To Be Awake

I don't think people like hiking with me.  I understand.  What takes one ten minutes takes me three hours.

When I hike, I have to touch everything.  All the rocks.  The leaves.  Water.  I'll try to catch a lizard.  A fish.  A bird.  I have to climb all the rocks.  Even if they are little ones on the road I can jump off of.  I have to climb a tree.  At least once.  If there's a river, I must be in the river.  I don't believe I've accomplished a real hike until my legs feel heavier.  My heart lighter.  I must be browner then I when I started.  My hands must be sticky with tree sap, my fingernails and in between my toes lined with dirt, if there was a river, I must have dunked myself completely, head to toe.  And when I shower, there must be a pool of mud that collects around my feet.

Some bonuses would be bloody knees and elbows.  Ooh, and freckles.  I've always wanted freckles.  Sometimes the sun will reward my time with it, and bless me with temporary freckles.  

This is a hike for me.  I have to smell everything, see everything, touch everything. 
On getting out of the plane in Ecuador, the first thing I did was rush over to a palm tree and hug it.  

I can't tell you how painful it was to sit in the buss, watching the jungle pass by and not being able to walk in it, to touch all the new plants and trees I'd never seen.  I wanted just one opportunity to hike, and I didn't get to.  But just seeing it, being there was good for the soul, like a friend saying, "Hey, you're always welcome to come back when ever you need me..."

Hikes are done wrong when I return still thinking about how stupid I am.  Still wishing I was prettier, smarter.  If I return from a hike not sore, perfectly clean and dry, thinking about my to-do list, then that hike was not a hike.  Hikes are not hikes when I stare at the ground and just follow the track.  Too tired to pay attention to the rocks.  The rivers.  Mountains.  Cliffs.  The sun.  The smells.  God.  

If life were a hike, I would have failed it. 
I'd rather be my rage monster self then go about life looking at the ground, thinking about my inadequacy, my unchecked to-do-list.  Too tired to get wet, too afraid of bloody knees and elbows, of dirt between my finger nails and toes, of sore legs.

Beware when a word that often enters your head is "Whatever." 'Whatever' is as dangerous as sleeping at the wheal.  Life doesn't make sense when you're asleep.

 

And be proud of me.  This is probably the first time I didn't use an acting/theater analogy describing the meaning of life.

It is faith and there's sleep, 

We need to pick one please because 

Faith is to be awake, 

And to be awake is for us to think, 

And for us to think is to be alive, 

And I will try with every rhyme 

To come across like I am dying 

To let you know you need to try to think.

-Twenty One Pilots, Car Radio