that i am writing. this is the first of anything i’ve written about our fall 2007 trip to the red river gorge in kentucky. it will be growing over the next few months to actually include what we did there and with whom…

Oren
He started out clean. Cherubic even. His smooth, round cheeks and chin like porcelain. His straw-colored hair and pale, pudgy appendages shining in the morning sunlight. Then we hiked up the hill from the cabin to the dirt at the base of the cliff. He isn’t clean anymore. Regardless of our vigilance in wiping his nose, the copious amounts of running mucus has attracted the dust. The groove under his nose is a muddy river leading to pouty, red lips. He stands in front of a newly-cut section of log that he is using as a drum, tap-tap-tapping away with two gray sticks, bobbing his head and sticking out his belly in time. His bright blue eyes have a glazed, feverish look to them, but he smiles showing tiny, white, square teeth. Still clutching a twig, he swipes a grubby fist across his mutinous nose painting a streak of brown completely across one cheek. I think it’s in his ear too. There the snot/dirt mixture will dry like cement, and we will have to pin him down and chip it away to make him recognizable again. Perhaps in preparation for this event, he begins a caveman-esque diatribe, howling along with the pounding in a raspy, baby-boy voice. He is a little barbarian, a prehistoric boy, if you will, aside from his multi-striped tank top– resplendent with a dark drool stain at the neck– and navy blue shorts. I imagine him perfectly content living outside in the forest, in a wilder place than our little rented cabin in the woods; at least, in a place where no one would confine him to such things as a “bed” or “clothes.” I imagine him a North American Mowgli, snot and drool landing where they may and mixing with the dirt to camouflage him from the other wild animals, whether friend or foe.

Posted on January 15th, 2008