Another short passage from Wilderness and Razor Wire.
I spent a lot of time while I was locked up
walking this track.
We had a half-mile perimeter dirt track.
Ran just inside the perimeter.
And every moment I was outside my cell,
I was on that track walking laps around and around and around.
In a year, I figured I'd hiked maybe 1,500 miles,
like hiking from Mexico to Canada
in these tight little circles.
We had some pine trees near the education building
and I'd go past those pine trees.
And if the wind was blowing just right,
I could hear the wind moving through those.
And I'm thinking, I'm on some ridge somewhere.
This is "Almanac Dust."
"Walking is an escape that frees my mind.
While I am walking, the mass of fibrous roots that is my brain
loosens and draws a few nerve-bound ideas
to the surface.
Today, on a cold December afternoon with Alaska
sliding into the Southwest like a glacier and the wind
polishing my teeth like with grit,
I think about elemental things.
My body, like the planet, is mostly water.
98% or so on a good day.
But water is an ephemeral thing in the desert,
a gift with strings, or, more precisely, alone.
You can't keep it for long.
Soon it evaporates or transpires or you excrete it as waste.
When it's gone, when it's vapor, all that remains
are splintering, crumbling tissues, a residue, dust.
Calcium dust, phosphorous dust, magnesium and iron
and carbon dust.
I am a collective body of mineral dust
that wind once lifted and swept from dune to sky
to dune that once stung eyes and coated lips.
When the wind comes, I taste the bones
of those who were here before me.
I taste the bones of those who would follow me."