Finding Place

Oct 2023

A long time ago, once,
I was lost
having wandered too far in a wood and over hills and crags,
around a bluff or two. And having lost sight of the radio towers peeking over mountain tops I had no desire left to turn around
and once I feared that I had gone too far
had even less.

You're not lost until you try to return to the place from where you came.
"Just keep moving forward," I told myself,
"you're not lost if you end up getting somewhere,"
but I never found myself finding anywhere with a name.

I instead found myself a mossy glade, which welcomed me
with intoxicating scents and colours between the leaves
of sleepy willow trees
and cat tails near a stream.

At once I forgot where I came from and as the sky began to fade
I pulled a patch of lichen over top of me and slept the night away.
I had fallen into dreaming, lost, in the middle of nowhere I could name
and when I woke I felt that I had found myself most definitely a place,
some vague where.

The same glade, the same clover, the same sap running down and of the soft cedar roots over.
Yes, lost, but some place, if only the same place that I was
when I close my eyes the night before.

I spent the day turning 'round and 'round, searching for my trail,
finding myself twisting deeper and deeper into Place
and farther from home with every twirl.
I drank form the stream when thirst first came
and I ate up the berries which grew in abundance when hunger paid its visit.
Hunger and thirst, it seemed, were both not as lost as I,
able to come and to go with such a regularity as to betray their sly familiarity.

Before the night began again I took some time to build a shelter,
though mostly for my comfort rather than for function
as this place that I had found seemed to exist in some exotic estranged pocket
where the wind blew warmly and the dew couldn't find me.

The next day I found myself returning to a certain crook in the crick
where the rocks were worn and large enough to palm
and which allowed me to dip down low and drink up deep
without the need to cup each sip through dirty, familiar hands.

I found myself as well walking not the first trail I had blazed through the berries
but one that I had found to grace them in the most efficient manner.
Sleep came with less worry tucked under it's arm that night,
and I dreamed of things I can't recall
but which were pleasant and were not reminding me of home.

And the fourth day, or was it the fifth?
I moved my shelter to the top of a bluff
which I had scouted just the day before
and found to have had the most soul-stilling view stretched out before it;
some yet unnamed valley on which the morning sun sits just right.

The following week I found myself less concerned with food, or with water,
or even with shelter as every day had added some new grace to it.
An hump of old man's beard to lay my head upon,
a cedar bough duvet to hold the lichen sheet on top of me,
a makeshift nightstand where I perched a stout branch of maple, which
had fallen and which on I carved the likenesses of animals that I had seen.
A robin I named Tirpy,
a weasel, Troy,
Gerry the field mouse
and the rest of Gerry's family which regrettably remained unnamed.
I had quite the gallery, and for this I found myself shedding even loneliness.

Time passed, and I cannot tell in what amount,
but when they found me,
and they did find me,
they told me I was lucky, to be found when lost so far out,
and when they brought me back they asked me
how it felt to be in the middle of nowhere with nothing for so long.

And I knew what they wanted to hear
so I told them
and they patted themselves on the back
for saving me,
but truth be told
I wasn't lost.
At least
not for long.
And I wasn't nowhere, or had nothing,
I was very much somewhere
and had found many things.
Somewhere I had ended up knowing very well
and which I felt knew me
and took care of me in ways I'd never felt before.

I've had homes, of course I have,
but never had I felt before what I had found while I was
        "lost."
Intimacy with a place that didn't exist on any map,
which had no road to it, nor trail to leave.

I like to imagine it felt the same way, that is,
glad to have me,
glad to have someone appreciate its boulders, it's stumps,
the way the willows whispered lullabies in the warm and even evening breeze
accompanied by the equally tangentially transient melody of the pops
and burbles of the waters as they said they only goodbyes,
a sweeter tune than any radio could hope to cast
or capture.

The way the wind blew sometimes, I swear,
it was telling me something,
a secret
or a joke,
a private thing.
I wish I could feel those lips against my ear just one more time
but I don't know how to return,
there are no roads to follow.