“How are you doing?” I asked my friend once.
“Oh, I walk around the house and sing my pain soul out” she said, “I sing my pain away!”
How wonderful! I thought. How wonderful to sing when the spirit demands it, to dance when the body yearns for movement. How wonderful to prowl in the fields at dusk and wander through forest in the early morning.
“I am an animal” I always feel when I climb high up on the rocks in my favorite mountain valley. I am a wild thing that squats in the shade, that curls up in nooks for rest, that stretches luxuriantly in a sun, drinks from mountain brooks, wades across rushing river. I am an animal. Silent, present, wild.
Somewhere out there, I think then, there is a human world. A world where I exchange my dirty t-shirt for a fancy top and put my scratched feet into high heels. Somewhere out there, there is a world where I think, write, produce, do, make.
But here, here in the wilderness I am only another wild creature. Here I am an animal. Here I am home.
