Freedom

The thermometer reads 18 degrees, and even though I am in the shade on my back porch it takes only a thin blanket around my legs to shelter me from the cool of the breeze that flutters and whirls at the tag on the end of the string dangling from my mug of sweet tea.

I spent a long time sitting out here last night in the calm midnight air watching the clouds ripple over the half-full moon like waves across a vast, glowing ocean. It was quiet then, and is now, though the motel and hotel in town are fronted by a stiff row of trucks each evening, which convoy off to their various industry jobs on the outskirts of town at dawn: the Jamie Creek power project, logging, and variations under these umbrellas. Hotels have had to turn lots away; there is just not enough room here, and no one to build more for jobs that are only in town on temporary terms.

The men live in trailers outside of town too, as I noticed while Hunter and I walked along the start of the Hurley road, into the barren hills where Sanford is buried.

Looking out over the landscape of the claim, which is now an area to be used for gravel for the power project. When I first moved here it was forested.

I have found myself once again giving to the push and pull of unknown trails, being led this way and that into places I have never walked. There is an ease and freedom that comes from walking with a dog at one’s side, from setting out to simply walk, from not having anywhere in particular to be.

This time we walk on the other side of the river, the grass at the edges of the river dry and brittle, breaking like thin twigs underfoot. We need rain, but there is not much sign of it coming. The dryness leaves the landscape brown and fallow, the new shoots awaiting a dense drink before they begin reaching for sky. In places along the path the ground is dotted with the holes where squirrels have come back for their stores of food, and in a sandbank there are holes where some type of bird has made a home.

Although we don’t find Sanford’s grave today, I like this, walking in a new place, and the feeling dances itself around the walls of my insides. Freedom. When I walk I feel free.

Last night I hosted a little impromptu jam session: three guitars and three locals in my living room. We banged on the drum a little, used the percussion around the house, and they sang out country songs about beer and women and finding happiness in the simplicity of life as I strummed away the chords along with them on my guitar. And then I went to watch the clouds.

This afternoon I am heading into Lillooet for the weekend for the annual Rivershed Forum. I’m looking forward to seeing some familiar faces from last summer’s river trip, and to finding out more about my own role and responsibility for the trip this year. I’ve also put together a little slideshow to present about my own experiences traveling down the river.

I’ve been writing too, and everything seems to be falling neatly into place, as it seems to when we trust that little intuitive urging inside ourselves. Not long now until I am back on the road again, but until then I can turn to the seat I sit in now, still, simple and comfortable, and I can listen to the quiet of this town with the wind through the trees, and the river reaching its voice from the depths of the valley. For now this is my home, and what a wonderful place of discovery it is.