We found a of map of the Great Smoky Mountains and picked a national forest named
Nantahala because we liked the sound of its name. Winter was receding and we decided to travel south to meet the spring. Hella and Birdie traveled down from Vermont and Maya Atlas….

“Where is the yellow teapot?” I asked anyone who might be listening.
No one answered.
I stood on the black and white checkerboard linoleum floor in the kitchen of an old farmhouse that was a couple of miles out of town past the school of agriculture.

In the beginning of August, Moon, Hella, Birdie and I went on an exodus to the promised
land. We travelled through spring and early summer in Moon’s white hatchback that was
covered in stickers:

LOVE YOUR MOTHER

Like its mythical namesake, Ithaca, New York is home to many natural wonders of the elementals. The road into town from the south is a two-lane highway that winds through the ancestral homeland of the Haudenosaunee (people of the longhouse) also known as the Iroquois Confederacy

The sun was high in the sky when I woke up in the attic room of the house on Aurora Street. The weather had taken a sharp turn towards winter and the wind chill was in the air. It was much too cold to get out of bed so I wrapped the blanket around me and pressed the button….

A boombox blasted from an upstairs window. My new friend Moon and I danced in the courtyard between halls. We were students in the first third of the last decade of the previous millennium – a time after many revolutions and before
many revolutions began…

In a time before time, the creator, who we will define here as everyone and
everything, looked out into the world and saw nothing and no one and — it being
a time before time — began to build the world on the back of a giant sea turtle.

We had been sitting on the side of the road for more than an hour — every time a car passed by we stood up and held out our thumbs but no one stopped…