23 August 2016

Flight.

Ringer, Northwoods Campfire, 2011


I felt its urgent demand in the blood. I could hear its call. It's whistling disturbed me by day and its howl woke me in the night. I heard the drum of the sun. Every path was a calling cadence, the flight of every bird a beckoning, the color of ice an invitation: com.  The forest was a fiddler, wickedly good, eyes intense and shining with a fast dance.  Every leaf in every breeze was a toe tapping out of the same rhythm and every mountaintop lifting out of cloud intrigued my mind, for the wind at the peaks was the flautist, licking his lips, dangerously mesmerizing me with almost inaudible melodies that I strained to hear, my ears yearning for the horizon of sound. This was the calling, the vehement, irresistible demand of the feral angel -– take flight.  All that is wild is winged – life, mind, and language – and knows the feel of air in the soaring “flight, silhouetted in the primal.”

Jay Griffiths, from Wild

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