Straggler

If I were a pioneer, I wouldn't be the most beautiful one.  Weeks of trudging through dust storms and flash floods would spin my unruly hair into knotted clumps which not even the sweet river water could coax undone.  Lacking a naturally willowy frame, my dresses would clump rather than delicately hang. And my freckles, they'd spread from my nose to my cheekbones, the speckled stain of  sunshine.

My eyes would be my redeeming quality.  A sun-shocked turquoise bursting forth from the mossy green.

The hunger pangs would get to me first.  The hunger, and the cold.  The miles would slip beneath my feet like nothing and I could push and pull and carry with the endurance of any young man.  But as the heavy afternoon sun slipped beneath the horizon breaking the silent hope for a timely, hot meal, my brow would furrow and I'd fall into a dark silence.

Reaching camp at night, the wind would pick up, shooting glacial gusts through my thin, ill-fitting shirt.  As sheets of ice crashed from the sky, uncontrollable shudders would run up and down my spine, my teeth frantically clacking together. Someone would build a weak fire.  I would probably huddle over it rather than endure the frigidness for a moment longer.

But when it came down to it, when the sun beat down or the snow drifted in, when boiled grasses and scavenged berries became two basic food groups, when blisters ravaged my feet, I think I'd be strong--though not entirely unselfish.

I simply believe that I could grit my teeth, say a prayer, and carry on.  I think those prayers, they would sustain me. I know they do now.

And should there have been enough room, or time for me to think of it, I know I would have brought along my violin. My prize possession, my first thought in the case of a fire.

 I'd naturally fall in line with a crew of straggler musicians: the silent banjoist with the beard of a sailor and a purple birthmark enshrouding half of his face in mystery; the plucky old man with a harmonica who would tell me I had the spunk of his late wife; the singer, middle-aged, in turns charming and brooding.

After camp was set up, we'd send our melodies to the sky in time with the crackling sparks of the smoky fire.

Stomachs sunken, but eyes alive, we'd  get our group stomping and twirling, pounding their troubles deep into the earth beneath broken boots.  Warmed and filled by the music, for the first time that day we'd revel in the simple beauty that it was, merely to be alive.