Leave me There

Any set of tracks when watched with care appears to grow upward like a single fox sprouting simultaneously from four seeds. The paws form first and then the furry legs on top of them. Soon they join together in a sculpted image with tail and ears. Then the whiskers roll out like time lapse fiddle heads. This is a ghost. It walks in and out of view. It leaves tracks, and it leaves smells, and its story plays out on the snow. You cringe while watching its foot sink uncomfortably through the crust. You lose site of it under a low tree, but it is not enough to find the trail on the other side. You watch the fox ghost circle under the tree and sniff the bark, it licks its paws and peers around, hunting.

You can see the deer trail so clearly that the ghost dissapears and is replaced with the the animal itself. A sense of urgency and alertness descends on you and you can't help but sneak everywhere you go, with your tongue hanging out as you smile. The trail extends in front of you and the deer is standing behind every tree. Its hidden under every rise of ground, and its munching on every frigid leaf. You find where it bedded down the night before, its smell still strong and sweet. Its body heat left you a small bed of ice to slip on, but you step beyond it and the trail is fresher. The deer is watching you. Now the deer is inside of you. The ghost is gone, and the animal itself is just out of reach, but you know where it's been and how it went you know what it thinks.

Now you are the deer, you no longer look at the trail. You track by letting the broken snow pull your feet down and forward following the arch of the deer before you. DEER!

THE WORLD IS LOUD ON ALL SIDES BUT HERE THE HEAVY QUIET SINKS LIKE YOUR FEET IN THE SNOW AND ALERTNESS FLOWS FROM CARELESSNESS. CARELESSNESS THE SOURCE OF CARE. WALKING TOWARDS SHELTER DISTILLS LIFE.

But you only sometimes find the deer, and never the fox. And soon your tracks are the ghost seeds. Someone watches you form and feels your excitement when you ran, your anguish when you fell. Someone tracks you. Someone submits to you. Someone becomes you and you haunt them. Who tracks trackers? Who walks with ghosts? Trackers track themselves and walk with ghosts.

And you enter into the wind when you come over the ridge. There is no snow here, only ice. But still there are tracks. In the west there is a new mountain range. It is a billowing cloud bank, opaque and dark and ominous. It is behind this dark horizon that the sun sets. And now the cold hits even harder. You succumb to the bitter touch of icy wind.

And it is amongst the coyote tracks that you die. Your body crumples and you watch it for a time. It is still vibrantly colored like in life, but it is frozen. You walk away. You are a set of senses now, a set of instincts. Troubles of life are frozen next to coyote tracks and you walk along the mountain in cold pain, but with no self. Not even the bridge of your nose or the brim of your hat to block your circular view of the world. Senses only. Opinions are gone. A ghost like the rest. And you leave yourself there. Among the tracks. And you take yourself away to follow new ones unimpeded.