—after Annie Dillard and Mary Oliver
start walking.
Move one foot, then the other, down a path
through woods of western larch, ponderosa pine, or
quaking aspen—Kailee calls these dancing trees, for the joy in their constant fluttering—
you come through clearing, you climb the saddle, you are on the ridge now. The mountain
before you suddenly in reach, small like you could pinch it between your fingers—
& no, don’t hike with a speaker, the music is already on: the squeaks of pikas,
the chirp of a marmot, the whistle of wind in the valley, the laughter of your company.
The silence.
What do you want to do with your life?
I want only to live in the world.
It occurs to me that I may have to be more precise with my language,
with what I mean by the world. & Living.
In the Tetons, Mitch tells me of a girl who doesn’t care for nature—
she has a taste for the finer things: going to the mall, a nice restaurant.
He is a staunchly earnest man. Things are changing, but I thought
deep down, everyone still—people don’t know, anymore? They don’t see? That it’s bullshit?
Traffic, concrete, sirens, shouting, sedentary, TV, blue phone light, news lines like ticker tape
in the brain, shattering glass. Excess.
How you spend your days is how you spend your life.
It is important to check yourself often, then—what am I doing with my life?
Am I living
in the world?
I used to survive on cynicism alone. I used to believe I was alone, & that love was
a foolish act. I used to speak about the Earth as if it were already gone.
So busy mourning a death that hadn’t happened yet,
I almost forgot to dance in the world while it was here.
So I started walking—farther, to mountain tops, to glacial lakes—
then stripped & swam in the cold shock of blue. Life
is not such a serious thing, not really.
Joy is.
Once, we climbed a mountain though the sky warned us not to. In a dark
sky lit up with lightning, Katie’s hair floated up, stood on end.
We sheltered best we could at a lower altitude, bracing against the wind.
Bilal’s afro was full of hail & we were overcome with giddy, inexplicable laughter.
I held Bilal’s hands as we slid down the saddle, the soil wet & electric with petrichor.
He’d never heard me laugh so hard. Listen: your life could end
in traffic. I do not mean to tell you to be reckless with your one life.
I ask only that you take chances that remind you it is wild, & it is precious.
The Earth could bury us in an instant, yes. & the funeral
would be so, so green.
Listen to me: the natural world is still out there.
We don’t have to watch it from Instagram, not yet.
Fear is a premature death, when you surrender to it.
Yes, the rain is full of plastics.
Dance in it anyway.
—
Camille Ferguson is a poet from Ohio, a heart-shaped place on the beautiful Planet Earth. Her work has been published in numerous literary magazines such as Passages North and Drunk Monkeys, and in the book Light Enters the Grove: Exploring Cuyahoga Valley National Park Through Poetry. She has a passion for our country’s parks and remaining wild spaces, and spends as much time in them as she can.
