well then.

the world sidesteps by, smearing colors and flicker eyes, the way that i think i might run if given the solong legs of a pronghorn. i wonder if i will be so protective of the tiny writhing lives which spring from me, when that time comes. if i will place myself in front of the strange alien assaults which glare at my children, give my life for theirs. i wonder if i could have gone another day without the soft tongue of the fog and the whisper of the ocean, if the great stretching silence of the forest could have kept me.

we stopped about an hour east of eugene. my mother refers to that stretch of land as "the enchanted forest" - the ponderosas and the redwoods scratch at the belly of the sky, while big broadleaved maples gaze down at the verdant cacophany of ferns and berry bushes and wildflowers, and the river sighs along, polishing its granite jewelry and sending misty breaths into the coolcrisp air. i stood on a little mulchy path and pulled air into my lungs until they hurt. the scent of life and decay, flowers and riverwater, so different from the altitude-thin oxygen of the wyoming sky.

but, at end, it is blissful to be home.
now, off to the bath.