Midwest City, Oklahoma 1952

The backyard is fenced by chain links. The screen door off the kitchen is scratchy and leads there. I tiptoe out. I am five and my mother and sister are napping. I know they are tucked in and wandering through the landscape of their dreams. My bare feet navigate the cement on the steps leading to the short brown grass. They are happy to feel the stickiness of the blades as they make patterns on them.

The sight of a hill of red ants awakens my breath. I maneuver around it and cannot resist the urge to fall on me knees to watch the lines of ants inching in and out of the hill. I am in awe. Their bodies are rust colored and shiny in the afternoon light. The spaces in between them in the lines are uniform. The ants are different sizes with different burdens to carry: a piece of rice, a cookie crumb, the corner of a bread crust. I crawl around after them wondering how far they are moving. There are more of these big ants than I can count. I am aware of their pace, their organization. I hear a song in my head as I lie on the parched weedy earth. It carries me somewhere on their trails. The lyrics insist, “I’m gonna live, live, live until I die.” I have entered their realm. The synchronization of their paths, the certainty of their faith. I do not know these words yet, but I feel the journey of the ants in the lyrics.

I am bitten by one of the red ants midway up my left thigh. It moves my attention from the reverie. I brush the ant off and hope it is not injured. I forget the sting. I am very much larger with this sense of the size of things. I crawl away from the ant lines. I am aware of the variety of the weeds and grasses in the backyard, each one making an impression in my knees and shins. I have made an impression too. I know they lie flat in some places, but will rise up like me, like my mother and sister from their nap.

The chain link fence is hot in the sun and separates me from the dusty meadow behind our house and street, but I cannot endure the limitation. I find a sturdy little stick and sit tailor style poking it through a hole in the fence. I move the stick in the rhythm I recall from the song, “I’m gonna live, live, live until I die.” In and out it goes in time. My breath keeps the beat. My eyes soften. The sun beams sparkles on the tall weeds so their brown turns golden. I sense movement on the other side. I keep up the rhythmic moves. And I prepare myself not to jump or wince as a mottled little turtle arrives and snaps the stick right off my fingers. I am not able to retain the stub of the stick. The turtle backs up. So do I.

The wind stirs up in step with the retreat of the turtle backing up from the chain link fence, the purloined stick swept from his mouth into the suddenly swaying grass. Breathing out, I feel the air pressure drop and smell the dust as it rises in a spiral upending the short grass and the red ants. So above, the flat yellow sun hides behind the clouds as grey as steel. The branches of the crape myrtle bend and arch. I stand up and run with the rain. It runs cool and clear down my neck and back, over my bare arms. Not drops but rivulets all over me. And I turn, the rain running all the way down my bare legs to my ankles, my spine tingling with the grace of the liquid sky. Pulling off my shorts and shirt, turning again, leaning into the rain. The yard was too small for anything but running in circles.

I could smell freedom, knowing my mother and sister still slept in the little grey house, their stares, their words, their judgments.

The russet-throated sparrow desperately spreads her wings and rump over her nest of speckled blue eggs. The praying mantis flattens himself on the matted grass. The swallows hover and dive under the eaves. It was as if all of nature were taking in a breath.

And then a rumbling commenced followed by a clap of thunder, the history of all the bolts before it resounding in the sky. The lightning did not hit the little grey house. It was the same source of fire and rain the storm had seen before. All storms were connected The rains enveloped the backyards, the roads, the trees ants, turtles. The sparrows were utterly drenched, stripped of any certainty of survival. Then, without a sign, the storm that lurked in the secret recesses of the wind receded. The clouds loosened. The sun sent her rays down to the newly baptized earth. The creatures who had not drowned looked up in wonder at what had passed and what would return.

I was aware and not aware of the storm and the sun and the lightning and the wind. I had stayed there in the backyard defying my mother’s cries to come inside.

I sensed my balance sturdy as the trunk of the crape myrtle. I particularly loved the dust bunny scurrying across the meadow behind our fence. It reminded me that I am dust and water. Humans are that. To live is to dance in that form—the form of the spiral. And I was dancing on the edge of my grandparents’ DNA.

I was utterly dependent on the temperature outside. The ants organized on the off chance that the rain would not pool excessively. The little turtle was protected from the wind by his shell. And I returned to my little grey house leaving my shorts and tee shirt in a substantial puddle.

We are a web. And each creature depends on the cycles of climate and weather. How strong we are varies. We all want to and are gonna live live live until we die at the bequest of Gaia.

Spirit tells me that the rest of my life I have been trying to get back to the level of sovereignty and freedom I felt that day.