I can find my way from the mountains to the ocean foam
I keep thinking of my descent out of the mountain. The rain came, soaked my sleeping bag and everything, and when I left the mountains, I seemed to take the cloud with me. After the first night of rain on Balsam Range, having gotten no sleep, the prophesying wind came hushing through the ridge where I had set camp. It not only brought cleaner air, but it blew the old out of me and breathed the new in. I know this is so. However, the elements were not done with my psyche yet. Next came the gray. It soaked everything as did the rain. At one point, I thought my skin was gray. I was in a fog for two days, all the while rain was ever-so-lightly yet ever-so-steadily drizzling. I was not at all dry that entire time. It soaked through every part of me. My bicycle was broken. Mile after mile passed under my prune feet, and achingly slow was my lot. I have never been so wet in my entire life, but I kept walking. Each hill which I was so sure was the last before the NC/SC border was surely not. How inspiring of Humility was it all!
I pictured myself in a Denver bar that night, with all the gang, and in their eyes I would be strange and ragged like the Prophet that has walked across the land to bring the dark Word, and the only Word I had was Wow
I came into Clemson wet, dank, and dirt-bummed. I think after the wind had flung some intangible thing from out of me, the water washed away something just as indiscernible. I know this because after I made it out of the mountain, having mostly walked on paper-thin soles, and arrived in Clemson, the looks I got were incredible. My hair was plastered onto my forehead. Thought I smelt damp and earthy. Ghost-white hands clenching the bicycle handles, my pack was laboring and huge on my back. Poorly wrapped around it was Dunbar's blue frayed tarp, secured with bungee cords spanning from side to side. nobody could understand what I was, but nobody could deny it. In their eyes I truly was strange and ragged. It was the virtue of being unfathomable. The last night I had spent in my wet sleeping bag may have been a cocoon. What was different about me did not wash away with the dirt and damp as I showered at a friend's dorm on campus. Until now, I never knew what it was. As I dropped out of the North Carolina mountain, down the Blue Ridge Escarpment, from NC-281 to SC-130, the trees changed. The air changed. The sun momentarily came out. Now before I entered South Carolina, I passed a water-glazed field. The fog didn't dull as it did everything else before. It lent a sullen softness to it. Oh, how marvelous is it that a small field such as this can emit so many fragrances and speak such a variety of emotions! I remember walking into Salem, the town where my traveling life commenced. I found this town at the end of my rope: an hour past dark, the thirteenth hour, speeding through cloud-laden SC-11 (never once had I looked to the right to try to spot what great secrets were concealed above the fog) not being able to find a place to camp for the night. "Oh, go down Burnt Tanyard Road" said a gas-station attendant just about to close the store. I took his directions into this rusty town with a brook running through it. It was beautiful, and I've kept coming back ever since, but now it was my passage into Clemson, where I sought shelter and a way to fix my bicycle (this is why the road was my burden and not my wings). I didn't enjoy it, I merely tramped through it wearily. Waiting for my friend to pick me up and take me into Clemson, I spent maybe an hour and a half in a town store talking with the only person inside (where I was, I do not know) while I was charging my phone. As I remember first opening my mouth, I am estranged to know that I still remembered how. Having gotten in the car, I noted the surreal speed with which we headed towards Clemson.
Four seasons ago (to this date), I awoke from my sleeping bag to the cool coastal air of Charleston, Carolina. The first thing I did was hop in that blue car and drove to the beach. I passed through the island of my childhood in the noon-day sun. I realize now what was different: It was my eyes. My affinity for light. The brightest of rooms was too dark for my taste now. I also realize, as I type this, the symbolism of that album of my choosing for my drive to Folly Beach that brilliant morning. Short Trip Home was what I listened to. I think more and more of how, in actuality, my journey was quite brief. As beautiful and ingrained in my mind as it was (and eternally will be), it was but a blink of an eye.
From the hills to the sea, I'll become a memory
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