Aurora Stories

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To begin something long-incubating

A kestrel, normally quiet on the gnarled locust branch outside my window, begins to speak in a reverberating tone

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bridge married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
— Mary Oliver.

I have begun this blog for a few reasons. They are of no particular order, or relevance, but all wave their hands emphatically insisting upon their importance. One is that I am a storyteller, and here is where I will, in part, tell stories. Another is that through my travels, I want somewhere to check in, to report back, a log of sorts. Another reason is to report. I will be informally investigating things, working out the details of telling those kinds of stories, of acknowledging all the details in the telling of a message.

So, in honor of the fourth-realm calibre writing that I am devouring from Mary Oliver, in honor of her effervescent engagement with life, I am here, writing.

22 years to life

It is my 22nd birthday today, which has the expected magic and stillness to it.

I’m at a point in life that asks for looking back, having recently departed from the university world to commence a life (a temporary break?) “away” from academia, in the world surrounding. It’s boggling to think about the fact that 100% of my sentient years have been spent worshiping the established schedule of semesters, summer and winter breaks, and studying. I’m not alone in this, of course, which makes the fact all the more astounding.

Life beyond has a chaotic feel to it, and a finality to “learning” that doesn’t feel final at all, but more like an unending question. What will you do? How will you do it? When? How hard will you work? Where will you drive your life?

I think, given the rushed feeling of semesters and general academic life, that I for some reason fear that there’s not enough time. In truth, there isn’t enough time, but in the same moment, it’s so easy to forget the bubbling truth and meaning in seconds. Both, true; both, driving.

So in my ~2 months of living in Colorado, after 10 or so years spent wondering what a life here may be like, I have been working to seize this time and ask it to stretch. I’ve bent the days to dedicated feeling, working, and time for stillness. In the next week, I will begin to report on my travels since arriving. There have been many; they have grown me.

My memories of college and the associated life arrangement are asking for my review. I have reflected in pieces, but have not yet let myself fully decompress. Do we ever? Should we? Because if decompressing means unraveling the learning and formation involved in those moments, I don’t want to dwell in them. I like the vernal coil of them. I like how the edges are not yet ruffled by continuous review. But at the same time, I know that I should sift through their pages and make sure that I haven’t missed something about myself and about living this life that is worth retrieving. I also like the thought of returning to the feeling of evenings and tea and warm wall colors at S’s, or the many mornings I ran through the green tunnel of the Huck trail, or the feeling of familiarity and exploration embedded in the very walls of Cheatham.

I will go back to them. But I will not return. There’s much asking for me ahead.

Who I am

I perch over my keyboard from my makeshift desk (bed) in Edwards, Colorado, which I have made my home over the past six weeks, and will continue to do so through the coming six. The coming six weeks will be the final set before I leave this place.

I’m learning that each word counts. And that all writing is is placing each word on the scale and weighing it, comparing its weight against the weight of the sentence, and adjusting accordingly. Maybe I swap out “pursue” for “chase”. Maybe I chop the end of the paragraph because the weight is less of a channel and more of a vestigial limb of a sentence passed.

The me in this time of July 2019 is a post-graduate from Virginia Tech, having ostensibly studied applied management in Wildlife Conservation with numerous side and all-claiming research projects into nuances of ecology and human dimensions. Behind the science veneer, I also studied humanities, literature, culture, and social justice. All four braided into one, the name for which is elusive and perhaps yet unknown to me. Still, I look for it.

I treasure the memories of golden hours spent at the home of my literary and spiritual mentor, evenings curled around ceramic mugs of tea, spent abandoning the traditional beliefs about life for something more, something intuitive, something in the beyond. Equally treasured are the mornings spent birding in pursuit of a research answer, watching the flaxen light of late Appalachian summer sift through the tulip-poplar and white oak and sourwood and hickory and birdsong as I recorded the trills and bleats and chirps of summering breeding birds.

Equally compelling is the promise of lessons yet to be held and absorbed. For a worldview shed upon arrival in a land new to my physical perception though I’ve read and studied them from afar. For the momentary, consuming difficulty of growth in the instant that it strikes at the hot core of being. For the breathy, expansive relief after realizing that the difficulty was a spiritual growth spurt, not a bode for the rest of life.

I’ve come, I’m going.

But why am I here, now, being who I am?

I will be using public venues as my expression and professional persona in the coming years, and I have stories worth sharing.

I will be writing reports from my travels, reports on the world I observe, reflections on moments of growth and focal experiences, and the sharing and grappling with ideas.

I want to find other storytellers, other journalists, other travelers that write on the move.