i don't know that a day goes by that i don't wish that i had the time to put on a pack and just walk and walk. to walk up into the long pine mountains and let my feet carry me along a ridgeline, over hill and butte, down into valley and back up into wide, wide sky.
friday evening, ben and i took chaco up into the long pines. i hadn't been up since november. and i hadn't been on a hike or a wander with chaco yet. a walk around camp crook with the leash gets us all some exercise, and it has been a good way to get our new pup acclimated to cold air, but it is nothing like being out, away, adventuring. up in the mountains, off the leash, in the big, wide open, he bounded along, ears flopping, nose to the ground most of the time {except when he would look up to make sure that ben and i were still close by}.
the air was warm for a late january evening, into the forties (around 4 degrees for my international friends), and the wind was from the southwest, so even though the wind was constant with some strong gusts, it wasn't biting at our cheeks and fingers and toes.
the setting sun gave us such saturation of beautiful color. deep. rich. and the windswept heavens were alive with clouds of all colors and shapes and shifting patterns.
we walked and walked, breathed deep breaths, worked our way down and up again. i ran for a bit, with chaco on my heels {my heels that were encased in lacrosse rubber boots} up the steepest part of the terrain we were to cover. i ran and my heart pumped hot blood all through me, and my legs worked warm, and my chest filled with laughter that bubbled up and gained voice, spilling over into the fresh and beautiful air. a girl running in knee-high rubber boots, up the steep side of a butte: funny and wonderful and free. ben laughed behind me, following the merry chase of tiny bird-dog and not-so-very-big wife. once at the top, we walked farther. sometimes i stopped to take another picture. sometimes i even laid right down in the dry grass and sage, and captured a different perspective.
then up i would stand and walk beside ben, before trotting ahead again. it grew darker, and we had picked a turning around point a bit farther ahead, where the ridgeline appeared to end, punctuated by more glorious sky. i was headed to our chosen turning point, when i looked down and saw this
i picked up the strangely shaped, bleached white bone. i turned it this way and that. i think it might be the chest section of a bird {obviously there are large feathers right beside it}, and it seems as though there is a place for a backbone, and shoulder sockets, for wing bones. ben and i look it all over; then walk on. some small distance away, we find this
more feathers. and a skull. an eagle. here. on the top of a ridge. up in the wind, in the sky. like an offering. like a prayer.
this feels sacred to me. up here. at dusk. in the gloaming of the evening. we handle the skull with reverence. i pick up some of the feathers and study the shape of them, the feel of these instruments of flight. wild beauty.
as we return to the foot of the mountains, i think that the top of the ridge is the right place for an eagle to have died. there, up close to the sky, in the air that is stirred and painted by the hand of God. i think that is the right place for things to die. out in the fresh, wild air. breathing deep and clean and free. i think of the people who's stories are told in the words of the bible, who went out to be under great trees or on the tops of mountains when it was their time to step from this world into the next. i think that when it is my time to go, i hope that i am not tucked away in a tiny room with a linoleum floor and bedsheets that have been sent in from a laundry service and a window that cannot open. for as many days as i am given, i will drink the wild air {even for just a few moments} each day. i will open my eyes to see the beauty. i will walk on rock and grass, pine duff and sage. i will lie down on the earth itself. i will breath deep. and when it is time to go, i pray that my final breaths are of air that is the very breath of God.