Back into the world...

It took a long time to fulfill the contract I'd signed with the federal government. I was a speck of life in the wilderness of central Idaho for the second season running. I represented pocketchange of deep pockets, an afterthought from the dislocation of naturalist to biologist in the caste of this inanimate institution. Get the data. That was my job. Be safe, alone in the wilderness on steep terrain with the huckleberry bears... but still, get the fucking data! So that's what i did and when the season ended i thanked the big guy in the sky and went back into the world.

With the late summer shining through pulled curtains and Ray Charles singin' "the mess around" on the radio, an afternoon nap seemed in order. Third week of the inbetween, unemployed and terribly content with it. The phone rang as i began to nod, friends inviting me to dinner one town over~ in Centralia. With nothing else in mind and the fridge and cupboards wholly devoid of dinner i agreed.

I grew up here in southwestern Washington between a farm and a city, somewhere in the gray area. The lush valleys bending from the Olympics into alluvial deposits of meandering waterways leading up and up, plateauing above subterranean notches harboring immense canyons at the base of Mount Rainier and the fellow Cascade Range. And down there in the lowlands between peaks lies Lewis County, my beautiful semi-illiterate gem called home. It's good land, procures bounteous crops and feeds the mouths of stock and citizen with ease.

When i was coming of age it became apparent that my town, and many of those surrounding, had died with the ailing timber industry. Died from poor stewardship of the land, died from lack of interest, too many vices without income or sufficient subsidy. Desparate as an enfeebled third world country, the twin cities of Lewis County, Centralia and Chehalis, begged for new money to save its economy and well-being. And then a miracle like the angel Gabriel, an outpour from our democratic metropolitan dwellars into the outskirts of our red state. A miracle, Yes! Money arrived due to overpopulation in neighboring cities.

And who would have thought it, streets were cobbled and cleaned, century-old buildings renovated, trees and gardens tended. And then the truly unthinkable, above the dilapidated beauty college, between tattoo shops and book store fronts for the deal of meth, a wine bar moved in. I got inebriated and happy and thought less about the future with my mind and more with my body... and with that came a simple understanding. That there is no such thing as preparation, never has been. Out into the world again, a new home, a new place, an everchanging yet static me.