I tried to buy what they were selling but it just ain’t fit me right. Like that story he was telling about the car drove by that night. Here’s a highway, there’s an exit. Share a toke. What’s your sign. You could pray that I’ll forget it but you know your god ain’t mine.

If instead I was everything. Breathing in rhythm with chirping crickets. Stomach like the weather. Each star a window to the wide world below. The distant highway rings, coursing blood. A magpie makes plans. A coyote sings memories. Eroding joints, the clattering of fallen rocks. Limbs in the wind, skin leaves.

Climbed a mountain and saw Shiprock again. What an incredible beast that thing is. Sorry I only have a phone camera but see if you can spot it, like fifty miles away.

I’m turning thirty-fuckin-seven this Wednesday! If you wanna help me celebrate, or just keep in touch in a cute way, you can write me at:

Kiah MGC, General Delivery, Dolores CO 81323

Gifts of stove and pot, from Rainbow and blood family, respectively. Stolen propane from a big box store. Fresh veggies and good spices. Most importantly though: the time it took to get proficient at living like this (Did you know that I was not a camper prior to moving into Casa Sorcha/my car?), without a fridge and on my own. Buen trabajo, buen provecho.

I can see the Milky Way trickling through the sky from one horizon to the other. All I have to do is swivel my upturned head. Even as I write I catch one, and another! Shooting stars among this glorious, innumerable density of incomprehensibly distant burning gasses.

The ravens are up to something. Forming a parliament or a murder, they croak overhead accompanied by wing-swept rushes that remind me of the first time their noises were startling. Dry wind like a comically loud whisper, sometimes a rustling high whistle, whooshes beneath raven bodies pushing through sky like phantoms. Thick, percussive birdsong from the juniper brush: a brilliant but simple, unseen xylophone. Gargled notes rhythmless; sweet melodious chuckles. Cluck, chortle, squawk, caw. The ravens are up to something.

Tonight I’m at a new campsite. It’s in the national forest, but the dogs bark in the distance like it’s a whole city neighborhood. Earlier I could hear the much more nearby campers, but not see them. I only see forest. There are plenty of ambient highway and road sounds.

It’s late now and the moon is bright and all the humans are quiet but the dogs are still at it in the far distance. I’m inside my car with the tent up when I’m suddenly aware of not being alone. I mean theres always bugs, but something else now. And then I hear it, a weird growl that doesn’t sound so much menacing as wary. Because it sounds rather like a dog, I immediately just say “No” in my most reproachful, also hopeful, voice. I hold as still as one can while shaking, barely breathing, listening hard. I have bear spray in reach but I’m unable to muster the will to move before the growl comes again, this time somehow more plaintive. It has to be a dog, I tell myself, as I again intone a “No” that would freeze any good boy. Then I move quickly. Toward the bear spray and my headlamp, immediately searching outside the car from its safe-ish confines—there’s still a tent at the rear—for the source of my adrenaline rush. I put the lamp in the brightest setting and shine it kind of wildly, searching for movement. There’s nothing. No hurried shadow, no quaking shrubbery, not even a neighbor calling their pet home. The far away dogs resume their barking. Are there more now than before? I shine my lamp uselessly into the underbrush. What the fuck just happened.

If shoulders could talk I would lean in, listen to the years. Sometimes the stretch between hip and rib whispers stories. I want to know how thighs get their living, what makes feet move. My ears yearn to press against spine, hear the details. Hands in hair, fuzz, fur. Skin smooth and rough, scarred and sensitive. The cracks and creaks. Tell me everything, please.

I don’t do much with any kind of consistency, but I sure do love celebrating the moon. Here’s my favorite when she’s big and potent, which should peak for the Harvest Moon about twelve hours from this posting. This ritual is relevant whenever the moon looks full to the human eye, so timing needn’t be precise. Buen provecho.

We laughed together on the phone. They had seen so many varied stunning artworks, described their detail well while I imagined. It’s called the Harvest Moon because it helped farmers work late to finish their work before the first frost. In the high desert the sun has retired but I sure can see around me. A solitary coyote howl careens sharply through the open sky ahead of the distant highway buzz. Across that street is Mesa Verde. Three moons ago I cried heading up, sang in the canyons. At this campsite she and I talked for eight hours one lazy day, I swaying in my hammock. Returning, to somewhere around 6,500’, the warm breeze reminds me that my world is the same. Only this moonlight demands to bathe bare bodies; in my mind it’s yours with mine. Ninety nights, or a lifetime: it took another week for my heart to catch up. Not much, so much, has changed.

I couldn’t tell when twilight ended. The moon took over where it left off. Out here I scratch down the days with a burnt stick on a rock. The cows came to say good morning, then the quails said go away. All the humans want to know is whether I will stay. Did you see that little kid held up to the net by another? He didn’t make the basket but he sure didn’t seem bothered. They hurt my face we laughed so hard. I’m smiling at the thought. I want each to be whatever we are, and nothing that we’re not.

If I couldn’t play along that time. If I cried in bleak frustration. Know it was your love alone that ripped through my pretensions. I’ve been in one spot several nights, and only just heard an owl. The haunting hoots are calming and I know you’re with me now.

You call me from the road, cat stowed in the backseat. You’re crossing this whole continent in late summer heat. The cruelty of apathy had me startled yesterday. There’s so little that needs doing but it all feels in the way. I need to eat more protein but I don’t want any meat. I need to drink more water but I always have to pee. They say they really want you but then they never call. I don’t want what doesn’t want me; I don’t want much at all. When you get to where you’re going, do you think you’ll know? I thought I knew all summer, but perhaps I moved to slow. If hurry is what works then I guess I’ll always fail. In Minnesota I began to pray, under strawberry-sized hail. Are you going through Chicago? Seeing friends in St. Louis? The country spreads out far and fast when you come from the East. I’m starting to familiarize my eyes with local birds. I don’t know if I can say the same when racism is ignored. There’s pros and cons to every place, and this one is just new. But it’d be much more lonely if you weren’t moving too.