A Human Experence

I awoke to rolling thunder shaking cement foundations, moving up stone walls, threw a lumpy mattress, and into my belly where it pulled me from my dreams into the reality of a solo bed...I miss Megan. I peed and went back to bed to try to find that place where distance disappears like cockroaches when the lights turn on. The rain poured down and then it didn't and then it did...and then it didn't...sunshine. The sun warmed my face, briefly, as it desperately tried one last time to break threw the front lines of the approaching low but this storm had, for two days, been preparing the land for its arrival and the sun had little chance and was quickly smothered.

Caffeine. Food.

I am in Kos (pronounced Kosh) to walk the hills as when I read about them it was the first time since leaving Istanbul that I had been truly excited about going someplace.

I ate breakfast while listening to the echoing call for morning prayer and smelling the smell of newly wet soil and salty waves meeting their fate at the lands end, made a sandwich, put on my rain cloths, gave the local cats the last of the meat I bought for them and took off up the mud road that traversed the sloping chaparral covered mountains rising from the sea.

The land here is so much like that of my childhood and as I walked I felt as though I was walking into the hills of my youth but in a very far off land where communication is minimal and bays and islands dot the coastline like spots on a cow...I like islands and bays…and cows. We, my youth and I, walked into the hills and into exploration and joy and tears flowed and the clouds decided to join us and they flooded the land with their tears and together we washed down the shrub oaks and the chaparral and the sheep and goats and the rocks and we turned the soil to mud...we tore down mountains with our tears, made rivers and growth occurred and we stomped in the puddles and sang songs. We sang songs…and those songs are still being sung and will forever ring threw the cracks in the rocks and the breath of the birds…threw the choir that is the trees and the shrubs, the beetles and worms, the walking sticks of herders and the bells on the goats they herd. As the choir around me rose and fell a song from my childhood came to me, one I heard just before Megan and I left for Baja (mmmm that was nice) but hadn’t heard for a long time before that. The song is a chant and these are the words, "Spirit and nature dancing together, Spirit and nature dancing together, victory to spirit and victory to nature, victory to spirit and victory to nature. Radha Radha Radha Govinda jai, Radha Radha Radha Govinda jai". Nice.

We walked for a few hours surrounded only by nature. Than we walked for a few hours in the hidden costal valleys where old small stone houses mixed into orchards dressed in fluffily dresses of white blossoms with white and red flowers flowing out from around them like the train of a fancy wedding gown. Mist came and went from the folds of the sweeping background, grey smoke billowed from cracking chimneys, chickens cockal-doodal-dooded and the rain came and went like the thousands of seasons this land has participated in. A border collie followed me for a while looking for a few pets and gentle encouragement and he looked at me and thought, "this guy is lost, I’ll stick with him for a bit to make sure he'll find his way to the road." and when he was sure I saw clearly my path he turned back to return to his flock that needed his guidance more than I. Now and again an old motorcycle would sputter its way past me on this road that had no destination or beginning leaving behind an exhaust trail that embarrassingly dissipated into the freshness of the surroundings. It was a scene I have been searching for since I came to Turkey, the same scene I saw in Ecuador and Mexico only very different, a scene that holds the space and feeling that inspires my travels, a space I didn’t realize I was looking for until I was completely within it.

No camera necessary...I will never forget it.

From this scene I meandered threw torrential downpours until I came upon a gaggle of geese who, having heard I was coming way before I arrived, squawked and flapped and lead me to the left, then to the right and pointed me to the main highway where I could catch a bus back to Kas. I like geese.

Wet and wanting only to eat and take a warm shower I bought some vegetables and found my way back to Ani Hostel. No hot water... but the kitchen is fully stocked and open for use so I made a huge pot of soup that, even as I write to you chocking on the incessant cigarette smoke that pours from the lungs of almost every Turk in Turkey, is waiting on the stove for me.

That was my today...my yesterday was spent on busses passing town after town to find my way to this one. As I bounced along in the half size busses on the roads that make spaghetti look straight I wrote and came to some beautiful new and old conclusions in new and old ways. Mostly I came to the conclusion that I am human and that I am in love with this human experience.

# posted by A Human Experience @ 1:07 PM