Date: 2007-03-20
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Miles today: 0.0

Everyone knows that children are better at finding things than adults. When I was eleven, I worked on a small farm in Western Pennsylvania taking care of livestock and doing miscellaneous chores. Part of the farm¢s acreage was devoted to growing fragrant Alfalfa hay which was fertilized with our very own farm produced manure using a manure spreader. A manure spreader is quite a beast as far as farm machinery goes. It has the antiquated jumble of cogs and chains that one might expect to see in a torture chamber. It¢s loud and slings shit in an aggressive startling arc behind it as it trundles behind the tractor. Picture Jackson Pollock with diarrhea and you¢ve got a good idea of this machine¢s abilities.   One late summer afternoon as the light was receding from the sky, an essential cotter pin dropped from the manure spreader, causing it to choke and wheeze to a standstill. I was called on to help look for it since a child¢s small hands and sharp eyes are the best ally in any search. I didn¢t really know what a cotter pin looked like -- life hadn¢t prepared me for these sorts of demands. I scoured the field, hot and frustrated, and eventually found it lying next to a clump of dirt.   Though I didn¢t know what, exactly, I was looking for, I knew what it was when I found it. I suppose I had a sense of its general properties; a cotter pin is made of metal, looks a bit like a hair pin, and this particular one¢s smooth dimensions fit comfortably into the palm of my hand. I¢ll pause here to shamelessly confess that I¢m looking for something on my hike. Maybe I want to find a little more happiness, a little insight, or strength. Like the cotter pin, I have a vague idea of what it is and I¢m sure I¢ll recognize it when I stumble across it in the middle of a mown field. After all, I found the cotter pin, so who knows what else I may find? I read a phrase in a book that I liked very much: ¢I¢m trying to get all of my bird to land in the same yard.¢ All of my birds ¢ and I have many ¢ have been fluttering around in so many different places. Uselessly but elegantly. It reminds me of the pigeon wars of my city where the locals, mostly elderly and Latino, send out flocks of domestic pigeons at dusk to fly in giant masses over the rooftops. The goal is to get the largest amount of birds to return to your coop at the end of the evening. Sometimes you steal someone else¢s birds but, of course, it is not seen as stealing to the competitors. It is seen as borrowing or gaining through some sort of merit or strategy or artistry; a collective effort where every man will slowly win a bit here and there. The man with the most birds in his yard at the end of the night lends a sort of literal materialization to this funny phrase I like so much. As for my birds; they do not swoop above the roofs or rest in a coop during the evening. Rather, they are frenetic and exceptional. Nonmaterial and fantastic. And if they rested together in a coop at the end of the day, it would be a wonderful epiphany of sorts. All of my birds in the same yard. I suppose that¢s what I will look for on the trail ¢ a way to allow all of those tiny birds with their fast beating hearts to sit huddled next to each other for at least one night. And I can be the most fabulous thief of life. See you on the trail!