“Where did you go to school?”
An innocent question, with a complicated answer.
A start.
A stop.
A lesson learned in the unexplained reality of being “other.”
No, I cannot and will not sit docile and tame in your classroom.
Breaking free.
Escaping.
The tiny bookcase built into chuck box and cot built into bed.
The Buffalo robes and books and maps and unyielding joy of wildness and no end in mind.
That first tinge of fear as I lost truck breaks outside of Kennedy meadows, two innocent hippie hitchhikers crammed into the cab.
That heady feeling of dancing around a sagebrush fire along the outskirts of Mono Lake.
The roads traveled and national forests called home.
Comfortable and comforting.
Blue skies and hailstorms and swimming naked as a jaybird.
Washing bleach blonde hair in Yellowstone rivers and lakes.
Waking up to Buffalo, to elk, to crows in tipi poles and funny tan lines on wrists and ankles.
I never saw the inside of one classroom during that undergraduate experience.
Education was written by adventure and learned through neon light lit shows.
Nights spent in a bedroll.
Wondering at what “normal” must feel like.
Would it be easier?
Cleaner?
Calmer?
Safer?
“Where did you go to school?”
America.
America with her blacktop roads and small town diners.
America with her rough hands and late night summer rodeos and early morning campfires. America with her imperfections and truth and beauty and wildness.
All waiting right outside that little leer camper window and truck tailgate.
All for me and never just me, America.
I went to school in America.
xoxo
AB
