Like a bird

“Just as we can know the ocean because it always tastes of salt, we can recognize enlightenment because it always tastes of freedom.” – Buddha

I’m staring out the window of my minivan, sipping on a latte while watching a homeless-looking man play his guitar on the street curb and collect single dollars into his instrument case. The kids are in school and I have a few precious moments to myself between grocery shopping, running errands and my part-time job. I’ve seen him here before, playing guitar to attract those walking past him. At least I assume he’s homeless, with his shabby clothes and small shopping cart full of belongings. I watch him for a while, wondering what it’s like to be him. Are we really so different? Did he fall on hard times, lose his job and was evicted from his home? Did he choose this life because he couldn’t stand to live in the one I was tied to with schedules and politics and religion? He could be part of a racket where several people panhandle on the corners, switching places so they don’t stay too long and then heading back to their homes. I open the door and step out of my car, walking towards him so I can drop a dollar into his case. When I look at him my heart feels a painful longing for my own guitar and my own street curb, to be untied, to be free.

I reminisce about my childhood, when I first experienced my taste for freedom…

I can see all the way to town from up here. Over the rooftops and past the marshy creek behind the school. I’m as high as the top branch will allow without buckling under my weight. There are two trees in the front yard of my parents house that are perfect for climbing. Towering oaks with perfectly spaced branches that dip low enough to get a good grip and pull yourself up. I tried climbing the trees in the backyard once when I didn’t want to come inside for dinner. They were even taller than the front yard trees, but with skinny trunks and branches that were thin and brittle. I found this out about fifteen feet off the ground when the branch in my hands snapped off and I plummeted to the hard dirt below. I hit the ground so hard that I knocked the wind out of me and couldn’t breathe for what felt like five whole minutes. The top of the trees felt like another world, one where the birds were free to fly and land wherever they chose. I wished I was a bird. 

I spent most of my childhood waking hours outside when the weather was warm enough, and sometimes when it wasn’t warm enough. On extremely cold winter days the windchill could hit -20, freezing my fingers, toes and even the snot that ran down my upper lip while I desperately tried to dig an underground snow house. Finally, when I couldn’t take the cold anymore and my fingers couldn’t even bend, I would burst through the front door crying that they might fall off, my mother telling me to run my fingers under cold water, not hot water, to bring them back to life. I never really minded the snow, observing it as a new playground that would only last a few months. In fact, each season felt like a new playground. The spring thaw would bring crocuses that would pop their heads right out of the snow and as it melted we would be greeted with extremely large puddles to jump in. The summer was my favorite with its long days full of riding bikes, swimming whenever we were lucky enough to have someone drive us to a lake, and playing in the creek behind the Elementary school. I took my first dare at that creek, catching a minnow and eating it raw. Autumn was beautiful with the colors changing to reds and pinks and gold, and when the leaves would fall we could rake them into enormous piles to jump in. One time the pile was so high that the local newspaper came to my parent’s house to take a picture, each of us kids buried in a different section like a Where’s Waldo cartoon.

As a teenager, my love of the outside changed from minnows, leaves and snow houses to reading books while tanning myself on a large sheet in the backyard sunshine, running the roads of town through the school lots and out to the football stadium, and late night swims with high school friends. There was freedom in the outdoors, and I wouldn’t come to understand what this meant to me for many years. Why I begged my husband to travel, why I developed a lust for racing triathlons, and why I eventually moved away for more hiking and year-round outdoor activities. Was it curiosity, wanderlust, or God I was feeling in the current that ran through my body when I felt this freedom? I did not know. But what I did know is that when I was fully present in these moments, my mind was free from worry, free from anxiety, free from religion or guilt or shame. With each passing year I wanted more of this feeling and this freedom.