Pre-Road

Seven years ago, damn near to the day, I traveled the long road known as Interstate 70. I was heading back to the town that coughed me up many years ago. I was living in the mountains, just South of Nederland Colorado, off a gravel road named Haul. I had a dog, a tent, and what I thought was a man at the time. Life wasn't perfect, I lied to a church to receive rations by saying I had a three year old son names Lars. I hiked daily, anywhere from 6-10 miles to get fresh glacial water. I swept up on the weekends at a gyro joint and a local brewery to make about $10 each time I emptied the dustpan. Jewelry I designed lain in an adorning fashion could be seen in a case located in a consignment/head shop in Boulder. I lived in a tent, cooked on a fire, and chopped my own firewood. To me, it was not harsh, it was invigorating. I loved each moment; swell, and not so swell.

My life wasn't passing by too incredibly quickly, I was in the late months of my twentieth year of life, though I felt thirty. As of today, at the prime and lovely age of twenty-seven; I feel like not a blip of time has passed. I feel twenty. My tired bones had finally gotten the rest they had longed for. The easy going mind had received an onslaught of emotion, stresses, and joys of the common household life. Still, it feels as though someone hit the restart button. Time fails to rear its ugly face.  Is it hiding? Will time catch up? For someone with a pack a day habit and asthma, I am a damn good sprinter. Good luck, time. I will take your lessons and hold them true, but you are no match for my will. I will never grow up. My shadow, it follows; but, she's coy like a stray feline. Time, she can happily keep me guessing.

As fresh as the morning dew, I remember. My mother, with a distraught tone, sounding very concerned said to me, "Please, come back. I miss you. I will take care of, everything." It was a very comforting statement. As a young lass, always taught to respect my elders, I did as she wished.  The pauses, placed ever so eloquently by her years of speech pathology. Listen I shall. To the cement land of steel I must go. And I went. I left a week later, leaving almost all of my gear behind with those that needed it, gassed up, and took Crue Sparrow back onto the tattered roads that had once brought me to what I had known as, well, paradise.

I began my 877 mile decent to my own idea of hell. Arriving in the sizzling summer heat of September, I unloaded all that I owned onto the parking pad of my mother's back yard. As I began storing in the garage, I felt the heavy pull of grounding immediately set it's rusty hooks in. The inevitable, placement. Being put up, taken care of, and set up for failure. By perspective, her eyes would ever know the reality I was being led into. I guilt not. I love her. I don't want any person to feel as though I did that day. Like a fish on a hook, a bear in a trap. I had explained earlier this week as, "It's like putting a rabid momma badger in a cage and sitting there, in front of her, boooooping her babies on the nose. Over and over again, right in front of her. I feel like I'm in a cage. Not a rat, a fucking psycho badger that someone expects to just go get a job and live a "normal" life. Fuck you! I don't wanna pair your socks! I'm not Betty Beaver or whatever the fuck her name was... " (And, you just met current me.) With that statement alone, I have summarized what, exactly, this town, the halt of travel, the chains of confinement and conformity does to an adventurous woman.

I pause, I sit here expressionless. Upon copying and pasting that quote from a recent facebook message I sent to a buddy; I have located that void. She's breaking up. the edges are worn thin, and my mind takes over. "The culprit has been located. over." static. "Can we get a location? Over!" static. "Just above the pineal gland Sir! Starting from the outer crest, about 9 clicks right in the temporal lobe of the left hemisphere, 3 clicks face, the olfactory nerve runs right through it. It's inhibiting her attention and emotional status. I'm surprised this girl can still smell things! Over!" static. "Call in the Spetsnaz. A strike of one, Zg842 at 0800 hours. Calendar date: Five, September, 2013. I repeat: A strike of one, Zg842 at 0800 hours. Calendar date: Five, September, 2013. Delivery day. Good work. Over and out." static....