This path seems to be going further than I had anticipated when I started out. My book group is still sitting at the picnic table, probably, talking about the channeled scabland formations and the significance of Deep Lake. This sagebrush is so interesting though, the patches for some reason are comforting, and I keep walking, twisting kind of.  The light is changing.  I crouch down a bit, getting closer to the earth as I follow the rocks and veins in the rocks and the grasses and the sound of the wind in the grasses.  My steps are hearing, it seems, a song, and I can’t quite hear it completely, and continue walking.  The song is coming from what appears to be a small portal in the rock face of the cliff, next to the lake here.  Climbing into it, moving physically, actually inside the rock itself, and more strangely, through to the other side.

Sunlight.  There is sun here.  I descend to the largest rock, giant and glowing in it.  Rocks of all sizes, twisting squares in layers neither random nor predictable, accrete protectively around this small home, bringing water here, ringing this curious sky.  I leave my rock to look under one of the larger bushes, finding some small seeds among the roots, blown here by the wind.  I smell the place where there is water.  I scurry up to the edge of this place in the mornings, watching others come and go, scattering their cans and poison and taking their fish and thoughts.  At night I curl into my safe, warm place in the dark rock, nestle my nose into my breastfur, and dream.