When I was a we’en, I ran like the wind, liking nothing better than the feel of my heart pounding, the rushing of blood through my veins. Through the forests and over the hills, gulping leaf and moss scented air–this alive–I reverted to the wild in me, to the voice that whispered the same soft rustling as the sun-tipped leaves. I drank the air and light and sound of this un-human world, sustenance and protection against the mundane life that I awoke to every morning.
This is how I survived my childhood and the pains I couldn’t bear. I ran them away, over hill and dale, letting the gasping of the effort blow them away.
But, we grow old and we grow slow and we no longer hear the wind that calls our name. Responsibility makes its weighty appearance. Age stomps in and demands decorum. We buckle and fold and forget the sunshine days.
Or do we?
Somewhere deep inside of me, on quiet nights, I can hear her wild howling–my wild miss–lurking in me still behind my many faces. Yesterday, like any other day, I drove the winding road home from work. The breeze snuck in my window and settled just under the edge of my skin. I put on workout clothes and stomped to the basement to lift weights. There was no room in the basement, a project had all the items from one locale leaking over into my exercise space. I dragged back up the stairs, longing for the rush of blood.
The door burst open and the wind blew in, “Run with me,” she said.
“I’m going for a walk,” I announced and of course they wanted to come.
Two tall lassie’s and two fine lads. We dressed in shorts and tank-tops, laced our shoes, and out we went…walking.
I didn’t know then that the wild in me had been born in my brood, but the hills knew their names, and called to their swift feet, away they went, galloping, a herd of two-footers and I forged after them. We dodged the trees and leapt over rocks and fallen logs. They laughed like clear water and bobbed through the rippled light, fairy-beacons, frolicking, guiding me on the path back to myself.
And the wild one laughed and is laughing still.
Lakshmi Bertram 