Riding

"Eventually, I started walking. And I counted. I counted every step until I had left everything behind. The door, the music, the past. I didn't know what else to do. One hundred eighty-five thousand, four hundred and twenty steps."
"You remember the exact number?"
"How could I forget? Every step forward was another day I walked into the future."
"More than five hundred years?"

"It goes by faster than you think."


I know that I haven't blogged for awhile. I haven't thought about anything worthwhile to blog. But today, I remembered.

I was riding on the back of the police boat with my eyes shut. The hot wind taking my breath away with every strong gust. I can't open my eyes, but I don't mind, because I can imagine everything. Everything about this world I love. I love it here. The stinging of the sun rays on my arms. How that St. George sun I know so well reaches out it's tendril arm and embraces me in a hug of heat and happiness. The feeling of water spray on my hot face. I imagine the neon red of the mountains, kissing the pastel blue of the clear sky. I think of my friends and their wind swept hair. My hair now tickles my face and flies behind my head in a crazy tangle. I imagine driving at sunrise, how the hard lines of the mountains manage to blur together in colors of green, orange, red, and blue. God's work of art he painted with a paint brush, just for me. I imagine the familiar smiles, the conversations of shared memories, lying in the hot grass.

And when I imagine home, all of this floods into my mind in an inevitable flash flood. How could I forget each step I take, it's another step towards my future.

And me and Dennis talk about other cities we have lived in, other cities we have lived.
"Dennis, of all the places you have been, you have lived, which is your favorite?"
Dennis contemplates this for an eternity.
"Sierra, I don't know how you feel, but Southern Utah? It scoops you up and you know, you know! that you will never again be able to call anywhere else home."
"Yeah, I know."

I was lying in bed thinking the other night, about my past feelings and my choices I created from those feelings. I realized what it is that I am. Who it is that I am. I moved to Logan with a "Live without Limits" kind of mindset. Just like in this book. I wanted no one to know me, to prejudge me. I wanted my history to be erased. Once I was there, living, without any limits. I realized that memories are all that I am. All that I was made up of. And there was no one there that knew, no one there that wanted to know. I like limits. I like having people already know who I am. I like who I am down here. Down here, I am real, I am myself, I am Sierra.

So in between these red mountains and underneath the red hot sun, I will create my story.
Live my Life.