THE VISION IS A PLACE | ✓ {complete}

Chapter 36 - compass grass

It was another night of tossing and turning for me, staying up listening to slow water moving over rocks. Addison had come back. I could see his face in the red glow of the embers.

As I lay in my sleeping bag, I found myself staring at his spray-painted truck, wondering about the book, until eventually it was the only thing still keeping me awake. After debating with myself, I couldn't take it any longer. I got out of my warm sleeping bag.

I gave myself three chances; I would look in only three places, and if I didn't find the book I would forget about it. Putting parameters on it made it feel less wrong.

The first place I looked was the most obvious; he had an entire box in the back just for books. Inside, there were history books on famous explorers like Shackleton, and books on wilderness medicine and survival. The Vision wasn't there, so I moved on to a Tupperware bin full of his clothes. Still, no luck. The third place I looked was under the backseat, in case he'd decided to hide it. I found nothing.

I was wide awake by then, my mind racing with nervous thoughts about what the next day would bring. I'd be back on my own again, headed to a place that I'd picked on a whim, based on the same ideas I had for my life when I was eighteen. I felt lost and I just wanted something to believe in too, if only for one night. I wanted to catch a glimpse of this thing he was leaving everything behind for. I wanted to know what it was he dreamed about that made him look so calm when his eyes were closed, despite having every reason to feel turbulent.

I looked back to where he was sleeping. His duffle bag was beside him, already unzipped. I knew that's where the book must be; all I'd have to do was reach in.

I closed the truck door, as lightly as I could, and turned off my light before walking back. I crouched down next to him in the dark. The hand-bound spine of the book was the very first thing I felt when I reached into his bag. It didn't feel like other books. As soon as I had it, I took off down the dirt road, towards a little clearing I remembered seeing on our drive in.

Deer took off when they heard me coming, their white tails glowing in the night. I sat down in the compass grass and opened it up to the first page, diving into the words, under the faint orange glow of my headlamp.

I read it ravenously; faster than I'd read anything in my entire life because there was no friction between me and the ideology it was planting. It was as if it was written by the deepest, truest, most untouched part of myself. The words, the ideas, the poetry—it all sunk into me as effortlessly as a hot knife through butter. Reading that book was one of the most affirming experiences of my life.

All my feelings, contentions, disillusionment; my fear, hate, love—everything I'd ever felt about the world—was being validated. The book was telling me that not only was it was okay to have felt all of these things, but that I was right and I wasn't alone. The book was telling me I wasn't crazy, or overly sensitive, but that I was awake. My yearning, and inability to satisfy the part of me which I was beginning to think might be fictional, was justified. The world I knew in my heart could exist, but had no idea of how to make real, was being explained to me in detail.

Kent Barren gave a name to this world and assigned rules to it. He described it in vivid detail, as if he'd lived there himself for years. He articulated a way of being—a way of living in tribe, with each other and with the earth—that made perfect sense. It felt like, of course, of course this is the way things can be. It made the way things are seem foolishly exhausting, and wasteful in comparison. The world he described felt within reach and seemed to guarantee a level of happiness that was foreign to me, but I knew was possible.