash value, and it’s only because everyone else is doing it, that we’re willing to sacrifice our own mother in the name of growing up.”
“Are we still talking about piñons?” doubted Spaz.
“I think we may have wandered a bit,” deciphered Miles.
“Because I was just thinking about how I bet if you looked inside each one, deep down there’s probably an equally complex arrangement of single-celled particles swimming around together.”
“And within that one there’s another, and another,” Tiana dove in. “It goes in both directions for as far as we could split hairs, these few levels of it that seem to us to be all there is to life, well that’s just the range of the spectrum that our piñon brains are capable of perceiving.”
“Then we invent some gadgets to expand our perspective,” Annie put together. “Now we must be able to detect everything there is, we can even see far beyond our limited understanding of the universe.”
“And the thing is,” unfolded Tiana. “When we put it all in a story about the piñons inspecting their surroundings with instruments made of those surroundings, it sounds ridiculous to think that they’d ever be able to understand the true gravity that holds everything together, no matter how many papers they published on the topic.
But we’re the piñons, and we exist in a material world that we can only monitor from the inside, as we predict patterns that convince us of our own importance. But how small-minded of us, to assume that we have any clue what’s truly possible outside the scope of a science designed to make sense of the smallest fraction of existence, but it’s the only one we can prove exists, so that must be all there is to life, because that’s science.”
“Okay you silly little piñons,” belittled Annie. “I think snack time might be over, sounds like dinner’s ready up the hill. And it smells like tacos.”
The open fire kitchen sitch had grown into a beast of its own, it was almost a novelty when it was a four top stir-frying pizza, but now it had to sustain a wheelbarrow load of hardworking dirthands. They had a big grate that could hold several pots, a wooden prep table with lots of veggies, the real trick though, was stoking the fire at the right time in the right place to burn everything to perfection. It was an art, a science, and a prayer, some might add a dash of luck for good measure, but Miles was seasoned beyond all that mess.
The new kitchen was going to be a game changer. Annie tapped Miles’ newly developed culinary expertise for the design team, they had a miniature clay mock-up and everything. The lodge would be a huge dome, a common area worthy of their uncommon denomination, with an internal archway that opened into the smaller kitchen space.
They stacked the ground up along the entire perimeter, but the corbelled kitchen roof came together long before the vaulted ceiling in the living room. At this point, there was really no good reason not to go ahead and piece in the appliances, and about ten thousand reasons it was more exciting than mixing dirt. It still took some bags to rough it out, but soon they’d be to the point of cobbing-in more salvaged amenities than your average tree fort, it was going to be revolutionary.
Miles felt complete on every level he knew of, every avenue of life had merged into one mountain pass, he didn’t need to know where he was going to know that he was already there.
He thought back to his three levels of being active. On the personal front, he knew that he was living in the best way he’d ever known, and could feel the Earth nourishing him in return. His local activism ranged from the aggressively passive to literally building community. And as consciousness streamed through their creative juices, he was inspired to share the latest model of home and hearth with the world, if it could work way out here, why couldn’t it work way out there?
And of course his romantic endeavors were filling another chamber of his being. And she prayed with him. The whole mountain was full of meshing spiritual philosophies that enriched every heart-opening conversation.
The fire brought warmth to the first shivers of fall, there would be snow within the month, the blaze of a full moon lit the match as nomads prepared to sow change.
“Horse meeting,” announced Rowan. “You settlers are welcome too, we just gotta sort out a few things.”
It was getting cooler out, it would never get below sixty seconds here, camp would be survivable even without a woodstove, but the road could be a little harsher on the cold bones. You never know, they could end up staying, and horses are a lot more convenient than the black ice of rubber, so they wouldn’t get snowed in. But they were nomads with a cause, and a path, and this place had certainly fallen within their committee guidelines, but if they were going to hit the trail, they might should do it soon.
They’d nearly completed the rotunda and there were enough hands to finish it up, planted plenty of apple seeds, discovered a reuse for salvaged barbed wire, met a ton of good folk and earned a standing rock residency at Captopia. Some were good either way, but the rest were feeling the call of motion.
Miles had nearly forgotten he was a horse person. He’d hung out with Bud a lot, every day at least, and their foursome had ventured off on a questrian adventure or two, but Miles still considered himself a dirt person deep down.
He didn’t want to leave. He had everything he’d ever wanted right here. Everything he’d never known he wanted. Why would anyone want to leave this place? Why couldn’t everything just stay the same for a while? Why was the nomad mojo tearing apart his utopia?
He could stay, of course, if he wanted. He could keep at it with the dirt kitchen, bring the vision to life and actually be a part of building a complete house. How was he supposed to share them with the world, if he’d never even been around to see one finished?
And there was prayer and food and camaraderie, the best of friends, but both paths had all that stuff. Only one would have Tiana though.
During the meeting, she was definitely a horse person, though she also had no problem with lingering around the fire a little longer. If she was set to leave, what could he do? He had to follow her, right? The brightest love he’d known was beckoning him to something further, standing right in front of him and opening her life to his, what kind of a moron would pick a bunch of shoveling over wild unadulterated passion?
But he thought he might. His heart wanted to go, but his heart said to stay, it was easy to follow the no-brainers, but no one told him about such confusing forks in the road. He wanted her to stay. To stay in this dream for as long as they could. How could she not want that too?
“Sweets, why are you sitting over here in the dark all alone?” she gently asked, perching on the boulder beside him. “Don’t you wanna come enjoy the fire with us? Everybody’s out there.”
“Just thinking.”
“I know. It was just starting to feel like we were always a part of this place, and you kinda were, it’s not always easy to ride that wave when it means parting ways with your family. But we know that those connections will pull us all back together as we tighten the threads of the star quilt.”
“I know.”
“And you know how to listen to yourself.”
“Yeah.”
“Miles, it’s gonna be okay, we’re still gonna have this thing between us.”
“Tiana, I think I have to stay.”
“I know.”
“You know?”
“Yeah sweets, I’ve see what this place does for you, and I can see that you’re not done here.”
“But you’re gonna go?”
“I have to.”
“Why?”
“It’s the same reason you have to stay, Miles. I have work to do out there.”
“So then what happens to us?”
“I’m not sure, baby. I guess it means we’re gong to be apart for a while.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“I mean, it sucks, a lot, but we always knew it could work out like this. It doesn’t mean I’m not going to miss you, and be sad, and cry, and lie alone in my tent secretly wishing I’d have stayed, but it will be twice as bad if I betray the call of my heart.”
“Cause your heart doesn’t want to stay here with me at all?”
“Baby, of course it does, I love you so much Miles. Our time has been so incredibly magical, but it’s not going to fade away, and this is not the end of our story.”
“Could be.”
“Don’t say that, sweets.”
“Well it could. Or one of us could meet someone else, and then what happens?”
“Then we can still be a part of each other’s lives. Each other’s journeys. You met someone else, yet you and Annie are still best buds.”
“I don’t want to be your best bud.”
“I know baby, I cherish what we have too. But it’s not built on frivolous physicality, we are deeply connected in a spiritual kind of way, and that foundation’s not going to go anywhere for a long time.”
“How do you know? Have you ever been in love like this before?”
“You know I haven’t, nothing like this, but yeah, I’ve been deep in it before.”
“Well I haven’t, and I’m not ready to let it ride off into the sunset overnight.”
“Then come with us.”
“I can’t.”
“I know.”
“Then why do you have to?”
“Miles honey, we’ve already talked about this. It’s just the way our paths are pulling right now, it doesn’t mean that it’s forever. I could be back here in a month or two, or you could finish the lodge and come meet me, or there will be so many other camps in our future, but we’ll never get there if we’re too busy clinging to the past.”
“How can following our hearts rip us apart like this?”
“It doesn’t have to rip us apart, if you don’t let it. But you know that we’re not clued into everything out there, maybe we need the space to grow into whatever that next stage of life is going to be for us.”
“I thought I’d be doing that with you though. People give up lifetimes for a love like this, and we’re just going to throw it away?”
“Miles stop it. I’m not throwing anything away. Everything we’ve been to each other is still right there inside of us, and I’m not going to let you guilt me into throwing my lifetime away and ruining the dearest romance I’ve ever known.”
Miles was kind of upset.
So was she.
“Look baby, I’m gonna go back to the fire and visit with everyone who’s happy for our forward momentum. I guess maybe you should sit over here sulking for a while, until you’re ready to be with me in a good way. It’s okay to be sad, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be happy too, excited for me maybe, and it doesn’t give you the right to bring me down with you, and I don’t think I can really talk about it anymore until you’ve made peace with your own path. I love you sweets, and this is going to be our last night for a while, so let’s try to make it special, not senseless.”
She left and so did Miles, kicking needles all the way down to the secret spot, it only intensified his loneliness to sit in the fading moonshine by himself. Well, that didn’t go how he had hoped. What did he expect, that she’d profess her addiction to him and give up her life for his? That doesn’t sound like the love he knew.
He spoke to the moon for a bit, and himself, and once he’d run through all the small talk, he remembered to pray. A little tobacco for the valley, a little smudge for the fog, already he felt better, but this one wasn’t just going to wipe away.
Maybe he was supposed to go. Maybe this was his heart yelling at him to pay attention. But he knew exactly how she felt about leaving, because staying was just something he had to do. He couldn’t put aside the path that had unfolded before him, that would never bring him around to the cosmic conclusion. He’d seen it before, the festering resentment of unfulfilled potential, so how in God’s name was he willing to make the greatest love of his life feel bad for doing the exact same thing he had to?
And after she’d been nothing but understanding of his own struggle. He was the one jumping off at the station, getting sucked into another world while she stayed on track, how dare he pitch a fit as the train simply carried on? And now he’d dampened their last night together. What had she said? Ruined their romance. It wasn’t bad enough that they were going to be apart, but now the last memory she’d have would be of him acting like a jerk, and it would be his last memory too.
Alright, well he couldn’t let that happen. One way or another, he had to be okay with tomorrow, because he couldn’t lose tonight. He prayed for clarity, and understanding, and something to somehow make him feel better about the tension of transition. He knew he was staying, he knew she was leaving, and he knew that he loved her more than anything, so that’s all he had to know, he just hoped it wasn’t too late to reclaim the moment.
He stopped by the fire but she had gone to bed, it was late. He lingered for a smoke with a couple of the newer dirt hippies before crawling into the cannery with prayers of conciliation. She was asleep and to the wall, he’d squandered all of the moments, his heart sank as his legs folded on the floor. He’d let her go to sleep alone and upset on their last night. How could he go on from here in a good way, with this looming over their memories?
“I love you so much Tiana,” he whispered, to himself maybe, maybe to her nocturnal transmissions. “And I am so happy for you and all that you’re going to do for the world. I just got caught up in feeling sorry for myself and didn’t know how to handle it, and I messed it all up, but I do know that we are a part of each other’s lives no matter where we are. And I know that the instant we see each other again, the magic will be right there with us.
I know we have to do what feels right, even if it hurts, but now I really understand just how right it all is. I was just at the fire with Luis and Mark, and I think they’re gonna go with you tomorrow. They felt a call, and they’re ready to take the next step towards defending the sacred, which is our ultimate goal, right? To inspire the folks we cross paths with to find their own way? But the thing is, we only have one extra horse... unless I stay. So you see, if I fought my own path, then I’d be standing in the way of theirs, and that’s all the sign I need to know that we’re doing the right thing, even if it hurts a little bit in the moment.
I love you sweets, and nothing’s ever going to change that, and I just want you to know that I feel like the luckiest man alive to have gotten to experience you in the way I have.”
“Miles, baby?”
“Hey, you’re awake?”
“Mm hmm.”
“And you heard all that?”
“Mm hmm.”
“And you’ll forgive me for wasting away our last night together?”
“Baby, you haven’t wasted anything away, there’s still seven hours of night left for us to reconvene, and I’m thinking it’s about time you get up here and show me what all the fuss was about.”