Mile 1—

Gould Trail

What land, we hold. Sduisdi sgidisi. What land, we breathe. Vertical gain, falling through a just-before-sunrise so deep each headlamp a city, a dream. Run with me. Hadanawisda. Tell me you want when the beat of our steps becomes the heartbeat of each mountain, the sound of water through our feet, our hands. Each red bird a glove for his pine branch, the leap above treeline like pulling your lover’s shirt off and seeing ancestral stone so perfect you fall on your knees. Today, let’s run so far we forget our names, sigwu tsinihiwi, sigwu tsinihiwi. Speak in fur and feather, leaf and grass, long night holding us like a cradleboard of rock and silt. Osiyu iyunalisdanedi who see what space here, what land. Osiyu iyunalisdanedi who know this body a fever, a flood, an open mouth, a trail of salt rising through our skin, nylon, beebalm and bleeding until we pass the sixty-fourth mile, and after.