Slow Travelers

Up and forward. I repeat over-over-over again in my head as I jog up the gravel road that leads to somewhere, I’m pretty sure. It is my fire moon and I am lighting a fire under these hot average sized feet! It is foggy, a delicate mist still hanging in the early air. It rained all day yesterday. New moon in Aries, special rain, collected some. “Whats that for?” a farm employee asks, “probably magic.” I shrug, but it is for magic, no probably about it.

So much of my jogging is lifting, heart and crown to heaven. Forward on the balls of my feet, push off, don’t dig down-a lightness-like cartoon wings on my heels. I fuck up, I do glance down. Worms. Sweet squiggly pink earth worms.

My heart skips a beat as I try to run past them. I heard somewhere that when they get all covered in the fine small gravel it cuts them up and they die. Or a speeding truck will smash them or a more intimate pink brooks running shoe will. My fire jog is propelled into a morning mourning. I tell myself, just keep going, running past them but thinking about the journey they are on, so painful and not their fault. I hate fucking roads, I hate progress, I hate that I am running towards death. I dodge the ones I see and tell myself, “okay, you can save three.”

I bend down and nudge one, “hey honey, I’m just going to move you to some soft brown dirt.” I coo at it as it flails and wriggles in my hands. I lay it down on some bare dirt on a hill beside the road, making sure that I only speed its forward motion instead of moving it to the wrong damn side of the road. Well, I guess my best guess. I move two others and Atlas and I keep jogging but I just can’t leave them to abrase themselves to death.

“Three turns into ten and then ten turns into twenty and my 45 minute jog turns into and hour and a half of looking down and back instead of up and forward.”

I am reminded meditatively of the slow sad journey on the blueberry smeared asphalt road through Joshua tree, two years prior, but vivid like yesterday. It is a Saturday so the weekenders are here. We are moving to the BLM land just outside the park because we are running low on money for camping fees. I am overwhelmed, angry and distraught. It is sunny and desert dry, spring. Poofs of yellow bush flowers bloom and spikey shit is just everywhere.

The caterpillars are moving across the road in hoards as the cars speed over them. We have the trailer so we are 8 wheels rolling over their migration. Emmett is trying to dodge as many as he can but it just goes on for miles. “Why don’t the rangers close this road?” I am pleading with the gods of nature. Emmett responds, “probably because it’s the weekend and they make a ton of money from these lovely tourists.”

I think to myself, no probably about it, money makes the world go round, up and forward-over-over-over. I feel like a murderer and in a lot of ways I am, but will choose to not be in not a lot of time. We make it through murder highway, reflecting on all the butterflies that will never be. The deep blue smears, baking in the desert sun. RIP Blessed be.

“I shared my death chart with my class yesterday.” Michelle says as we all stand around the fire after ritual, the farm blanketed by the night sky; my jogging shoes tucked away in the camper, waiting for the next run. I remember her and I talking about it once before. She continues, “the chart goes from birth to death and along the way we are pushing towards death, with little thought. We go to school, we get a car, we graduate, we get a job, a husband, a house, a couple kids, we live capitalism;” Up and forward-over-over-over. “but when we stop and reflect, by writing a poem or going to see art or meditating we are defying death. We are no long racing towards it but looking back on life.”

Up and forward. I am thinking as I jog down the gravel road but squiggly pink earth worms will help me defy death today, causing me pause, sensitizing me, offering me meditative purpose. Down and backward-deeper-deeper-deeper. Blessings to the slow travelers forever and always. So mote it be.