a magpie squawks at the top of a blue spruce while white-winged doves coo back and forth across the orchard. today i did not hike into a rainforest and forage for a glowing neon-green mushroom; i did not fly to new guinea to catch birdwing butterflies; instead I hiked a trail across patches of snow and, scratching the trunk of a ponderosa pine, inhaled a vanilla scent. i strolled in the orchard and spotted a magpie nest in an apple tree, marveled at wisps of clouds like branching red coral in the sea; near the scimitar of a moon, venus shimmered. i shoveled snow onto a strawberry bed; then a dove cooed — on a day when i did nothing but search myself and steep in each minute of the deepening indigo sky, i suddenly had somewhere everywhere to be.

ᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟᅟ — arthur sze ('scimitar').