Fair Morning Spring

I recommend Anasazi to everyone I see – struggling or not. Here I am, “GO TO Anasazi!!!!!”

It is weird…It has been 6 months and five days since I have been out of Anasazi, and there are so many things I wish I had written down so that I would remember. Plant names…people’s names…creek names…roads we had crossed so maybe I could go back to those dirt roads and find some familiar ground, some of the food. I miss the taste of my seed butter doughnuts…my pizza…my cereal…the joy of opening my new food pack and seeing a full bag of raisins, brown sugar, and flour…the taste of our water. I miss crying as I struggled up mountains hoping and praying that my mom would come to my rescue. “Hooting” is a regular thing at my house with me, but I miss the echo of it and the way it carried on for miles in the wild. As I type this I look down at my scarred hands and arms – scarred from endless bug bites and branches that I know reached out on purpose to grab me. I miss the smell of the wet ash when we no-traced. The pain that would shoot up my arms when I would “bust a coal” has not been felt since the last time I busted. I long to feel it again. The sweat that fell from my face is now only a smell in my brown shirt. I want to sweat again like I sweat at Anasazi. The feeling when I climbed a mesa passing every group that was ahead of me (including the Sinagua Boys, might I add) is merely a memory. The view from so many hilltops is now just a vague picture in my mind. The desert colors have faded from my memory. And the endless hours of talks with fellow YoungWalkers and TrailWalkers have faded to a slight whisper. Some smiles I can remember but cannot hear its unique laugh, some laughs I can hear but the smile is a picture of the past. I miss these things enough that it makes me cry when I think of them.

Though I have left behind so many memories from my time at Anasazi, I won’t ever forget that I have a choice. Whether I make the wrong or right choice, I know I have one. And now I know which one is right and which is wrong.

Fair Morning Spring