In some families, parents find themselves unable to enter helpful conversations with a son or daughter. Attempts to talk about concerns result in a conversation of blame through words or silence. The times for teaching and learning together are few and far between, if not at all. For these families, we offer an opportunity to significantly improve their relationship through a “walking” in the wilderness.
Fair Morning Spring
I recommend ANASAZI to everyone I see – struggling or not. Here I am, “GO TO ANASAZI!!!!!”
It is weird…It has been 6 months and five days since I have been out of ANASAZI, and there are so many things I wish I had written down so that I would remember. Plant names…people’s names…creek names…roads we had crossed so maybe I could go back to those dirt roads and find some familiar ground, some of the food. I miss the taste of my seed butter doughnuts…my pizza…my cereal…the joy of opening my new food pack and seeing a full bag of raisins, brown sugar, and flour…the taste of our water. I miss crying as I struggled up mountains hoping and praying that my mom would come to my rescue. “Hooting” is a regular thing at my house with me, but I miss the echo of it and the way it carried on for miles in the wild. As I type this I look down at my scarred hands and arms – scarred from endless bug bites and branches that I know reached out on purpose to grab me. I miss the smell of the wet ash when we no-traced. The pain that would shoot up my arms when I would “bust a coal” has not been felt since the last time I busted. I long to feel it again. The sweat that fell from my face is now only a smell in my brown shirt. I want to sweat again like I sweat at ANASAZI. The feeling when I climbed a mesa passing every group that was ahead of me (including the Sinagua Boys, might I add) is merely a memory. The view from so many hilltops is now just a vague picture in my mind. The desert colors have faded from my memory. And the endless hours of talks with fellow YoungWalkers and TrailWalkers have faded to a slight whisper. Some smiles I can remember but cannot hear its unique laugh, some laughs I can hear but the smile is a picture of the past. I miss these things enough that it makes me cry when I think of them.
Though I have left behind so many memories from my time at ANASAZI, I won’t ever forget that I have a choice. Whether I make the wrong or right choice, I know I have one. And now I know which one is right and which is wrong.
Fair Morning Spring
