Patterns Alive

Oak leaves and clumps of dirt cling to her old patterns, old memories of baby blankets and calico dresses and tweed slacks. Books, a journal, a mason jars of herby water, a yoga mat, a headlamp compete for space on her calming flat body.

She found me in Oregon. In the back of a house in a front-yard-garden kind of neighborhood. A basement full of porcelain cherubs and yellowing prairie-themed books, the back patio adrift in broken toys and bulbless lamps and penguin ashtrays. 

She lay folded on a table underneath other folded warmth and effort. A pile of blankets and quilts, stained and torn and perfect for picnics and roadtrips and campfires under tall trees. I scooped up the pale pinks and violets  and once whites and promised an extended life, if not an easy one. 

She cradled me back, soft against my belly, and promised she’d seen her share of love and loss and adventure and was ready for more. 

The quilt is the storyteller of blanket world.

Last night,  the ants created more lines and circles and marched spatters of red and black on her back. They found my bare arms, flung out of the too warm sleeping bag and resting above tangled hair. I woke to feathers of touch on my hands, forehead, on bare legs covered by covered down. I brushed little bodies from my sunburnt face, I picked them off my mud flecked chest. I tried not to crush, squish, maul. I just wanted to sleep in my bag on my quilt on the ground underneath the oaks with the sliver of a moon coming over the mountains. 

Maybe they were just a few and would go away, grow tired of this game.

Then I noticed the smell. 

Strong. 

Sweet and spicy. 

Strangely minty. 

Was it the sage growing into the valley? Or that these little mouths ate that sage to give off this dusky incense? Without flicking on a light I knew they surrounded me. I could almost hear them. What by day was an ant-free domain, by night was the I-5 of this acorn antdom. 

And I was the center divide. On a lawless highway.

Have you ever noticed how ants seem to bump into one another as they pass? Like a small town where crossing to the other side of the street isn’t a true avoidance technique, these ants forgo the cowardice and simply body check one another as they move down the way. I’m sure there is information being passed, but I like to imagine all their little ant arms meeting in microsecond Namastes before moving on. Or even high fiving. The things you think of at three oclock in the morning when you discover you are covered with ants and after enough swatting you finally surrender, yes this is happening I need to move back to my hammock. But not before staring at the ants who pay no mind to your squirming body or blinding headlamp and continue with their Very Urgent chores. 

You are slightly miffed to be woken up from intriguing dreams and you dread the fatigue of the morning, but you soon laugh as your days consist of moving rocks from here to there, of sweeping leaves from ancient rugs under more ancient trees, of finding shade to nap under, of talking and laughing and (gratefully) grieving at picnic tables and in tiny kitchens that remind you of boats. 

And you are excited: that you have time to notice the ants’ customs, to see this nocturnal commotion, and most stunningly, to recognize that you (I) were able to SMELL ANTS and know that that is what you (I) were smelling!

I know in my sun strengthened bones that the wild is returning not only to this campsite but to my body and heart night after night, day after day, breath after breath. That sleeping outside is not a punishment, it is an honor; to hear the coyotes scream their prayers into the canyons at dusk, to breathe in the midnight breeze as it flutters past my face and into the trees above, to feel the vibrations from roosters crowing as Venus skims the mountaintops, to step onto the leaves and dirt and feel the earth on my skin first thing after sunrise. 

Primal is not a derogatory term here. It is welcomed, nourished, bathed in sun and starlight.

Here I can howl with the wild. 

Here I can hold the earth in dirty fingernailed (happy) hands.

Here I can SMELL ANTS.

Perspective

.

There is a tug in my belly to go up, out.

Sometimes I forget there is an outside (this stove, fridge, bunk).   

I emerge from the galley into the blackness of night. The boat heaves and rolls as each swell barrels past the invisible reef and sways the hull, the mast swinging the anchor light like a pendulous comet. 

I climb onto teak and peeling rubber, glass and metal. I feel my way forward, steel guidelines in my hands, salt crusting on my fingertips as I go. At the bow I sit near the anchor chain, where it has disgorged itself from the boat and leads forward into murky water. The chain speaks with the passing of every wave, every gust of wind pulling it taut against rope and metal. I speak to the anchor, that little lump holding us in the middle of this dark bay, off the reefs, off the island. How much we depend on something so small and fierce! Dig in deep little one! 

My eyes adjust to the surrounding black, to the pinpoints of light overhead. I still don’t understand the Milky Way: how can we see it so clearly up there if we are a part of it down here? How can it be a sprinkled band across the sky if we are encompassed by it? Where does it begin and end? The stars don’t answer my questions, the Milky Way blushes at my ignorance and throws a worn stream of light my way. I make a wish, tear at my ribcage to open it to courage and love. 

I sway with the swells, the mast, the comets in all their forms. The darkness embraces me, the wind lustily kisses my neck, the water flashes silver with mystery. I want to capture this feeling, to jar it for the next day when the heat and this relentless cough and oftentimes meaningless work overwhelm my spirit. 

The wind shifts and the southern swells are less noticeable as they approach the bow and we ride into them. They are still there, still stroking the hull with salty memories of deeper water, but I cannot feel their influence in this moment and forget (exactly) how it felt to sway and heave in the past. 

It is all about perspective. 

I jar that thought, full of gratitude, and head down below to sleep.