Now mostly scraped bare, the blackberries still fight tenaciously to keep the ground covered and green. Even though these few acres of bush could not be called beautiful, it is not necessary for this re-wilding to be beautiful, it is only necessary for wild nature to always have another chance. Now there are piles of broken vines and branches, trunks piled in rows, waiting to be carted away, but there is no away. I sit beneath a large maple, tagged with yellow tape with the word “Caution”; a few of the larger cottonwoods are also marked.

I notice the wind blowing from the West, and it feels like a prairie wind. I feel my heart respond, lonely, and I wish to be blown somewhere wild. This Here is painful, yet in the distance the larks still sing of freedom. In the Southeast the early summer cumulus hide the North Cascades, thunderheads bringing memories of Colorado and the road to Ridgway.

Depression hangs over me and I feel my heart in my chest, my brow furrowed and lips tight, eyes squinting, and in my mind the words of the Griefwalker: “Surely it is knowable, that the time to change our ways has passed.” Continuing with the recognition that we have failed, and that what remains to be revealed is the manner of our failure.

My thoughts do not serve me well; I know too much and have not a heart big enough to hold all of this. Then I remember the breath, and the life in it. One day I know l will breathe out and not breathe in again, so now I let my breath out, wait, and feel it come in, opening me to the new moment, the life that is here in this broken place. And I am at home.