What's your story?

What's your story?
Mine is atypically typical. I am amazed at how unimportant so many of us can be. Particularly me, I mean. I'm just floundering along through life. Perhaps that is a divorce thing. Single at 53, by someone else's choice has perhaps clouded my view of where it was that I was going. Some of my friends have suggested therapy. Yeah right. That is just a not-so-clever way of telling me to pull over and ask for directions. Like I'm gonna do that. How can any stranger, albeit professional, tell me which way to go when I have no destination in mind? (Professional stranger), I like that. It's in fact how I see myself being seen by the world. (Actually, I am the almost invisible professional stranger, but that is quite a digression) I believe in motion. Just move, does't matter where you are or where you are headed, you've got to pop out somewhere eventually. Go like hell and, if you run fast enough, the ugly things you left back in the trees can't catch up. Not that I don't like getting lost in the trees. I was snowshoeing near Milton-Freewater this past winter, having only intended to stretch my legs a bit, and I was on the snow for 6 hours and better. Fortunately, I had my decent hiking snowshoes along and not just the lightweight running shoes. (you don't care if you get wet if you're only running a 10 K )Breaking trail the whole time I ended up in a stand of trees that was so uniform and dense that the light that reached the ground was like twilight. No shadows, just the flat (homgeneous) light that you see in the evenings or on the occasional early morning. So comforting, because it is so unusual, less (judgmental) then typical daylight. Looking up to the tops of the trees I was struck by that diverging line thing that always occurs when one looks up from the base of closely packed trees. The tops sway and lean away from each other as they climb. (I do have this optical sneeze reflex and generally when I stare up into the sky it is followed by a bout of sneezing) I just stopped and enjoyed the quiet. But one does have to move on, eventually, and I spotted a blaze on the tree across the way and knew that I was at least on somebody's trail. I also found some ski tracks and decided that shoes were the right choice in these conditions. Chest deep powder as one is inclined to find in the Rockies, this was not. These were the Blues after all. But the snow was relatively dry and had fallen deep and fast. I had a butt-load of extra bits to eat and gear in my day pack, so time was not a real issue. I was reminded again by the wealth of color in the blue and green range that one finds in the Northwest. Bits of that delicate lacework that falls from evergreens and lies like pale green coral on the snow brought this to mind. I don't know if it's a moss or lichen. I should, but I don't. The Rocky Mountains are dry and they tend to run in the browns, yellows, and reds. In the Rocky Mountains you get lightning every afternoon, in the Blues (more so in the Cascades) it tends to be rain. I remember my X wife and me camping near Lake Lillian and the rain drumming (again) on the tent in the early morning. Tents get so small when it rains.
One morning we were camped on the beach on Lopez Island and the sun had just come up. A raven was squawking in the distance, as they do. An arm came out of my X's sleeping bag and pointed, unwavering, towards the sound.

"Hear that?"
"Uh... yeah...?"
"Kill it!"
I took that to mean that she was in a good mood.

This more or less filtered through my thoughts while I searched for a trail in the snow. This was fresh snow so the rocks were covered and packed tightly, their actual shapes hidden by engulfing snow. You can tell when the snow is at least a day old. The rocks absorbing energy from the sunlight during the day heat up and melt away the snow all around their perimeters. It's always a little odd to come across a rock that is isolated that way. A uniform air gap from the surrounding snow as if the rock had been carved out of the snow itself. Immersed in snow, but untouched, forever peering across that gap. Separated from its' environment. (You know what's coming now in this woe is me tale.) I'm peering across that gap everyday....blah de blah de blah.
Now fresh deep snow blankets everything and smoothes the bumps, takes away the rough edges, averages dimensions, fills voids, eliminating the noise on the curve. It can also hide your past and begs to be written on with footprints and hands (and other stuff that doesn't fit the mood here). I always knew that snow angels were an allegory for self realization. People lie down in the snow to mark it with their own dimensions and leave a personal signature for others to come and find later. (note to self: face up when doing snow angels) A transitory and idealized self portrait, but aren't they all. (Like the ones on match dotcom. What are those people thinking?)
It was just about this time that I was approaching the trailhead and passed a couple tramping through the snow with a puppy following behind. He (the puppy) was so small that he had to leap from foot print to footprint to make his way, floundering, through the snow. A touching moment for one whose heart goes out to the trivially naive and defiant underachievers.
Gawd, at least I'm not trapped in somebody else's footprints.......................