Ahéhee'

I'm done here.  I can feel it in my soul.  My journey in the desert was finished as I sat on top of the world, at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. I felt it slip away.

It really is the Grand-est.

A week in Red Mesa, a few days back in Shiprock, and I'll be headed back to my real home, with my real friends, with my real life.

How long can you live a life before it is your real one?  Is it ever not?

I can only hope that some, or let's be optimistic, most of the lessons I've learned out here stick.  Clinically, spiritually, dietary.

I will miss the loneliness.

So this is my last real post from the rez, not counting potential quick posts on my final adventures here.  There's nothing else to say, I feel like I've said so much, and yet haven't even begun to speak.  People have asked me if I'm happy with my time here, if I feel like I used it wisely.

If sweat is wisdom, I have become the Oracle. 

I have to say yes.  Could I change things?  Could I use hindsight to optimize further.  Certainly, yes.  But all I have to do is look how far I've come to realize that what I've accomplished is good enough.

I've already spoken about my love of hikes with tunnels.

A sidenote: That thought - "what I've accomplished is good enough," - with the self-awareness that you must always be working to move forward, and that good enough for now means there's more work to do ahead.  That thought, I believe, may be the difference between despair and the joy I feel every day.

Seeing the herd for the buffalo, as it were.

I fail, constantly.  Not in big ways, though every failure should mean something.  I fail a technique in clinic, I fail a sentence in a conversation with a friend, I fail to open a lock on the first try.  And if all these things happen, it is OK.  I am improving, I am refining, I am growing.

Some segue into a thing about layers. Like an onion, or a parfait.

I had a plan for this post. An outline, or the bones of an outline.  It pretty well fell apart, as soon as I started typing.  Most of what I write is closer to stream-of-consciousness than any sort of coherent thought process; I just edit it in my head for grammar first.

Sunset.

This happens every day. Mundane.

I'm excited to go home, but scared to leave.  As usual.  In my head I'm still a chubby nerd who struggles to make friends, though logically I haven't had trouble making friends for a decade and a half.  I'm better at it now.  The friends I make now are of a higher caliber.

And sassier, to boot.

And it's not like I will be lacking friends when I return.  I just like the ones I've got here.  I know some will drop by the wayside, relegated to the status of "keeping in touch and hoping to visit someday."

That hurts.

Mundane.

Seeing a bird soar blissfully through a canyon is reason enough to visit. 

An odd situation, being forced into a friendship with someone you've been aware of for years but never spoken to.

Can you clarify? What are you even talking about?

What I mean is that I like most of my friends.  Well, all my friends, but mostly I keep friends around because I just like them.  Sometimes, someone comes along who is good for me.  I've grown to enjoy being pushed, being given the freedom to turn it up to 11.

If I see this view 100 more times, I'll still die a little sad that I didn't get to see it once more.

I know what's waiting for me back home.  Good friends, who've seen me lazy, who've seen me weak, who've seen me as less.  It's freeing to be around people who only know me as I am now, or as I'm pretending to be.

Fake it till you make it.

I don't want to give it up.  I won't.  I like how I feel, I like fanning the flames and seeing just how much I am capable of.

It doesn't just look like that all the time. Someone has to throw a handful of sand.

This does look like that all the time.  Except at night.  It's less interesting then.

Have I changed, since I've been here?

Have I made what's outside fit what's inside?

Yes.  Change is constant.  I've changed.  I'm tanner, now, and leaner.  More trusting of strangers.  More patient with plans changing.  I push harder, physically and mentally.

I make Krista swoon, and Jordan...scoff?

I don't even know what this picture is about, but I like it.

I speak more Navajo, though only a bit.  I'm better at speaking with humans, which is more important.

Do you remember Molly and Wendy?  Another life.  Nested dreams.

I'm more competitive.  Or less.  Actually, scratch that.  I have no idea.

What a wonderful place. 

And would be so easy to walk right over without ever seeing.

Our guide made us a tiny canyon.

I'm less scared of heights.

I'm more excited about failing, more willing to take risks, more forgiving of mistakes in myself and others.

I said more tan already, right?

This weekend was a monster.  Physically and mentally exhausting.  The exhaustion sealed my done-ness.  I liked it.  Push until there's no more pushing to be done, and you have a fair approximation of your measure.

I was pretty confident in my kayaking skills.

Perhaps I should have been less so.

We drank the lake water. It was tasty, and nobody got sick.

I like to know where I stand. It helps me decide where I need to go.

Though, to be fair, the goal is always the same.

Keep moving.  Keep moving.  Keep moving.