Ouroboros: last Easter, we went hiking in the old burn off 89, and today I went there again for the first time since. Last year, after following the creek for a while (Was it running? I can't remember. Why can't I remember that?) we sat in silence on rocks with our backs to the eroding bank. I can still taste the dirt-colored sun and the ash. Some white thing blooming. There was a drumming, a heavy sound that made our animal hearts pound before a sudden herd of deer leapt past us, not even a pause or swerve, thundering across the creek and over the opposite hill and gone. Our silence was stunned then, and then nervous - from what were they running? Later he would tell me that he'd been eyeing the rocks nearby for likely weapons, as his proclivity is towards fight.


Mine is flight. And so every time he stood to face me, I melted into the landscape, turning to a cryptic collection of sounds and feathers and leaving him bewildered and alone.


Today a hike with a good friend, up a road with so many dead-end forks I began to wonder if I wasn't dreaming. A dirt road, rutted and strewn with downed wood; I had been drinking all day, trying to swallow myself, and I stumbled more than once. Dead grass between root-sprouted oaks, skunkbush bristling with determined buds. At the top of the hill is a great outcrop of white quartz looking out across the forest. The edge of the fire showed clear as any line between past and present, and the wind blew tiny shards against my bare legs, blew my ears to deafness and my eyes to tears. I put a sharp piece of quartz in my mouth, leaving in trade the stone I've kept in my pocket for years, dull and grey against the sparking hill.


Yes, the water was clear and winter-cold, with algae growing in the eddies. I remember now.