The Answer

The Answer
By Katy Turner

Let me walk with no agenda
to where the failed days are still rewarding.

No judgment,
no burden, no facade.

Let me take off all that is me
and become what is meant to be,
Who is meant to be.

Let me drop what is now and
run to the woods,
my solace, my love.

Let me rise with the sun and let it warm my heart
like you never could.

Let me sing with the barred owl at dawn,
and let me scream my lament with the crows.

Let the dew upon my feet be the tears
that wouldn't fall.
I wipe them off so easily.

I am the moon, I am the sun,
the displaying turkey, the loping deer.
I am the morel living with the dead.

Let me be the maple,
the bramble, the peat.

Oh just let me be.
Let me be me.

In my home.
In the woods.


With the answer.

Nature Journal: Deer

• Ok, yes humans are more evolved then deer. We have a higher "intelligence," yet when we enter the deer domain we are weak. Would we still be good hunters today if not for the ammunition, the gunpowder, the machine that we have at arms length that only takes a finger to operate? There’s the bow-hunting yes, but as a society, how much would the world be different if we devolved our culture a bit? Just a scrambled thought I had today when thinking about hunting. In the end the deer and the human make different uses of their surroundings. One is with it, is the stealth of the slow swaying tree beside it, and the other? The other is marching, banging drums, and roaring to the surroundings “I am man, I am man: Do you see this concrete beneath me? I have built it!”

Nature Journal: Geese

As I see the geese line up around the river getting ready to fly away, I am filled with envy. Their wings have no limitations. My legs have a sort of ball and chain that was issued to me when I chose this path. Most of the weight is money, responsibility that I took on when I began taking out loans, but there are also expectations. It just kills the wild in me thinking about all the years I will be spending to pay off this debt. I think about how heavy that chain will feel, and though with time it may come off, I wonder if that old bird inside me will be fit enough to really fly. To really feel the wind whip across my face. I would be the grayest goose, zigzagging across the sky, honking up a storm. Free.

Nature Journal: Change

• It’s the smell I think that excites me about the fall. The summer is beautiful, heavy, bright. The fall brings a wonderful aroma to my face. The crunching of the leaves adds a music to my ears as I walk about. The colors stimulate my mind as I paint the them in my memory, but they too fade with time. Perhaps weather is the only change that I truly welcome. Usually I drag my feet with anything new, or my heart explodes in tragic anticipation. With the changing of the seasons, I feel weight getting lifted as I tell myself that with the changes around me, so I can change, Like the leaves on the tree before me, I can be beautiful. I can figure things out. When the snow falls I will be closer to being who I want to be. Perhaps with the chill will come a confidence to take another step forward.

Nature Journal: Escape

• One thing I love about the woods. The isolation. A pressure gets lifted off my back when I enter that haven. I feel like screaming right now, my eyes are stinging in frustration. I hold it together. I let it grow, that black bulk; if I were on my own with the free trees I would run as fast as I could. I would throw myself to the floor and writhe in anger. I am afraid though that if I were to enter the woods at this moment in time, that I may never come back to this world. What’s the point?

Nature Journal: Climbing a hill

• Using your legs, pushing on as your body screams in protest (passionately), as you feel pathetic realizing that the elliptical at the gym did not prepare you for this terrain. In fact spending so much time at the gym ends up equaling hours of staring at moving TV mouths, people sweating, and machinery whirring. I prefer the land. Unfortunately I will remain a gym-goer merely due to the fact that land, hilly and beautiful, is not often available, and everyday pointless life restraints do not allow the necessary wandering excursions of the little nature remaining, known, or available around us.

South Dakota Turkey Hunt Day 1

Day 1:  Thursday April 14, 2011

ESCAPE, IMPATIENCE, AND COLD

6:32 am

                I’m driving away from Minnesota, Wisconsin, and towards my wild self. I am abandoning my problems, the stupid ones--of course in calling them stupid I am not implying that any problem is not so. I’m leaving the irrelevant that is detrimental to the life I value most. The life I am working towards.  Sitting buckled in, surrounded by suitcases, I’m exhausted but I’m breathing easy. My hair is thrown up atop my head in a dirty mess and my face is my own. No I’m not sick as I’ve been asked before when wearing no makeup. This is my face:  Wrinkles, blemishes, uneven blush. Only now do I feel beautiful, with the people I love, dressed up as trees.

                As we drive towards South Dakota, pre-hunt talk about supplies and strategy are discussed. We devise a plan that involves splitting up in the morning. I’ve only hunted this property once before and I suddenly find myself panicked with the idea of pitch blackness and growling cougars at my back. Only after this initial silly frenzy do I realize another reason my nervous heart is pumping:   I realize that the only think I know about hunting is how it makes me feel—And only as I crush that leaf beneath my boot do I forgive myself for loving a man who has crushed my heart—no thoughts are not enough! I have no sense of direction.  My knowledge of when to call, when to move, and when to sit is amateur. Hopefully during this hunt I will learn to be more independent, more conscious about the logistics, and conquer my fear of decisions.

3:04 pm

                Beth and I woke up from our car-comas to a blizzard. We had to stop to dechunk the windshield wipers with our frozen fingers and upon reopening my car door, the entire handle shattered in an explosion of ice-shell. In fact, the entire right-side of our suburban was now a muted maroon, cocooned in a possible horrid foreshadowing of a miserable hunt to come. I can only cross my fingers in hope that we are leaving this nightmare behind us. I must now selfishly relate this blizzard to my feelings (for after all, this is my journal): Ahem…

The bitter wind upon my face was for naught—for my dear friend stood but facing me, saving me from constant erosion with her back. With the snap of a finger and the blink of an impatient eye I felt the pounding of cold wet-drops stabbing my face, my heart; for I was now lying on my back and my friend hovering over me with a giant overflowing bucket of resentment and a face of indifference. The wind kept swirling from each direction, tolerable wind! But in combination it was lethal:  the horrid gusts freezing each of those bitter cold drops faster than I could wipe away, recover. In order to survive, I must push her from me, wiping my face of moisture and emotion. In order to survive, I must forget about that time she stood facing me.

Yes I’ll clean off the windshield, shatter all the ice away, and move forward.

                We stopped at Cabelas around noon. The underarmour we purchased should help us not die, or want to die in this colder than anticipated weather. Beth and I also bought our first mouth calls. The car then filled with the beautiful music of natural diaphragm users.

Note: Walking through this store I became relieved. Although yes, a lot of the merchandise would be nice to have, I was not thrown into my normal shopping frenzy where I need to fight my impulsive shopping self that is set on the notion that a specific article of clothing will make me love myself. Here I realized that yes, that is a nice camouflaged -jacket, but the one I already have is nice too, and it allows me to crawl through dirt and fall against a tree just fine.

7:02 pm

                It’s cold outside and I’m still in my travel sweatpants and light jacket. We’ve spent too much time chatting about arrowheads and the history of South Dakota with the landowner. Of course this comment and complaint is stated under the assumption that a reader will not take it in the wrong way. This is under the presumption that the reader remembers the lengthy car ride, the weather, and the tease of escape.

 And now the snow is melting and my boots are caked in mud. The clay on the roads and now the car floor matches the red cliffs around me. Hopefully tomorrow morning no white will be in sight.