Kerplunk!
A beret topped acorn free dives from the spring board branches of a tall oak digging its heels into the tumbledown ferns tripping over themselves in retreat from the Virginia ridgeline border on the northwest side of Cumberland Mountain. The ferns, now in Kentucky, part, like the Biblical Red Sea, allowing me to walk the hardpack path down to the White Rocks authorized Park campsite to set up for the night out in the backcountry.
I set up camp and head for Sand Cave about a mile along the ridge that separates Virginia from Kentucky, the East from the West, civilization from pioneering. If the upcoming morning holds low clouds like this morning, then any views will dissolve into fog and mist. Best to explore now in this afternoon's sunshine, to let the sands of weathered time slip through my experience.
Kerplunck!
Fall acorns land softly on the ferns carpeting this hillside as I quickly walk to dodge the aerial fall. Sunshine is quickly hiding behind these Kentucky oaks and hickories and clouds lift away from the mountain ridgeline in anticipation of a star laden night panorama. By that time, I will be snugly nested into my cozy sleeping bag for the night, hopefully dreaming of night fairies running barefoot through the ferns and singing moon-songs. In the morning, I'll forget my nocturnal romp with faeries and hike back across into Virginia, maybe under the bluest of skies, or perhaps droopy fog. Sandy time will tell.
Fissures
We enter a large open "room", where Native Americans have mined minerals, later slaves mined saltpeter for gunpowder, ministers held religious services, tuberculosis patients tried to find a cure, musicians played into the echoes, and actors performed soliloquies. Rock piles have let loose, and crumble in on themselves in nearby openings. We walk on toward other openings, voids and fissures containing stalagmites and drips. We have explored about three quarters of a mile of the 400. Some other areas require spelunking, or swimming.
In the 1800's, Kentuckians start to give tours, build rickety wooden steps, build tourism. In 1841, the US Government protects over 45,000 acres around Mammoth Cave by making it a National Park. By 1981, it has also been recognized as a World Heritage Site and in 1990, an International Biosphere Reserve.
We view karst dreadlocks hanging from rock overhangs and ceilings, moist drips lingering along their points, and see within the Earth's hidden places the quiet crying, tears turned to stone in statuesque monuments. Then, without time to mourn as well, or perhaps crawl into a fissure womb to remember, we are ushered out, premature birth, into the blinding light. |
Hiking the Backcountry: Along the Green River
A Rose is a Rose...
In the exact moment, a feathery whisper emerges. Many have theories of why—or—why not. But, in the exact moment, there is no going back. Like a flag marking the spot where it all happened, a corolla opens up its soul, its petals all new flesh, the Rose blushing at the thought of what just may come to be. In the exact moment, the flower is no longer the bud, but starts now its journey into the fold of the self.
There is no going back. Each downy edge also cuts, as it needs to. Within my own exact moment, I remember the edges. A lot of time has passed, but the edges remain both downy and cutting.
So, in those moments, the exact ones, I hear wisps of whispers, and the slick cuts of paper thin petal edges. And there is never any going back. The bloom is vulnerable, and I know there is no turning away, so I hold the stem gently and inhale the scent of the down. And in this exact moment, the remembered one, I feel the tickling hairs of the soft petal of history, my history, every woman's history, HER history.
Her long red hair drips down her body and sways with the motion of not only one hoop, but two. The larger hoop circles her center, and the revolutions spin into quiet, then, understanding. The exact moment happened when she was given her first hoop. There was no going back. The feathery whisper became the breeze around her waist. Each rotation became its own Revolution. Now, she flips the small hoop around her arm.
This is the intersection where we cross— caught together inside a Revolution. She is the Rose, and she is the Feathery Whisper, the Downy Flesh. And I remember the tickling hairs. I remember the not going back. I remember the journey into the fold. My fold. And we have much to share from the perspectives of the new edge and the journeyed edge within this Revolution—"Unacceptable". The journey of this unfolding never really ends and as her Revolution begins, mine drinks in renewed energy by her reminder. The "Revolution"? Why yes—the scratchy syllables slipping into sentences that summon the sun out of the cloud, or the moon, playing the star's points like a harp, to cut through the blue-black night.
This is how we met, why we met. Many have theories of why—or—why not. But, in the exact moment, there is no going back.
"I may have to carve out writing retreats, away from the distractions of Revolutions," I say to a friend over the phone. "I have no choice, at times, to act on the exact moments in response to whispers. I put the writing aside."
She is a Kentucky "Rose", and although we were destined to get sucked inside the Hoop while in North Carolina, we are not done, and I track her down in Bowling Green to continue our conversation, continue the whisper, continue the Revolution. I had planned to write over the course of the rest of this day, but the Revolution is more important, and so I put the pen down in favor of touching rays of sun in anticipation of the crescent moon song in pizzicato.
I am a sucker for whispers, so I lean in because I know each exact moment is precious, and the writing will come in its own time. The whisper inhales and exhales throughout the afternoon and evening.
She is the "Kentucky" Rose, hoop whorling, petals opening, long red hair flowing like blood cleansing what has come before. We clean up the blood as the morning mist dissipates over the fields and the sun sends a lonely beam onto our faces, just two comprising an intimate Mandala within the history of women dancing together along the edges of the Hoop.
The beam broadens, lights up the road, and I let go of the Hoop and drive away from Kentucky.
The word "mandala" (Sanskrit), loosely translated to mean "circle," represents wholeness, a cosmic diagram that reminds us of our relation to the infinite, the world that extends both beyond and within our bodies and minds. Describing both material and non-material realities, the mandala appears in all aspects of life: the celestial circles we call earth, sun, and moon, as well as conceptual circles of friends, family, and community.