april snowstorms

it snowed today. made me miss the nearing spring.

there are three weeks left.

and I know things must end. (I think the reasons have to do with patience.)
I wonder why we can't get perfect recall.

anyway: the following are excerpts from my spring break journal entries, one month ago. I wanted to post them to commemorate good times with good friends. they all took photographs, but my memory is ink.

3/16 [after hiking Angels Landing in Zion National Park]

sitting around a fire, wonderfully, thoroughly sore. tense.
knackered. today was hard.

so tired. so cold and tired. but accomplished.
more familiar. more.

3/17 [evening, after hiking Echo Canyon in the late March snow]

the last day. melancholy glory -- good weather.
one last blaze of a bonfire, ashes of the moments we know we can't keep.
hymns. soft.

nothing you can write down. nothing the same as the feeling of now with friends and endings.

the ambivalence is so thick you float on it, hazy and dreaming.
soaking it in.
pulling all the threads of experience and knotting them around your memory so you won't forget it.

but no matter the adverbs -- no matter the photographs -- holes will get in and blur it all.
and you'll only be able to picture bits: the amalgamation of sensations and thoughts and emotions. not the one-thing-at-a-time intensity of the climb.
the climb over
in the snow and sandstone
your hands on rock and chain,
your body supported by gravity and friction.
your wet jeans. your scraped knuckles. your uncertainty and your persistence hovering around your aching shoulders like angels.
And the marvelous:
marvel at the capacity of your self. weakness and ability so mixed.
marvel at the laws of nature that created this place, this hole in the earth, this color in the rock.
and marvel at your fellows. the way they climb ahead. the way they climb beside you.
marvelous.

3/18 [on the way home, after breaking camp.]

slept perfectly. woke up and packed. drove away just as the rain swept through the canyon.
and now I can feel real life pushing its fingers through the thinning boundary of my vacation. assignments. responsibilities.

don't be afraid.

I need to do that all again someday.
and savor the joy.