Going to the Flowers

After about two months of being isolated in the Intermountain area with my son, my mornings have begun to consist of opening my eyes, remembering that I am in lock down, and quickly switching my mind set to be grateful. This particular morning the sky was overcast, a layer of boredom had settled on my eyes, and a lethargy from indulging in way too much sugar had fogged my body and mind. I hardly ever watch movies, let alone in the morning, but this was just where my morning was going. The movie was Just Mercy. As I watched the depths of human insecurity, pain, injustice, and then the highs of justice felt only when there has been great suffering, my face contorted and tears flowed with overwhelming compassion, love, and disgust for the human race. I was shocked that a movie could have such power over my stoic self, but perhaps I was remembering that we are all human and all in this together despite our different types of isolations that are imposed upon us and sometimes in which we impose upon ourselves. I thought about the great difficulties that some people face, and I thought, surely, I can get my ass off the couch and do something productive.

Today, I would not be challenging the American justice system nor saving people from wrongful imprisonment and imminent electrocution. Today, I set my sights on simplicity. I needed something different. I needed something beyond the walls of my house. However lovely those walls may be, covered in mementos of my journeys and photographs and art that chronicle the growth of my son, I needed a different landscape. We headed on the road. We drove through green farmland spotted with A-frame, rustic barns, admired a church founded in 1800’s, and laughed at a deer on the side of the road staring us down and flicking its tongue to lick its lips; we looked up to the sky trying to determine with our mediocre meteorological skills whether the ominous clouds would dump rain on us; we both decided it would be all right if it did; in fact, it might be quite lovely. We drove out of Shasta County, out of Lassen County, and into Modoc county. If you know anything about this area, you will know this is not a long drive. We went up hills and down into valleys, and finally, we came upon the spot that I had passed several times in my years of living in this area, but have never taken the time to explore. We started the Red Tail Rim Trail with no expectation. When I began to notice the sprays of color on the ground, I knew this hike was enough. The trail offered forests, lava rocks, vistas, a small creek, twisted oak, towering Ponderosa pine and cedar. The air was wholesome and the breeze rejuvenating. I walked slowly on the trail, careful to notice the details of all the flowers that had bloomed and have yet to bloom; I looked ahead of me and Joaquin was running on the trail just to run, no other reason, because that is what kids do...run. Today, there were no complaints about having to walk and no revolutionary plans of forming his own government emerging from my son’s lips. We just noticed things. I use the adverb “just”, but really the simplicity of noticing is not so easy sometimes. It is so easy to walk forward with our eyes plastered to our feet making sure we do not trip, but that vantage point never allows anything else to come into our perception. Because our eyes wandered around us, we saw the ant colony that had made its home in a stump; from the rim of the mountain, we looked down and saw houses tucked away in trees and imagined our future homes; we saw the woodpecker hard at work up in the treetop, and we saw that the white butterfly’s wings were tipped with orange, and the flowers; we saw the flowers! The sky was still grey; it was the same morning that I had awoken to, but I was in a different mindset. Today, I just needed to see the flowers, the splashes of color, in a mundane world of lock down, political ineptitude, fear, injustice, and walls.