Afterward, a heron flew overhead.
He couldn't remember my name so he called me beautiful. I was standing tall in a windy field with my dress whipping around my thighs and my hair streaked across my face and I thought yes, he's right. Then I reiterated my name.
Another time I was walking in a different dress and holding my sun hat onto my head with one hand--such a windy weekend! I was walking alone, thinking to myself, unconcerned with the human chaos and the blustering wind unfolding around me. In that moment I made eye contact with a stranger, and we smiled at each other--those big, beautiful, open smiles that are as rare as they are wonderful--and may I never forget it: wind, walking, being exactly within myself, and then glancing up into the smiling eyes of someone I do not and will never know but whom, for that one preserved moment, I knew to be the most beautiful person in the entire world.
For three nights this weekend I camped in a field with thousands of people and shared porta potties, water spigots, and music with the lot of them. What I learned, though, was not about them but about myself.
I should go ahead and feel it all.
I will not break.
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