Day 40: In My Mind I'm Goin'

Day Forty: In My Mind I'm Goin'

7/20/11:

On July twentieth, I decided that I didn’t want a career or a home or a steady job. Nope, my true calling was to be WILD.

This moment of enlightenment came to me about midday as Noah and I surveyed around Hat Ranch knoll. The area, heavy with sky, was cut up with boulders and rock walls begging to be scaled.

Resistance had never been my forte.

Dragging Noah with me, I would momentarily halt our survey to scrabble up and down ledges, testing the steadiness of leaning rocks with a variety of flailing hops. Perching on a cliff-dwelling rock, I pushed against the wind and soaked in the blue-green view of the KNF, a pair of shed antlers (my third find of the summer) strapped to my pack.

I guess a little bit of wildness settled itself over Hat Ranch knoll too. After a day of traversing craggy hills and dipping down into shaded lowlands, we stumbled across the sun-bleached bones of four horses, tufts of hair still sprouting from above their dark hooves. The skulls were large, the teeth still anchored in their jaws lending them an oddly predatory look. Eyeing a disjointed leg, I couldn’t keep myself from testing the bend, more than a little intrigued by the smoothness of the motion and the way the bones hinged together.

A few hours later, my commitment to maintaining a WILD perspective was tested as I watched Joe, Quentin and Noah descend in a mild frenzy on our Fratelli’s appetizers and pizzas. Elbows thrown, I entered into the fray and emerged with a plate of pure deliciousness. Quentin was resigned to leaving us in the morning, and this was our final hooray. Quentin was homeward bound to North Carolina, where he would be packing up for Knoxville and a long awaited return to academia as a graduate student at the University of Tennessee.

Joe—Q’s other half—would have been inconsolable had he not been hurriedly devouring cheese and marinara sauce.

After unleashing our more animal selves upon a truly gigantic feast, we poked around Flag, let Quentin say his final goodbyes to Peace Outfitters, and headed for home.

Driving the familiar stretch of highway back to Williams, Q was already half gone to Carolina, while in my mind I thought about the earlier afternoon and how I was always going to be fighting to be just a little bit WILD.

Photos: 1. & 4. Horse bones 2. & 3. Hat Ranch knoll views 5. Final hoorays