Explanation

So why did I leave?

Why leave the shades of blue?

Why leave the poetry workshops?

Why leave the promise of such Thanksgiving?

Well, I suppose I could offer many so-called 'reasons.'

I could say, for instance, that I overerestimated my capacity to resist the pull of the seeker-errant life (though I was certainly late in setting out that fall) or that I simply miscalculated the arrival of a time of quiet solitude.

I could say that I was afraid of my changing attitude towards death and ran away.

I could say that the valley was getting crowded.

I could say that I was ultimately more frightened by Camilla than anything else.

And all of these would be, in some small measure, 'true'. The journals reveal them to be so.

But in the final analysis (and this is the final analysis), as I sit here at my desk with a fresh capuccino and a small pile of receipts from today's sales, I am forced to face up to the reality that any such reasons are merely justications after the fact, justifications of what I chose to do that do not explain the choice.

The choice to leave was free and it was mine.

In the end, the reasons for any of our 'setting outs' or 'goings forth' are ultimately far less important than the miles that followed, the people we met and the conversations we found ourselves immersed in.

In that spirt, I am sure I will write here at some point about the day I left and the conversation with Brother Joseph.

I am sure I will write here about my last conversation with Camilla.

I am sure I will tell you about almost turning back.

But I will also tell you about a mailbox I saw in South Bend, IN that made me weep, about a truck driver who I hitched a ride with in Spokane, WA who listened exclusively to Merle Haggard the whole way to Seattle, and about a man in Santa Fe, NM who trained a mouse to sit on the back of a cat and that cat to sit on the back of a dog while he walked them around through the adobe architecture trying to stay out of the heat.

I will tell you where I have been, what I have seen, what I have heard, who I did meet, and maybe even what I'll do now.

But I cannot tell you why.