DIFFICULT ROADS

BY CAROLYN STICKLEY

EMBERS & BARK
Being eighty years young has my mind packed with memories like fire causing emotions or excitement cooling down to embers. A small piece of live coal in a dying smoldering ash or embers gives me thought. There is a time out of our power when wood and bark achieve their purpose. Dyes can be made from bark and used on the paper just as we can be used for colorful good via our inner selves. Bark is stiff to my eye but not to the woodpecker with its strong claws and stiff bill for drilling through bark. Wood pulp ground and chemically processed into fertilizer to trees used to make paper completes the cycle of life. A wood block print about “I am the Vine” (John 15.1) reminds me that people are branches and God is the gardener, who must prune the branches so they can bear more fruit.

DIFFICULT ROADS
In my mind’s eye, bark is a mask, and masks camouflage soft vulnerable insides. I have masks in many shapes and forms that hold the thoughts swimming around and around in my head. Even my cell is a mask, that I use like a turtle shell. The turtle sticks out its head, looks around and then retreats to the safety inside its shell. The cell door slides open, I peek outside to the hectic day room, and withdraw inside my “turtle cell” (mask safety zone.) The loud door slams closed.

I watch Naked and Afraid, the reality television show, trying to understand why those individuals, strangers to one another, participate as a united partnership. Some test their mental strength or fight demons. They enter the 14-21 day challenge without any clothes, to travel a difficult road. The winners are people who may fail, but they never quit. They win or complete the time when they travel successfully to a road where they are picked up.

Bark is part of their challenge. It is used as a makeshift shelter, sitting spot, or as firewood. Mosquitoes are constant nuisances, and a swarm of cicadas fill the day with a chorus of screeching songs. It reminds me of the day room. Bark and branches give them some protection from the damp air. Darkness takes over and the crackling embers of the dying fire created splashes of light — like the thoughts inside my turtle shell. Difficult roads lead to beautiful destinations. | CS

CAROLYN STICKLEY WAS BORN IN 1948 IN WASHINGTON DC & GREW UP IN A NEIGHBORHOOD THERE. AN EDUCATOR, CAROLYN HAS FOUND WRITING TO BE ONE OF HER CREATIVE OUTLETS.