LAND OF THE FREE

Another day wandering in the forested fields of this divergent part of the country I feel is home. With a few days off before a week of travel, I went for a long walk out in the fields to gather my thoughts, ricocheting around inside my head with all the pre-election madness. Woods abounded and finally, I found stillness and quiet, out among the snow and the trees.

At the base of one tree was the trunk of another felled during a storm and for a moment I could stop, sit, think and take some photos of the frozen landscape. Had it been warmer I could have taken a nap there, leaning against the tree. I've done that while pheasant hunting, setting my gun down and exhausted from miles of walking, simply leaned against a tree with a patch of sun tattooing my skin and slept. My black lab would drop to his haunches at my side, sniff the air for trouble, then doze himself, twitching to rabbity dreams.

As kids my brother and I would sleep in the yard on many a starry night, dragging out the little pup tent, and setting it up under the canopy of the apple trees. We'd lie on our backs in our sleeping bags out on the grass, tracking satellites through the air and speculating on the nature of the heavens and why the plain Hershey bar was just better than the one with nuts in it. We were kids, and there were no worries, about elections or taxes or bears or hydrophobic porcupines. We'd wake, ground cold and soggy with dew, and hike back those 10 yards to the house, bleary eyed from lack of sleep yet energized with the joy of believing that we would live forever.

The woods still fascinate me. To drift in thought in the presence of the trees and the proximity of the earth is much of what I feel when I'm flying. In it I get a sense of the truly spiritual. Not as Christ in the wilderness, but in the ablution that comes from placing ones self at the alter of the planet, and for just a moment picking out a little infinity from the perpetually crushing teeth of time.

I wouldn't say I was a tree hugger. Not for me the granola fueled protests to save the spotted owl. Growing up in a small city where logging was the prime employer I appreciate a tree in the form of a pile of two by fours as well as in it's original state. I do not think the trees are the home of sentient druid spirits, nor do the trees speak to me; but I am pleased to take shelter under their branches, reinforced in the smallness of my form next to their trunks, smiling as the branches separate me from the chatter of the world that echoes outside the woods. There is comfort in my smallness, for I am stricken by the thought of tremendous roots threading their way under the ground beneath me, knitting themselves to the earth, embracing the soil in a way we poor ground dwellers never will. Such gravity. So sitting on the trunk of one of their fallen I rest, and they feed my soul as surely as if the roots were joined to my own veins.

I had to do a will recently, not for any thoughts of my impending demise, but simply so that my friends know where I want to end up. And that is not in a metal box, set into a cold mausoleum. Make me ash, with the fire of woodsmoke, and sprinkle me into the forests and the shores of the land that I love. My remnants becoming part of the rough skin of the planet, as time settles into itself and the microscopic bits of me will blend into the cosmos, seeping gently through the leaves in a graceful descent back to where we all became. The earth is a beautiful cradle in which we are all bound to sleep. Hopefully sleep will be long in coming, but I rest better knowing where I will rest.

In my job I'm at war with death. Collateral damage is inevitable. Sometimes in the midst of it I wonder why I fight at all. I do my part, but amidst the smoking losses, innocents gone, I have realized, reluctantly, that sometimes another's life is not ours to save. Sometimes we have to let it slip quietly over the vale. And walk away.

Perhaps that's why I see beauty in so much, because I deal with death on a daily basis. Leaning against the trees, sun glinting off of icicles on mighty stone and wood, the secret whisper of wind invisible to me and silent. Would we find the beauty in anything if we lived forever? Would the gems of thoughts and feelings and desire be so precious if we knew they would always be upon our shelf? Or would they fall to the earth, trickling through our hands like water, evaporating on the cold ground, because we thought our hold on them was eternal. Life is fleeting and beautiful and I will fight strong to hold onto it until the last dwindling dawn.

Perhaps why that is why I believe so strongly in the Second Amendment, a part of the U.S. Constitution that someone who could be elected as Commander in Chief is on record stating they wish to see it taken away from us. Was it not the rights of those that planted these lands, and their fathers before them, to carry arms to protect and preserve these plots of ground? Ground that they labored until death to maintain and preserve for the next generation. The land is precious, as is the fruits of our hard work. As I walk through the woods, I rest my hand on the wood that makes up the grip of my weapon, feeling the cold power of its strength, that in turn flows through my arm, emboldening my step. I walk boldly, a woman alone in a vacant forest, knowing well that my gun should not be needed but for the day a politician tries to take it from me.

As I turn to head back to home, the words of Benjamin Franklin come to me.

God Grant that not only the Love of Liberty, but a thorough Knowledge of the Rights of Man, may pervade all the Nations of the Earth, so that a Philosopher may set his foot anywhere on its Surface, and say, "This is my Country.".

This IS my country, and THIS is my land. I believe that as strongly as I believe that I have the right to protect it, to protect myself from those that would wish to take it from me to share the wealth with those who's days have not known such labors as I. Selfish no, I am part of this land, and it is part of me. I have earned the right to be here, and I will rest my ashes in its ancient depths when I am gone.

Time to leave the forest, Barkley looking up at me from his enigmatic gaze as I stand. Clouds move across the sun, water drips like blood from a frozen knife of ice. I quietly walk across the leaves that blanket the earth's secret. I look up to the sky, thirsty roots sunk deep.