twenty-three miles

wednesday october 1st. 

[ A year ago, this was my first day of classes at the University of Ljubljana (everything happened and now) ]

My soundtrack is  Still Corners- The Trip. 


This is what I do know: 

this weekend I hiked the Grand Canyon with my dad. 

factually it looked like 23 miles and 13 hours and 10 000 feet of elevation change. 

I was so far from everything, so disconnected. On a plane again in that grey space of non existing, it had been so long, to leave the country, to get away, to put every Thing, every ounce of paperwork and books and readings and assignments and papers and people and auditions and scripts and meetings and touch points and coffee dates and late nights and politics and conversations and burning, even the burning, to put it all here, while I went There. It wasn't a pause but an escape, it was a complete escape, and I turned off my phone and I got off of Facebook and I set out again and it was me and my head, me and my heart, me and my last-minute purchase of hiking sandals and a 5:42am bus and an airport, an airport again, and the routine of that, and how much I know it now, (check for passport, print boarding pass security checks purchase water bottle listen to music fall asleep go go just go). It was that, again, and a plane ride between two ladies from the Dominican Republic who said "you tell everyone who says you don't have nice handwriting that two ladies from the Caribbean think it is very nice", because I was writing and they watched me write and I heard them ask each other quieres tomar algo? si si, un cafe, and no one has ever told me my handwriting is nice before...probably because it isn't...and we laughed for a bit and the plane landed and I was There. 

Phoenix was hot, and we drove away, north, and it looked like this 

the most incredible sky, the most incredible sunset, the clouds, the open road 

(how it felt to be on the road again, under a sky that touches each horizon) 

the clouds roared and rumbled and flashed and sparked, and the wind picked up, and it was 9:19pm when we turned off the lights in our hotel room with the wake up call set for 3 am. 

3 am was dark, and the wind howled, and the sky flickered in the distance and the silence thundered and we parked the car and turned on our headlamps and gripped our hiking poles and then we left, 

                  we disappeared into the red rock heart of this planet and it was me and my feet and my dad and our bobbing flashlights in the pre-dawn darkness, slipping and tripping on the smooth sand between steep downwards steps that speak of an uphill to come, far off and in the distance, lights bobbing by us as the runners ran, the sky lightening, and then the most, the most, the most incredible sunrise and it dawned and broke and turned off our flashlights for us and the world was new, and the world was silent, and the world existed in the craggy rising red walls around us, a rhythm of walking, a gold that burned pink that burned bright orange and a white-haired woman said good morning, and i said, what a sunrise, and she said, incredible, incredible, the people who stay on the rim miss the best part, and we left. how much of that is life: on the rim, you miss the best part, walk forward, move on, keep going,
and we walked, and the dawn arrived and burst into being before the day set in, 

       and around a bend and through the switchbacks as the red dust turned our shoes brown and our legs pink, there snaked the Colorado river and it froze our feet and coated us in slick red mud but it was cool, and for a hot moment the sun burned out and then disappeared behind clouds and then we walked,

we walked

we walked

we walked

and it was my feet, my two feet, my dad, his two feet, our bodies moving through a place that only your feet can take you to, that only your feet can take you from, a step, a foot, forward and forward and forward; Dad said "most people I know will never be able to experience this", because of bodies or time or excuses or money, and it struck me, and we walked. 

    we have no pictures, really, from inside the Canyon because there was not time to walk and stop and take a picture instead of absorbing the space we were actually in, so we didn't, really, we just absorbed.

  towards the last four hours as we headed up and up the north rim, it began raining. The first hour was a refreshing cold on pained joints and sore knees, and the world converged in red rock walls and layers of sediment and design from whatever ancient nature used to be here, waterfalls floating off canyon cliffs and to a far-away ground, roaring springs, and the rain picked up, cold and pouring and turning the upwards trail into a waterfall and divets and creeks of collecting puddles of mud and mule shit and rainwater, running off and in makeshift streams, a year's worth of rain in an afternoon, and thunder, and lightning that cracked and a fog that crawled and snuck and swirled into a cold breath on the northern trees, higher and higher, legs that had to keep going and feet that trudged through the flood that rushed over the side of slick rock, fingers that clutched, damp, hiking poles and that creeping sense of cold and a heart as light as stars, for me, 
                    layers of sediment and colour and dips and valleys and views and cold and river and dust and rock and I was moved, moved to tears and beyond, my heart exploding, exploding from what exists on this fucking planet and embracing it, taking in to remember in the dull days this place, this moment, this now, all the tired and hurt and wet and cold, how our breath froze on the north rim and how it hitched and hiccuped for me not from exertion but from exhilaration, emotion, straight emotion pulled from my exhausted body and wide open soul. 

we arrived at the north rim around 5:30pm that night, our breath falling like ice from our lips, and of course there was yet another mile to walk to reach the lodge. we hitched a ride from a very kind couple whose names we never heard, shivering our way into the back of their RV and softly amazed at the kindness of people to pick up a soaking pair of hikers from the road. it was all we could do to check in at the lodge and then shed the soaking cloth and wrap ourselves in warm blankets. I was bursting, bursting with adrenaline, we made it, we did it, every damp and difficult last hour, every second under big clouds and crack of the sky and the falling rocks and the other world that exists, that exists so clearly in this world, this world of so much 


          that night the stars were the brightest stars I think I've ever seen, crystal and small and scattered and everywhere, everywhere the milky way glowing, between the trees the entire universe held between my eyes, my blistered hands, in my cold-air lungs and cramped feet and I

                                I was small, 
               and the world was infinite

the next morning was a slow sunrise and warm coffee with the whole of the canyon spreading in front of us
the next morning was a shuttle ride back, conversation toned down to public-travel-space volume levels 
the next morning was this:

and the road, and heading down to Sedona

the next afternoon was road trip pit-stops and hobbling between car seats to stretch in parking lots until we arrived in Sedona, in red rock country, and did this: 

to sit and sink and absorb what the land has to say, to heal, to set and feel

this is what the world can look like. 

on the plane home, I wrote again. 

I feel new, this way, and I cannot stop for all the time I'd need to know what it was that moved me, that kept me going, that made this happen. 

but we do, we keep going, it's what we do. 

and as new as I feel it is not a new of never-before but of again-and-again, the way I can write so much easier and freer than I could write these last two, three months, because I was away from where I was stuck, on a plane, in transit, and again I feel the way the world works through me now and it's a newness of return to this state of being, of going, of no longer hamster-cage-wheeling but of motion and different faces and red rocks and not-Canada and travel again, 
again I feel that newness that the road brings, that heady freedom, that release from the-same, again I am sinking into another layer of what it means to go, and again it is something different and something that has shaped me and something that has made itself a story in my life, folded tucked bruised flooded and pushed into me

here and now because I (am)(was) travelling, because I am not in the place where I left, because I am not in a place with all the people and conveniences of 'home' (not home but you know), because I only know how to write when I am like this, is it? how much it feels to be easy and right and better and flow, how flow it is to write now, and it is because the cogs of my being, unbearably light though they may be, are moving and turning and aware the way I can't be in Vancouver...

and I can only hope, I can only hope this won't be the last time I feel so much more able to write than I have of late, beyond summations of my days, that I am not hanging my life-hat of flow on travel/escape as the only place I can be down to the depths of my soul toes, that I can still find this flow after my feet hobble through international arrivals,  
and yet, 

this is the creative for me, right here, above the clouds and not touching down but delving, to what oxygen gives me new life to live, what words I feel shaken up inside me and rising, rising, rising to a new surface I thought I'd lost 

( i don't know where this surface goes when i stay where i am for too long )




x

-k