To See, And Be Seen

I have learned that cold is a relative thing. If I do not look at it directly it cannot touch me. In my mind I am at the hearth, tending the fire. Sipping tea. Holding the spine of a book in my hand and feeling its weight, the warm weight of the room around me. In my mind I am safe as a mouse in its nest, somewhere small and quiet and away from the world.

But I am in the world. And I do not deny the reality of cold. Do not deny the horror when you are in it, with no escape. Sometimes it makes me catatonic. If I look at it directly.

It's been many days on the road. I've hitched a few rides but now I am beyond the routes of the average traveler. I don't mind. I cannot bear the eyes of strangers anymore anyways. I am going home. And it is a journey I must make unobserved.

The snow began sometime yesterday, falling slow and soft but very, very steady. A few powdery inches have built up, nothing to hinder me yet, but I know I must move quickly. I thought I'd have more to climb before I reached the cold. It always seems to come to me. I am nearing the first hide, where I will wait out the night. The forest is peaceful and quiet. I am unafraid. Very much in my element now, in my territory. The closer I get to the cabin the more I am in a different realm: our realm, which I built with someone many years before. I know every tree, every curve in the path, and I feel them welcoming me. I do not know what will greet me when I reach the cabin and I do not speculate. I picture the little wooden front room, cold, and grey, and lonely. This outcome is likely and causes a twinge in my chest. But there is another possibility, so slim that I push it away and away and away because the hope of it is too dangerous. I could not bear the heartbreak twice, if I let my expectations get away from me. But deep in the pit of my mind, there is the cabin door, and I picture it opening onto light and heat and someone there with hands outstretched to hold me, who will kiss me and tell me I am good, I am loved, and I will never feel the cold again.

But, this too is something I cannot look at directly. There are dreams we must keep to survive and dreams which will kill us in the end.

Night is beginning to fall when I reach the hide. One of our secret places. We were lovers first, survivalists second, and we built many such secret places in these hills. This one is a hollow of earth beneath a huge fallen mother tree. It is laden with saplings and rotting to a beautiful red. In the half-light I can see it is overgrown and tangled, but I have no doubt it will shelter me just the same. It is set some ways off the road, to keep it hidden. No one will have disturbed it in our time away. We were the only two who ever knew it was there.

I pull back the small panel we used for a door and slip into the small cavern. Some rummaging in my bag and I find my candles, matches. In the little glow of the flame I look around: bare earth, the emergency kits we left, patches where the shelter gives way and snow has made its way in. And something new. Not truly new, by its appearance, but new to me. Something we did not place here together.

It is a duffle bag, worn and threadbare, the kind of heavy canvas thing you'd find in a military surplus store. It is placed in a new hollow in the dirt, where it is most protected, but I can see the damp in the bottom of it. I settle in and pull the duffle towards me. My hands tremble a little. The presence of this bag means someone else has been here, who was not me, and could only be one other person. I breathe deeply. The cold is looking at me. Seeping up from the ground I am sitting on. Working its way into my bones. I do not look back.

The zipper on the duffle is rusted, but this doesn't really tell me anything about how long it might have been there. I try to pull it open and it resists, but finally slides along on its teeth. The trembling seizes me, full bore, I am not strong enough to resist it.

Inside the duffle, nestled tight, there are bundles of paper in industrial plastic. I know what this is. I can scarcely breathe as I pull one bundle from the bag. 20's, 50's, 100's. Haphazardly stacked and wrapped in rubber bands. Not lovingly counted and sorted by a banker but frantically collected into manageable stacks by another kind of practiced hands. We were lovers first, survivalists second, thieves third. I drop the bundle I am holding. My blood is rushing, my face is hot, my muscles jackhammering not now from the chill, but from hope, which floods through me in earnest, ablaze.

I dig through the duffle. Tossing bundles of money around me in the little cave. There is $20,000 here, this I know. I could almost tell from the weight of the bag. Enough money to change the life that I let dwindle and falter around me. Believe me when I tell you I do not care. I am looking for something else.

And I find it. At the bottom of the duffle, wrapped in its own plastic for protection, is the notebook. Small enough to fit in my palm. Cracked black leather from years on the road and years now set in this hide. I rip it from the plastic with my teeth. When it is in my hands I hardly know what to do. I know that whatever is inside will change everything. Will tell me the truth, whether I want to hear it or not. I do not know how long I sit there, in the candlelight, breathing ragged, staring at it. But I must know.

There are many pages of notes and plans and grocery lists and scraps of songs and poems. These I flip past. I know what I am looking for. I will know it when I see it. And I do: near the back of the notebook, there is my name, written bold and centered on the top of the page. Pen pressed to paper so firmly it nearly tore through. In my lover's hand, reckless and looping and long.

It is for me. It is what I was meant to find. Adrenaline is pouring through me. Below my name, it begins:

"my heart. my fire and my downfall.

"i cannot apologize enough. i have spent years imagining you at the station, waiting. waiting for me and realizing i would not come and never, ever forgiving. i do not blame you.

"i am writing now to tell you i am sorry. that no power of man or god should ever have come between us. the money is yours, if you want it. my whole self is yours if you want it.

"there will be no explanation that is ever enough, but there is one. it is hollow in the face of our love, hollow because i should've gone wild to get back to you. should've torn down every wall that stood between us. should've fought until my fingers were bleeding and my legs were broken beneath me. there will be no penance for my sins.

"this is what i have to offer you. your share, fair and square. i wanted to leave all of it for you, but i know that would be a slight of its own. here is what you earned, no more and no less. i will go to the place where you might find me. i will hide this so you know it is me. i will hide this so you know where i am.

"i do not blame you if you do not come back. there is no reason for it. i love you as much as i did on that last day together, now, still, and forever. but i know that is not enough. and i know that you may have run out your love for me on that last day.. i leave you now, as before, with a choice, which is unfair, but you know that i bend wholly before your will and that i trust you to do what is right, in the moment.

"i will keep this land for you in case you someday want it. i will tend this earth, this hearth, this table. i will hunt the deer with reverence and take no more than what i need from the stream. there is nothing left for me in the world. not without you. there is only the world which is ours, which is yours. what was built by our hands and in your vision. if you come to kill me i will not blame you. if you come to love me again i will worship you. you are my true north. you are my molten center. i will be your knight, your hound, your sword, your shield. or i will leave you be. you have only to ask."

The quiet around me is pulsing. I am electric. I am burning in the dark. After all these years, believing I was left behind. I find I do not care about reasons anymore. Nothing matters beyond this: I am loved. By the one I have loved. Through anger and fear and misunderstanding and across time and distance. I am loved.

Before I know it I am moving. Shoving fistfuls of plastic-wrapped cash into a decaying duffle. I know the miles between me and the cabin. Between me and my man. The map is in my mind and I do not need light. I do not need water. I do not need air. I gather everything in moments and burst out of the hide, out of the woods, back onto the road. The moon is dim but my body is strong, I do not feel the weight that I carry. I am running. The cold cannot see me, will never find me again.

I am looking back now. And forward. Looking directly and allowing hope in, like the sun, like honey. In my mind there is a door and in my mind I pull it open ,and in my mind the fire is singing in the hearth and the most familiar hands are reaching out for mine and in my mind, soon in my body, I am home.

I am home.

I am home.