I am watching the sun rise over the mountains ringing Cora, Wyoming. A thin and crooked line of pink marks the boundary between mountain silhouette and thick clouds above. I am either in the town proper or just outside it. It’s hard to tell because there’s a decided lack of right angles or urban planning. Cora seems to be a random outbreak of sturdy houses, horse fences and sagebrush.

I have stayed for two nights at Painted Cow Ranch, named after the colorful statue standing majestically on a rock pile near the highway. My hosts are Jack and Diane, straight from the 1980s John Mellencamp song – if the teen-agers in that song were 60ish and had bronzed biceps shaped by years of tossing hay. “Sorry I didn’t see you pull up,” Diane said when I arrived. “I was feeding the horses.” Her pink and purple work shirt was sleeveless and fastened with snaps. Jack emerged from the house, moving unevenly, dragging a foot. We chatted briefly. My guess is Jack used to do more of the chores before whatever happened to his foot. Hold on to 16 as long as you can.

Last night I heard the poet David Whyte talk about genius loci, the unique and irreducible signature of every geography, no matter how small. Surely at this moment the sun is highlighting sagebrush on a thousand other Wyoming horse farms. A thousand other zealous roosters are launching morning prayers. Yet there is a certain slant of light, a vibration of air, a distinct layering of the silhouettes – gentle blue hills in front of taller gray slopes in front of jaggegy pink peaks – that is this place’s genius, its daimon, its soul imprint. I am the beneficiary.

David Whyte spoke at a beautifully designed theater in Jackson, 65 miles north of Cora via a mountain highway that crossed the same river eight times. I got to Jackson about 2 and spent the rest of the afternoon stocking up on smoothie ingredients and hiking with Tamar on hills still graced with the last of the season’s aster. I bought Tamar a chew toy at a pet shop to occupy her in the van while I listened to a genius persona read poems. I cooked my turkey burger dinner on a residential street near the theater. 

I am struck by the impracticality of it, as such things tend to be measured. I drove 650 miles from Denver over four days just to attend a two-hour reading by a poet whose work I have loved for years. I boondocked in high desert near Dinosaur, Colorado, and on the vast gravel parking lot of the Sweetwater County (Wyoming) Fairgrounds. I marveled at the Flaming Gorge Reservoir outside Vernal, Utah. I contributed to the economy by filling the van with diesel every 300 miles and buying ginger kombucha, my one walkabout indulgence.

When the promotional email arrived in my in-box three weeks ago, I noticed a conflicted response. The part of me that’s hardwired for poetry and beauty – I’d guess my third chakra if I was more knowledgeable about that model – stirred immediately. But another part of me – the good-soldier voice of reasonableness and prudence and 401k accounts – was already reaching for the delete button. I paused and considered that voice’s well-rehearsed arguments. But the miles. The money. What about your responsibilities? You’re not some indulgent Peter Pan. Do you even have the vacation hours?

That last plea, the one about vacation, is irrelevant now. But the vestigial reflex persists, like a survival adaptation baked into my DNA. How many times have I said no to what my heart wants because that’s not How We Do Things Here? How many times did I not stop myself from hitting the delete button because I am an upstanding citizen and homeowner and churchgoer who knows how our agreements work? Feed the machine, and the machine will feed you. Secede at your peril.

There is likely truth in that view. Perhaps I will discover that 401k voice is wiser than chakra voice. Perhaps Future Brett will come to curse Present Brett. In the meantime, here is what David Whyte told me last night: 

There is a road always beckoning. When you see the two sides of it closing together at that far horizon and deep in the foundations of your own heart at exactly the same time, that’s how you know it’s the road you have to follow.

With love,

~B.

P.S. GRATITUDE: Thank you to Lee McElroy for his generous gift of a fantastic backpack. Thank you to Mary Waters for showing me what Hakomi therapy looks like. Thank you to Eric Benson for his honesty. Thank you to Denise Melton for a primer on astrology. Thank you to John Wolf for doing research and sharing his automotive expertise. Thank you to Marj Hahne for her commitment to “making poetry hospitable to everyone.” Thank you to Amy Maxine for sharing her breathtaking photographs.

P.P.S.: POEMS from last night’s David Whyte reading

• Just Beyond Yourself
• The Bell and the Blackbird
• Santiago (“Even Australians are walking the Camino now.”)
• St. Patrick’s Well