Ink and Vein

I went to a punk show in Pagosa Springs a couple days ago. Some of my friends were playing, and off we went on an adventure.

On the drive, one of them said, “Let’s go to Treasure Falls after the show!”

And so, after the show, in intermittent moonlight from a nearly full moon and cloudy skies that treated us to light rain, we found ourselves on a trail in the dark.

At first, not everyone seemed as excited as she was, as I was, for this adventure, but I’d been yearning for trees and water for weeks. Others could wait in the car if they didn’t want to go. I wasn’t going to miss this, no matter the time of day or the hesitance of others.

This mood, this sense of “I’ll do what I want” is one I’ve carried for quite some time, but there’s been a shift. I used to say it with bitterness, say it because I knew, at the end of the day, nothing I did actually mattered to anyone. Doing what everyone else wanted was never enough, because there was always more of what they wanted, always some way I wasn’t good enough and had to do more. Doing what I wanted, when I actually did it, was defeat wrapped in defiance.

Nothing I did really mattered. Nothing I did would earn the love I craved.

“I’ll do what I want” has shifted to something different, now. Yes, there’s still defiance, but instead it’s wrapped into a desire to live. A desire to stop hiding in bitterness and defensiveness.

So 10pm found me on a dark trail amidst the trees, the air humid and slightly warm. The nearly full moon shone her light, sometimes illuminating sky from behind dark clouds, sometimes fully visible. Light rain pattered down on the dirt trail, releasing the scent of trees and dirt.

And then we started to see them. Slender, glistening bodies reflecting our flashlights back to us. First, just one little dark-bodied slug inching its way along the path. Then another, and another.

We all stopped as a group to look at them, admire them, capture pictures of them, and then continue on our path, watching our feet to avoid stepping on them.

We saw so many on the way to and from the waterfall, so many gathering on a huge stump, all over the path, all traveling in similar directions, one silver with dark spots. She said, “They have stars on their backs,” and I said, “Little galaxies.”

We were children, immersed in our wonder.

When we reached the waterfall, the moon broke through the clouds a little, though she stayed mostly obscured. Soon, she went past the railing and got near the water, and the rest of us followed, me pushing my anxiety down and answering the call of the water and ignoring the call of rules.

In these moments of flouting rules and following my desires, I wasn’t seeking approval, or acting in defiance of others’ expectations, just waiting for them to despise me.

I was responding to the hum of my blood that wanted to slow its frequency to match the viscous hum of tree sap, the thrum of my blood that wanted to roar in unison with the infinity of water droplets forming the waterfall, dancing as fine mist in the air, kissing my face, my hair, my eyelids as I closed my eyes and breathed, filling my lungs with moisture, and imagining ocean and salt—salt that spices my blood the same way it tangs in ocean air.

As I leaned against a tree and wrapped my arms around the trunk, only briefly self-conscious with four other humans around me, I felt the stability of its life. Rough bark, soothing against my cheek. Branches reaching up for the stars, and roots reaching down into the soil, all of it made from stardust. All of us made from stardust.