My Third Walk

My Third Walk begins in the wind, the path slightly muddy from the rain that fell as this storm began and now from the snow melting once it hits the still-warm earth. (Checking the temperature before leaving: 40, feels like 18). I can barely move, life as we know it, now in limbo, since the second election of Donald J. Trump. Everything I believe in tossed in the air.

The First Walk began the day after Trump was elected in 2016, I walked from our home across the valley to the canyon with the longest views and stared out for three days. I took the same walk to the same place after the 2020 election, still unsure but barely confident that Biden was likely the winner. I needed guidance through the damage and doubt Trump had heaped onto my small, self-contained world.

Giant flakes swirling in such wide and random spirals make wind direction impossible to know. Their paths may not be random at all. The sky is a plate of solid steel. On this first cold day since last winter, I’m covered and warm except for my eyes and cheeks and the top of my nose. Above me, the towers have not moved, still standing firm and holding up the heavy sky, the wind opening their snowy skirts. I pass through the portal separating the world of hype and fragile dreams and impossible promises into that of pure, evolutionary truth. Small mammals have passed through ahead of me: ground squirrels, one cottontail rabbit, others unidentifiable from their tracks.

I pass through the portal separating the world of hype and fragile dreams and impossible promises into that of pure, evolutionary truth.

Like the first two, this walk is in response to what my mentor, Paul Shepard said, that the mind expands with the vista. Once again, my mind needs expanding. Shepard was referring to the point in our evolutionary history when the size of our brains vastly increased once we left the forest and stared out across the wide African savannah. Based on personal experience, I know that this also applies to each of us, individually. According to nineteenth-century zoologist Ernst Haeckel, “Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”—our personal development (ontogeny) follows the same path as our evolutionary development (phylogeny). For the same reasons, I’m convinced that we live closer to our evolutionary lives while immersed in wild nature, where most of our evolution took place.

Trump’s 2016 victory devastated me. I couldn’t imagine how he’d been elected and shuddered to think about the damage he might cause before leaving office, which I thought was temporary. Biden’s narrow 2020 victory, I worried, might be but a tiny island in a raging sea. This election was different and I needed this third walk more than ever.

Buffeted and pushed by the wind driven snow, I make my way up the main wash and through the massive break in the canyon wall. Recent floods recently exposed a new rocky section of the canyon bottom and cut vertical jagged edges into its banks. Ravens call from a high ledge. Moving quickly to keep warm, my mind wanders in rhythm with my steps. Sumac bushes and small junipers lunge in the gusts and I want to turn around, but can’t, the wind a great force against my back. I’m suffering from the weather, but also from carrying the dark weight of threat to all I hold dear.

I’ve been here before. I’ve carried this weight. I must have lived through it. We are a divided people. But we all have something in common: we gravitate toward that which is life-affirming. The question then might be, "How do we define the ‘life’ that we want to affirm?”

I cross the through-road and enter the tight tributary, the short cut to the pass. Floods have deepened this wash and I’m able pass beneath the barb wire crossing it without ducking. Floods had washed more soil from the base of the giant juniper, but it still seems firmly grounded, although not for long. I hear, but don’t feel, the wind whirling above me.

Taking the left fork, I climb out of the wash to the rim and turn onto the path made years ago, I suspect, by deer uncomfortable in the tight canyon. Then through the sculpture garden made from boulders shed while the cliffs and towers formed and along the trail of recent water and onto the Stone Bison’s pebble path. Running water has widened the cave beneath him. As if the wind is a swift river, I ride it the last fifty meters to the pass.

Too cold to stay long, I don’t sit, but watch time embodied by the wind as it carves the cliffs and moves sand and dried leaves. This walk is different from the other two. I feel more clear and closer to pure truth. I watch the full distance to the horizon, see the earth curving in front of it. Ravens tumble together risking their lives as if for the fun of it. “They don’t need to be doing that,” I say out loud. I don’t need to be doing this, I think. Way out, there it is—as if cut open by the world’s hottest torch, the first break in the dense, solid sky. Through the hole a new sky appears, a different sky, a blue I’ve never seen. The future a color I do not recognize. A future, nonetheless. A ball formed by random organic fragments wrapped in black widow web strands, bounces across my path trying to hold back.

Way out, there it is—as if cut open by the world’s hottest torch, the first break in the dense, solid sky. Through the hole a new sky appears, a different sky, a blue I’ve never seen. The future a color I do not recognize. A future, nonetheless.

We’ve made grave mistakes, including those that may doom us. We will mourn each loss even as we marvel at the earth’s brilliance. I vow to marvel more than mourn. I will keep  reaching for that ‘boiling thing’ and nurture the flame on which it depends. I will affirm all life, regardless.

I’ve seen enough and my dry eyes need a break. Time to turn back. “Bye Bison,” I say. I doubt he’s moved. Suddenly the wind dies to nothing and silence fills the vacuum it leaves. Not soundless but that great silence that hums. Something has passed. The air keeps breathing once the wind stops blowing. I keep moving, flowing now. Juncos, their tailfeathers flashing, free from the wind, move in a group from one juniper to another and the sumac trembles from below.

---

BROOKE WILLIAMS is the co-author of The Story of My Heart. He lives in Castle Valley, Utah, with his wife, Terry Tempest Williams.

GIVE TODAY