Even Now, I Long for the Adventure

“Even now, I hear one and I long to leave/without a suitcase or a plan; I want to step/onto the platform and reach for/the porter’s hand and buy a ticket/to some other life” —Faith Shearin, “The Sound of a Train”

I had such a precious time that summer in England, walking in the moors, being by myself with the sheep and the rabbits and my journal.

I wasn’t lonely. I wasn’t even cold, though it was rainy and damp in mid-July. I had to make a fire each morning in the wood stove of the English cottage where I was staying. The glowing hearth made it a little harder for me to leave, but even then, the wildness called to me—the adventure, the romance of walking somewhere unknown, discovering giant landscapes, pockets of flowers, massive rocks on a cliff.

I stood on some of those rocks the first day and heard the lonely call of the Lapwing, my only companion it seemed: pee-wit, pee-wit, pee-wit.

I was alone but not lonely. Well, sometimes I was, maybe a little. I could always talk to strangers in the pub over dinner—like the father and son who were hiking together across the top of England. Even now, I long to step back into that landscape, that time, that conversation, again.

We were in “the highest pub in England,” where I’d driven on a lark late in the day, my tiny car hugging the ground as it climbed higher and higher into the top of the Yorkshire Dales National Park. After a delightful conversation and a half-pint with my fish-and-chips dinner, it was time to head home. I had a long drive ahead of me. At 9:30 at night, it was still light outside but the darkness was coming.

I set the GPS and followed it, noticing it was taking me back a slightly different way, but I trusted it—even though another voice in my head said, Are you sure?

The scenery around me became more and more desolate—barren, rocky fields, high cliffs, no signs of life. I came to the bottom of a hill and stopped the car, stunned. A rushing torrent of water was flowing over the road in front of me, fast and fierce. How would I get through it? (It never occurred to me to turn back and go another way.)

I looked around in the darkness and found a rock at least six inches high. I threw it into the middle of the stream, to see how deep it was. The water swallowed the stone completely. I got back in the car, and, gritting my teeth, drove straight through.

Even now, I long to be on the lonely road and feel the exhilaration of getting to the other side.

—from a fast write on July 14, 2017, with the women at the Community Transition Center, on the theme of “poetry of place.”

Reflection: I enjoy using the exact same materials for those on the “inside” (incarcerated women) and those on the “outside.” I absolutely change nothing. They totally get it. The format for the circles allows each to experience the poetry and the prompts in whatever way works for them. It’s accessible but also deep. I listen to their stories, and they listen to mine. And we never know what’s going to happen on the other side!

photo credit: Independent Cottages, UK