"D" - A Story

Today's post is a story about someone I met in my travels.  It's a bit longer than my usual posts, but I would hate for you to miss it - it's a good one.  If you don't have time to read it now, you can also listen to me reading it while you work or drive by checking out my YouTube channel or my Podcast titled The Trackless Path.  It should have been released this morning under the same name. 

I met “D” on the backside of the mountain.
We were parked along a wide turnout in the road. 
We had stayed there for the night.
And just as the sun was creeping over the mountaintop,
I stepped out of the RV to see him,
Not 50 yards away, his shirt off,
And his great bare belly glistening in the morning sunshine.
But he did not appear fat to me, 
Nor naked on the upper half.
He was exactly clothed with the thing he was, 
And it was beautiful and strange.
It was like noticing a plump groundhog
Who just so happened to poke himself out of his hole
At the exact moment that I glanced out of my front door.
And I knew that we were supposed to meet.
“Hello,” I said.  And he was startled.
He had been riding his bicycle down the mountainside
And had stopped to rest. Between his legs
Was an old ten-speed bike 
With a little trailer following behind.
As I approached him, 
My family came out to say hello as well,
And the children looked up at him in wonder.
There was something innocent about “D”, and childlike.
He fit in with the canyon and the pines
Like a wild thing, but harmless.
And when he spoke, he spoke in broken thoughts.
I translate it here so you can understand.
But it wasn’t that way that day,
Something was fractured inside his mind,
But perfectly so, I thought.
“Where are you from?” I asked.
“Everywhere,” he said.
“Oh,” I said.
“But most recently, Steamboat Springs.” 
“Really,” I said. “Well, what’s it like?” 
“They’ve got the mask,” he said, 
“They’ve got it bad.”
“Oh,” I said. “That’s too bad,”
“I won’t wear it,” he said.
“It’s of a reprobate mind,
“And they’re given over to it!”
And he pulled out a much-thumbed bible.
And quoted me chapter and verse,
But not like a preacher,
Like one who believes the thing he says
And isn’t afraid to do without for the sake of it.
“So you are homeless?” I asked.
“I have a home,” he said,
It’s here and there, it’s everywhere.
I’m at home in nature,” he said,
And I believed him.
“I’m traveling across Colorado,” he said,
“And back again, most likely.
I love the mountains.”
“Me too,” I said.
“But what about the wintertime?” 
“Oh, I’ve been cold,” he said.
“I remember one time,
I was coming down the mountain
And I was so cold, I thought I’d die.
I was afraid, and it was the only time I ever did this,
But I went inside a little house.
There was no one there,
And I warmed myself.
I slept the night.
But the whole time, I was afraid
That someone would come,
And I’d be in their house.
But I was so cold,
I couldn’t help it.
And in the morning, 
I left a gift to say thank you,”
I wondered what kind of gift he left
Since “D” did not think like other people.
And I wondered if they noticed 
The trinket lying on the shelf.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“D”, he said.
“Dee, like DEE?” I asked.
“No, just D, like the letter D,” he said.
“Really?! I’ve never heard that name before,” I said.
“I named myself,” he said.
“I had another name my father gave me,
But that was bad and I don’t like to remember it.”
I could tell that he had had a painful childhood,
So painful that he had to separate himself
From the thing it was.
And for a half an hour
“D” shared himself with us.
And every few broken thoughts,
He’d pull out the much-thumbed bible
And read us a verse.
He loved his bible.
It was a part of the thing he was,
Like the canyon, and the pines,
And the sunshine,
And the bike,
And the trailer following behind.
And all of it, I thought, was a thing perfected.
And I was so glad that my children were there to see it.
It’s rare, I thought, to find a thing so pure.
And just then my wife 
Pulled out another sacred book,
Not sacred to most, but cherished by us,
And handed it to “D”. 
“If you love the bible,
I think that you will love this too,” she said.
But I could tell that “D” didn’t have room for another book.
He recoiled at the sight of it.
But he tried to be polite.
“Well, I’ll try,” he said.
And I thought that perhaps it was a mistake
To trifle with something so perfect.
“But’s it’s right,” she said.
And I knew her intuition,
So I didn’t protest.
But I wondered what it would take
To integrate anything else into the perfect wild thing
That traveled up and down and over
The mountains of Colorado.
“Well, goodbye,” he said
When we were finished.
“It was good to meet you ‘D’,” we said,
“It was good to meet you too,” he said,
And we wished each other best
And then watched as he mounted the bicycle 
And took off down the mountainside,
His broad, tanned back glistening 
In the morning sunshine.
And it brought a tear to my eye.
My children waved and shouted “Goodbye D.”
And he raised a hand and waved,
And that made them happy.
We’ve often talked about our travels since,
And the sacred things that we experienced.
But I don’t know if there is anything so sacred
As the day we stepped outside 
Into the morning sunshine
And found the most endangered creature
Of the Colorado countryside, “D”.