-

There are those who seek knowledge in order to serve; that is love.

[Bernard of Clairvaux]

-

Birth activist retreat. Winding up the dark side of the mountain, thinking the sky in Utah always looks that certain way. Women laughing, full breasts, hips, babies, patchouli and cinnamon in the air. I pound up the stairs to the lodge like a little kid, so happy to be on the road again, so happy to be alive, so certain this is where I'm meant to be. Blessed daughter.

I eat until I'm full, listen until there's nothing left to say, lay right down by the water and go to sleep when I'm tired. The sun browns my collarbones and food rounds my belly. When the laptop presentation isn't working, someone jokes it's because Mercury is in retrograde. The brightness of the sun reflecting off the mountainside wakes me up in the morning from my strange dreams.

Long arms reach to rub my back, hold my hand, brush back hair. Tattoos tumble down their backs and biceps, black and bright, ink stories and songs and images I can't quite make out. Women I've never spoken to hand me their babies and say, I'll be back in a minute. It's no big deal, but it makes me so deeply glad, makes me feel like they saw something in me they trusted. I cradle their happy wriggling baby bodies and whisper nonsense stories to them about birds and the sky and deep deep water.

Mothers, midwives, activists, doulas, all of us here together, up the mountain for a vision. There aren't enough pieces of the pie? she says, looking right at me. Then we need to make a bigger pie.

I hit the road again, all these things alive and bright in my head and heart, and head north.