Numinous

We talk freely about loving people, loving a favorite song or a favorite film - even loving a place. Can you love a road? And can a road love you back?

In 2010 I moved from one small Montana town to another - well, to a slightly bigger town - in my attempt to find respite for my crushing depression. Winters were brutal for me. Would a more vibrant town help? That's what we hoped to find out.

That year was an unraveling. If I had to look back and mark a time when life had its way with me, that year would be at the top of the list. Even remembering it now, I can feel the ache, how much that year hurt. And yet that year was also profoundly alive. And there was so much beauty, too. Who knew how joy and pain could live, side by side?

I remember so clearly how I sat on my deck under the moon, wrapped in a blanket, weeping with the night sky. In the daylight hours, I walked a ribbon of road, over and over, until that road became a good friend. She held me as much as my friend Sue whom I also met that year, and who remains one of the most generously empathetic people I know.

That year marked the time when I began feeling my grief rather than trying to understand it. I felt as tender as I'd felt birthing a baby, and as vibrantly alive.

I wanted to capture the essence of that year in a poem, and how that road became my companion. I tried to so below. You can let me know if I was successful or not.

In his book Beauty: The Invisible Embrace, the beloved John O' Donohue writes, “Is it not possible that a place could have huge affection for those who dwell there? Perhaps your place loves having you there. It misses you when you are away and in its secret way rejoices when you return. Could it be possible that a landscape might have a deep friendship with you?”

To his question I answer yes. Yes.

Numinous

In the low bottom of Montana
lies a town. On the outskirts
of that town lies a road, winding
through the Hyalite hills. It crosses
a creek. It travels through clusters
of houses, the quiet hum
of traffic through wheat fields.

If you look ahead you see waves of golden wheat.
If you look to your left you see rising mountains.
If you look to your right you see the path to town.

I walked alongside that road for a year,
walking and crying, walking and crying,
my hand warm against the weight
of my chest. I threw rocks into the creek,
hard stones of shame.

That year was the before and after –
when I stopped explaining
the ache of my wounds
and let them bloom instead.
At nights I sat, wrapped
against the cold, watching the moon.

My friend tells me – you must grieve well
to live in this world. That year a stretch of road,
an arc of moon, and a cradle of mountain
wrung me clean with grief.

I can still feel my footfalls
on the gravelly asphalt –
July's warm heat,
January's fierce cold.
The way a road held me,
the way I came to love that road.
The way I came to be loved by her.

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