I was on a road trip across the country when
I stopped in a little village and met with a medicine man.
I asked him if he could tell me my purpose in life.
I felt dismayed because on this road trip I was to find myself.
He shook a bag of bones, blew some smoke in my face
and said to find myself.
My path in life I must climb the mountain and the
answer will come to me.
I set out, packed my bags and hiked and hitched.
As hours went by, I followed the path as far as I could.
I was so out of breath that I sat down and tried to enjoy the view.
Night was coming soon and I wondered
what I was supposed to find in myself when
I took my last breath and died on that mountainside.
For a thousand years I was a tree,
standing so very still, growing so very slow,
only moving with the wind.
Shedding my leaves every year for a thousand years.
They fell so very slowly to the rocks below,
and for a thousand years, I was a stone that
warmed in the sunlight and cooled in the night.
The moss came and went, only changed
by the stream that washed over me.
Then for a thousand years, I was the river
that ran down from the mountain.
As the clouds crashed into the highest peaks of the mountain
and the river ran down like tears upon my cheek.
For a thousand years, I shook down from the clouds between
the trees and around the rocks.
I brought life to the forest, the animals drank from me,
the fish gathered in my rivers that grow bigger and bigger.
I ran from the highest peaks for a thousand more years.
I was the tide rising and falling every day as a body of water
greater than the horizon.
For a thousand years, I washed upon the shore.
And then I was the sky, the sun, the rain, thunder and
lightening, the stars, and the moon.
For a thousand years, I was greater than the
oceans, mountains, rivers, rocks, and trees.
And then a thousand years later I was born a man who
questioned his place in the universe.
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