I set out today in a deep and muggy swelter, my mind well apart from its earthly locus. From where I stand the sky is a sheet, bluish-grey and oppressively blank, and cicadas drone and birds creech horribly. Dusk is gasping at my back. I meet no one, no one, and make damn sure of it too, turning into an alley I don't recognize; no one but birds and faceless drivers. I'm not here to clear my head. It is already empty, thoroughly, a void that upwells to my eyes. “Windows to the soul,” aren't they. To my either side now is a jungle of vacant dirt and unfinished construction and awkward raised concrete beds. Weeds choke a driveway through a thick web of cracks. Maybe from this high resistance looks like revolt.
#prose

It was hiking today, with my mother, father, and that powerhouse of a young girl my sister. It got off to a poor start when we left our car, losing the trailhead and then each other; but we were quickly reunited. In a short few steps we reached the promised “creek crossing”; though it seemed to be much more of the first word, with no clear path to the second. The water was too wide to jump and its temperature lagged at least a season. Eventually and through much shouting we devised a route, pulling ourselves across with sticks and boulders. I stumbled, freezing my shoes and then my hands as I reached the other side and made to empty them. The cold would haunt me for the following hours, my fingers periodically turning icy and completely immobile.
We had come here – first on vacation, then to the trail – with hopes of escaping city life. We had largely succeeded so far, our cabin having a beautiful view and no internet service. But now all around us we found evidence of the press and clamor of human habitation: twin moats of branded consumer junk flanking each side of the roadway; an abandoned and rusting farm vehicle stamped JOHN DEERE (I now think it was a backhoe); a full hillside of felled trees. Nature showed too, in flashes: a pair of eagles dipped and rose to meet each other off the backs of thermals; drips of meltwater furnished a carpet of ancient ferns and mosses beneath our feet.
My sister drew from some endless well of energy, invisible to the rest of us, that allowed her to yell with full force, swing from vines, scale perilously sheer rock faces (to the mingled awe and dismay of my onlooking mother and myself), and kick a foot over a high edge dropping to the road beneath. If I had to guess, her soul would be the color of faded pink fabric stained with mud.
Not to be outdone, my father sulked a great distance ahead of us all (as happened when we walked anywhere, up a mountain or to a store or down a block). After some time he reached a fork in the trail and, without hesitation, turned right. Coming up behind him, we were confused; setting aside the trailblazer's markedly minimal marker usage, it seemed to us the correct way was left. But he continued stubbornly on, as though some inertia had lodged itself in his feet to drown out my sister’s shouted cries. So we followed.
And we did, for a time. At one point we came to the edge of a railroad, which we traced to the start of a logging trail. We were almost certainly not where we were meant to be now, but we held onto vain hope that we would rediscover a path to our car. But now we were getting tired (even my sister), and we were lashed with biting cold, and it was nearing lunchtime. At a turn in the trail we stopped to try and use GPS; but it was no help, since we weren’t sure of exactly where we had started from. The mood was rather miserable by now.
But then: Through the trees, we caught a glimpse of a vehicle sitting off the edge of the path. A farm vehicle, a yellow one, stamped JOHN DEERE. Somehow, and by complete accident, we had brought ourselves nearly to the start of the trail!
We came down the hillside, splitting into two groups. We forded the river once more, pushed through scratching chest-height plants, and we were free.
#prose