The sign said no walking on the land without permission from the chief, but we did anyway. My family chattered about signs left behind by beavers in the forest and laughed indeterminably ahead. I stayed behind and slipped off my shoes and with each step fought the instinct to turn back.
When we got to the sanctified springs, my family tramped down the concrete steps and splashed sulfur water on their sunburnt arms and posed for photos and bathed the dog. I watched and listened to the static of the wind and water on rocks and dragonfly wings in discomfort if not disgust.
From the top of the steps I was pulled away, but no longer to go back. I walked past a pit I’d sat in last time we were here, now filled with charcoal and scorched earth, to a fallen tree leading to the foundation of a hotel they’d tried to build here at least twice. It burnt to the ground each time.
Abandoned now, the foundation was damp and soft with moss and lichen and inside nothing but beaver signs. Creeping low on the fallen tree, a branch slashed my face just before I had both feet over the threshold, so I turned and sat crisscross on some solid structure unseen beneath the overgrowth and closed my eyes and tried to drown out the splashes and laughter behind.
Here is your culture, the forest sounds said, your contribution to a sacred landscape, a consumed resort, blighted pavement, and a smile hung in my cheekbones like, yes, it is, and to earth it is already returning.
A stinger slipped into my left hand vein and I let it in. My blood should be sapped here, I thought. I sat in the after-apocalypse for some time and when I opened my eyes the mosquito was still there. And the chewed-up trees and unkempt weeds and black and white dragonflies said, yes, let it tap the blood, let them lap up the holy water, if you will bear the burden.
I stood and turned off the foundation toward a perch of needled dirt looming over the falls and fell to my knees. My head kissed the dirt and my fingers made a steeple above it and beneath it I prayed. Thank you earth for the ground to kneel on and thank you for the finite resources and infinite reserves of magic some will look at and think, how nice, very cool, isn’t it lovely, and frolic in the magical backdrop until drunk dry and stale, then move on and forget about it. Thank you for the blessings so soon forgotten, gravity keeping us tethered to the dirt not eternity, ground to swallow up our blemishes, hearts to swallow our brains. My cheekbones swallowed the smile and my jaw hung loose. And they will do what they’ll do, sang the sounds, and cannot be controlled, and should not could you choose to, for they’ve chosen for themselves, and if their cause effects them for it, it was their choice, they chose some alien discomfort later, and yours is an earthly one now, to listen to the forest, a dying art, to be thanked for, but no better. And you will see where it will lead now. It is too late to turn back.
I lifted my head––nose and lips kissed the earth––earth clung to both––head kissed the air––feet the ground––then I leaped up the path to the cliff by the river. I knew in my feet where I needed to go. The dirt turned to dust. A sheer dune of roots and uprooted trunks rose before me and I scrambled up.
A dragonfly alighted on a thrust then rushed away when I neared and I sat where it had before I knew it was what it wanted. And it landed on my shoulder for a second after as if to say, yes, it is.
The spot was a bed of soot and not comfortable. One heel stabbed a sharp stick and the other foot bent under it into a rough root. I should not be comfortable now, I thought, I should be thankful. The view inspired awe. The sky and mountains and trees and rivers looked separate and whole. I was thankful. But not enough.
I should leave something, I decided, of me––blood, not just in a mosquito. I picked up a piece of kindling and pressed it into my thumbprint. The blues and greens and whites seemed more vibrant while I did. But I saw no red.
Fine, then. No sacrifice. My hand swam in the flaky dust. It is as holy as the sulfur, my head said. The five fingers flowed together, under a shrub, coming up on the other side as one waving line.
It is okay if they never feel what you feel. You feel it and are the ground they walk on. No one owns it. It owns you.
Very well then it will have what I do.
I went to stand and noticed blood had sprung from one of the discomfited feet. Fittingly I let it spread the red until it disappeared in the earth. I contorted into a strange position to do so then unravelled and sprung to my feet. A new fallen tree now pointed due north.
The tree did not make sense. Mangled roots dangled over the ledge, an eroded landslide leading down into loud white water. The top of the tree rested between the hedgerow of evergreens guarding the reservation behind me. Languid rocks tumbling into the rapids played percussion in the background. I did not know how the roots came to be suspended so high off the earth they’d once been rooted in, or what they pointed toward for me, but I knew why the trunk lay on the earth it had once hung so far above––because it was very much dead, now just a bone, like all things come to be.
And why know or not? It called and pointed to me. So I cleared a couple ferns and landed, barefoot, balanced on the bone.
And knew now what it wanted. The dragonfly had landed by the hanging roots. It flicked its wings at me pointedly and flew off. I wondered if it had been a glitch in my vision. I knew it had not. I was to sit at the end of a dead tree hanging over a cliff.
I sat. But still on the part of the tree resting on solid ground. I wondered if there was maybe a way around it. Maybe if I lean with my hands on the spot where the dragonfly landed and my feet against the cliff like a prayer, I thought, it will feel the same. But it did not. I sweated and felt the ground crumbling under my arches and the bone groaning under my half weight, but it felt wrong, and it was not what the dragonfly wanted.
I sat up and back on the safe part of the log but the inevitability of the sacrifice did not feel safe. Instead my head felt light and my body too heavy. The roots resembled tentacles reaching from a void. I thought against the sounds.
Maybe if I’d been brave and told my family to go back when I first felt it.
Maybe. But you did not.
Maybe if I go back now and forget the whole thing.
Maybe. But you will not.
Maybe I mistook where the dragonfly landed or what it wanted.
No. It is the spot you remain drawn to and you know what you must do.
I surveyed the length of trunk behind me––long, but not necessarily enough to support my weight. The fall looked soft––inviting, but not necessarily enough to survive. So be it, I thought. They will find my body, and all the blood I’ve left behind. And I scooted out.
My legs hugged the trunk like a dying vine and my fingers tread thin air without aim. And my head said short phrases. You are out on a limb now. You are hanging by a limb, by a thread, by a dead tree, always. A truck cut through the view. The sky lit up from the sun behind the clouds. The river flowed wet and wild. Their expressions gave me nothing. My stomach and heart and bones were empty. But the dragonfly I knew felt something. You are hanging by a limb always. And when I closed my eyes I was sure the trunk behind me tipped over. And I felt the pull of the roots back to earth.
But when I opened them, it was not, and I was still flying. Scared and thankful and sure I was where I needed to be, I sat there for a time, until I was not. And when I scooted back and felt the ground with my bare feet, even the crumbling dust felt endless and bountifully solid. And I knew they could keep the healing springs, and drink and suck them dry, for I had the blessing of the dragonfly, the beaver signs, the mosquitos drunk on my blood, the dirt crusted on my nose, gravity’s pull keeping us tethered to the bones, the dragon fly.
