WEBVTT

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Another short passage from
Wilderness and Razor Wire.

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I spent a lot of time
while I was locked up

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walking this track.

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We had a half-mile
perimeter dirt track.

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Ran just inside the perimeter.

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And every moment I
was outside my cell,

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I was on that track walking laps
around and around and around.

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In a year, I figured I'd
hiked maybe 1,500 miles,

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like hiking from
Mexico to Canada

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in these tight little circles.

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We had some pine trees
near the education building

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and I'd go past
those pine trees.

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And if the wind was
blowing just right,

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I could hear the wind
moving through those.

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And I'm thinking, I'm
on some ridge somewhere.

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This is "Almanac Dust."

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"Walking is an escape
that frees my mind.

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While I am walking, the mass of
fibrous roots that is my brain

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loosens and draws a
few nerve-bound ideas

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to the surface.

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Today, on a cold December
afternoon with Alaska

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sliding into the Southwest
like a glacier and the wind

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polishing my teeth
like with grit,

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I think about elemental things.

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My body, like the
planet, is mostly water.

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98% or so on a good day.

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But water is an ephemeral
thing in the desert,

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a gift with strings, or,
more precisely, alone.

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You can't keep it for long.

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Soon it evaporates or transpires
or you excrete it as waste.

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When it's gone, when it's
vapor, all that remains

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are splintering, crumbling
tissues, a residue, dust.

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Calcium dust, phosphorous
dust, magnesium and iron

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and carbon dust.

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I am a collective
body of mineral dust

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that wind once lifted and
swept from dune to sky

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to dune that once stung
eyes and coated lips.

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When the wind comes,
I taste the bones

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of those who were
here before me.

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I taste the bones of those
who would follow me."

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