TEAM FLAME, A Hermit Crab Essay in a baseball lineup card

Nine at bats.

BATTING FIFTH

Number 77, Third Base, DESERT DUST

(Coaches note: all hit or miss, takes a big swing)

Sitting on rocks, I recalled Gary Snyder’s line: “The closer you get to real matter — rock, air, fire, wood — the more spiritual the world is.”

Under the tree and above the hard ground, matter and spirit no longer seemed separate categories. In Wyoming’s Red Desert, I was not in Plato’s school of pure thought and logic, but in the empirical school where heat itself became instruction.

Everything was dusty, dry, and hot. Lizards, spiders, ants, and dust taught the matter of man as sweat dripped from my forehead onto my notebook pages. My pen bled into the parchment as I pushed it along and took all the big word swings I could muster.

Truth force said, “Your best thinking got you here.” I lay in desert dust, my tongue hanging out, waiting for a baptism, doubting my best thinking.

The old ones walked into the wilderness to battle demons. In my summer, I entered wilderness riding over air-cooled cylinders, carrying water.  Different century. Different batboy. Different dust. Same thirst. Same ghosts.

Tomorrow, batting sixth, number 97, Center Fielder, Shapeshifter

^{Burning excerpts from Stories Emerge Like Bears, a Cornerstone Press forthcominglyric memoir in 2028 exploring wilderness, memory, labor, rhythm, motorcycles, drumming, fire, and the sacred atmospheres and languages of place.}