Date: 2004-10-12
To: Katahdin
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: overcast clouds

Yazzy's Cabin, Lake Francis, NH, a few miles south of Canadian borderSo that's how it's gonna be. A little insomnia, restlessness at 4 a.m. as my flight departure approaches and those few missed AT miles plague me in the night and conflicting schools of thought, "Oh, how much easier it would be to do now with all gear at the ready and me here and in shape" and on the other side "Fuck No! It's frikken winter already, could snow any day, cold, steam of breath, ugg!" and conflicted and needing to pee out i go into the cold NH night of near Canada, temps in the mid-30s and peeing look up at blinding clear night sky of descending Heaven and Whoa! Coyote Orion! My Patron Saint of the Road, always there for me on long night lonesome desert stretches to guide just outside my driver's window, out and up or just above if I lean forward over steering wheel and all those silhouetted saguaro cactus flying by or nothing but sagebrush in the dead west Texas I-10 night and Pow! Coyote spirit of bold Orion brilliant and clearly outlined, defined, he guides and gives me hope, a sense that what I'm doing, where I'm roaming RIGHT and OKAY. Orion, my one constant in a sea of constellations.But Orion hasn't been here this summer. Maybe it was just the dense forest canopy of most nights, shelters tucked in trees with little view of sky but no it seemed Orion just wasn't around, like he knew I didn't need him to walk the well-blazed and purposeful A.T. So he hid and I walked instead of driving and all was well with the world. Then Wham! Like an angel visitor my secret nocturnal Friend of the Western Road, there he is! Tilted just so as always and framed perfectly in the one open chunk of sky here in the likewise dense forest of Yazzy's Camp, far northern New Hampshire. Wow! Whoa! "What's that you say, Orion?" Go?"Go roll your bones, alone! (Kerouac, 1950s) Close the gap in the wide toothy smile of your A.T. triumph then come home to us, to me, in the West, where we will roam again the roads of Arizona, Texas, Cali, New Mexico." Yes! Together. Me and spirit brother Luci in the Beamer bolting through black night with great stereo sound and Orion `oerhead, we'll go to Bisbee, see Kate. New Mexico and Dave. Texas and Mary, Hunter, Stephan. Maybe even NOLA and the Stocks, but no farther East. Fuck east. God Bless The East and all it has given me, blessed gifts and adventure and Love, but time it is to Go Home. Or nearly so. One more week? Can I stand it? Orion says YES. Do it. Do it now. Sobo from Sugarloaf through the Saddlebacks and stroll Monday to the highway and kiss the ground and say "Woo Hoo!" For only then will your heart be content.I'll sleep on it. Another hour or two before bloodshot dawn and decision time. But I do believe the dye is cast. Orion doesn't just drop by to see me every night. The message seems clear. And I am clear and well-rested now, enough anyway, from Katahdin and stress of making it last week. A vision quest. Alone I'll do this one. Perhaps at last I'll see my moose, my bear. -RSM[Postscript: Orion, Yazzy tells me, is a winter constellation, thus accounting or its summer absence. Also, Orion is for me solely a phenomenon of the haunting, open West. It was surely the stupor of 4 a.m. that made me think Orion wanted anything more than for me to come home, straight home, my journey at an end.]