the shadows of myself

There were many possibilities on how I would live my life. Yesterday I visited a shadow self. High mountains, low desert. Pine trees, hiking trails, twisty road curving up and across mountain faces. I love the rural setting. I loved living out away from people. The nearest neighbors 3 miles down the road. I loved going into my backyard and disappearing for hours on deer trails, exploring abandoned homesteads with cisterns and pantry caves. I love the hot moist smell of the desert and the clear cold nights. The complete connection to the earth. My love for the rural places is my love for this planet. For the animals, for nature not over run with human manifestations. Places where nature trumped human endeavors and I watched entropy encroach first hand, applauding.

I took to the open roads. My love of automobiles comes directly from my love of the land. I could cover more land with the help of my gas powered motor. I kept the windows open and had a long passionate kiss with the earth through the protective barrier of pavement and rubber.

Yesterday we took the same journey. S, Romeo and I piled into the convertible and headed out to Snake Jagger's Art Show in Indian Wells. We took the straight shot zigzagging through traffic, windmills, big rigs. I gazed longingly at the mountains to the south. The rough jagged edges poking up into the sky, unknowingly intending my return. Three hours later, I was carving the curves up the pavement, keeping pace with two state troopers obviously enjoying the drive. The rise from the flats of Palm Desert to the crest of the southern mountains is intense. You cover something like 5000 feet in 15-20 minutes. The land is gorgeous filled with scrub, washes, mountain faces, rocks, rock piles, pine trees - my words can not do it justice, let alone describe it at sunset.

We stopped for Prime Rib at a local cafe and that's when I met my shadow self. A person I could have been. A quantum possibility, lived out by someone else. The dream to live surrounded by more land than people. And I realized, that for every "yes" I've said in my life, to every adventure I've embarked upon and challenge I've met, every metaphorical mountain I've leap off, there is a shadow self, the part of me that took another road, the one that didn't leap, the one that said, No.

Someone so close to who I am, and yet, utterly different.

I see them from time to time. Sometimes they are satisfied, like yesterday, sometimes they rage against the issues I've resolved. Every interaction, meeting or observation of these shadows of myself, incites me to push myself further into the places that not only _I_ dream of - but into the places of my shadows dream.

Because, if they are living out an alternate possibility of my life, then I am most certainly living out an alternate possibility of theirs.

Comments

[Alicia]

Yes!