aspen-matis

I began to lust after our conjoining life.

I wanted to come close to fierce wild things. They seemed prehistoric, rare and sacred.

He hadn__ treated me with the love and compassion I wanted, but I was worthy of that love, and someday some boy would have it for me. I hadn__ found it yet, but I would find it soon.

I couldn__ yet piece together the disconnected clues to understand the origin of these lights. To explain away strange magic, I__ convinced myself there was an unseen road cutting across the boundless desert floor like a scar. I imagined its different possible courses. The mystery intrigued me. I couldn__ think of the real destination this road would have been built to lead to, but I accepted I couldn__ see, and I accepted it was there, strange but _ from where I stood _ a beautiful vision.

I was going to mean what I said, to be direct and firm.I found my moleskin notebook and on the page behind the pages addressed to Never-Never and my family__wo unsent letters__ wrote: I am the director of my life.

Children believe they are immortal, death is an empty word like the name of a country they__e never been to on a time-faded map. I wasn__ a child anymore.

We aren__ afraid of what we can explain.

I walked without breaks, slept through nights without waking, inhumanly smooth _ a small machine.

My path, beyond doubt or denial. I just hadn__ looked toward it. I wasn__ lost. I__ always known the way. If I__ only allowed myself to look. I had never been lost, only scared.

I doubted I could survive in the woods without these very basic things to help me. It seemed like a tremendous leap of faith to forsake the tools I__ always been told I needed. And yet leaving college to walk was such a massive leap of faith already, and nothing I__ ever trusted and believed in seemed true any longer.

But I couldn__ say any of this yet. No one answer felt it could contain anything close to the truth about her. My thoughts of my mother were wild chaos, I didn__ know how to tell him we__ been enmeshed for as long as I could remember.

I hoped my solitude would help me reclaim my innocence, remember who I__ been, to find who I wanted to be. To become her. To love her, Deborah, Debby, Doll Girl, Wild Child, me, despite the irreversible truth that I__ been raped. I was learning again that I could trust myself and, also, I was seeing, other people. I was brave enough now to go out alone towards what I wanted, to trust that I was strong enough for it, to know that help would come when I needed it. It always came.

These tools were my parents_ way of saying: What you__e doing is important. We support it. We want to help you find your way.

Second____ take much better care of myself.There were simple things I could do. I could start with my poor feet. These little two feet carried me each day for miles and miles, steady and flexed, tired and aching from constant daily pounding, bruised scratched and sometimes rubbed red-raw, my weight pressing and pressing them. I decided now that each night in my tent I__ massage them. I would knead them with lotion because they always ached, and at the end of thirty-mile days they burned__nd it would be luxurious__omething I could have done the entire way because I had been carrying sun lotion but had never taken the ten sacred minutes to do for myself.

In lovesickness we had found a common language.

Childhood is a wilderness.

I don__ remember having one conversation with my dad in the three days I was home, but looking back at my journal, I see I wrote about him. I scrawled about how I heard him telling my mom that I needed to go back. I was unhappy; he thought the hiking was better for me.I wonder why he told these things to my mother, nothing to me.I wonder if overhearing his approval encouraged me to finally fly back to the trail. Maybe. Maybe my father__ faith in my walk__n me__ade me feel strong enough to leave. His actual words, as I wrote them in my notebook, were, __he__ an adult now, she can do what she wants. It doesn__ mean she__ not selfish._ He almost understood.

When I felt strongly I would say it strongly.