Rivers of string, taut and echoing between my ear drums: how can I tug them aside when each pull, every pinch reverberates deeper? Useless plucking. But no keeping from it, I fear, as the quickening ticks toward midnight surround us. 

I’ve been telling people all week, hundreds at a time, that something deep is shifting. 
Not yet shifted, but lurching back. A reversal brought on by our collective exhaustion. 
A growing awareness that this constant rush forward hasn’t gotten us as far as we hoped. 
Or maybe took us well beyond what we sought. 
Reassuring others, audiences of well-intentioned, nervous folks, that I sense a rejection of the pushing-and-shoving. 
Or maybe a moderation: adjustments to find stability and surer footing, a slower path forward as the thicket tangles further around us. 
Maybe just reassuring myself. 
I know I don’t imagine it. 
I see real signs that [something] fills and firms. 
It slips into niches and flows over familiar ground in new ways. 
Far from what it was, it slowly and sometimes painfully learns what it will be, tracking some broader change.

The orangery’s caretaker seeks branches to support the juiciest fruit, cuts away the weaker limbs, pulls up stunted shoots. No moment to spare for unsettled earth or freshly shorn wood. No deeper silence or solace to seek. Old growth — so deeply connected, so often visited, so nourishing and wise — can freeze and crack when it can no longer sustain. Trees must fall, bury themselves with old fruit and rotted rind, to nourish anew. The fittest fruit-bearers, the best situated, strongest bred and heaviest fed find light in a crowded orchard, closing out brethren from the sun. Encircled and trimmed. But connected too, if to continue.

The snowy fields east of Denver lay dormant, recharging and regaining strength for the return of spring’s warmth. 
Snow that barely stopped in the few days of my visit slips into the earth, precious. 
It crowded mountains west of the city, slowing travel but building the coffers of ski towns and cozy pubs, caches to clutch when summer’s quiet comes. 
Up in Fort Collins, I joked with locals, not believing my luck. 
Three of four times, if my memory serves, I’ve brought rain or snow to the high, dry land. 
The sight of rising water approaching the underside of bridges, footage of rushing mud overtaking roads and homes still haunt me from my first visit, seven years ago. 
Maybe don’t come back too often, the sweet and helpful shop clerk offered with a smile, suddenly understanding why I declined to join their loyalty rewards program.

High-pitched screeches and squeals intensify, speeding and rising to their inevitable end. Quiet. Breath. 

Posted up and laughing with leaders of a local brewery, I laid out my thesis. 
At the same time that the growth of US craft beer began its descent to a lower and slower flight path, this country also confronted a new reality. 
We faced old truths, long ignored. 
Centuries-old fissures resurfaced and American discourse fell into them. 
Every conversation suddenly held a heightened, often hidden tension. 
Taut and tautening, relationships snapped under the strain. 
And just as many rose up in that space, filling the void with strength and clarity, others of us retreated into ourselves, unsure how to speak at all. 
Some kept up the rush, unwilling to slow and reaping the rewards whenever raising the rhetorical ante won them the pot. 
But I folded. 
And I followed along as so many other kindred and thoughtful fellows quieted. 
Slipped back. 
Saddened and shook. 

A year passed and another and the struggle took our comfort and it took lives. 
Grieving deepened our divide, but forged new friendships too. 
Tenuous, perhaps, and loose. 
Something to silently depend on at least, and to quietly feed plans. 
And as another year passed, our inevitable rebirth approached. 
We knew our quiet couldn’t keep forever and we found ways to push through the newly warmed soil and into the sky. 
Aware of the unpredictable climate above, steadied by the bravery of those who weathered it all along, we return, insistent on rebuilding what we feared lost. 

I see it. I know I see it. I know I’m not alone in the time I took away and in the surer footing I feel I’ve found. For myself and for us. Four years further, we finally can reclaim the fields we left barren and weedy. We sprout. And as we do, we send word. It’s time. 

Dark plains give way to the lights of Des Moines. 
And just as quickly the darkness returns. 
I know full well the breath they’re finally taking down there, having hung on to hope as the intensity grew, the pace quickened, the spotlight of a nation burning bright on their flushed faces, shoulders burdened by imperfect updates to old systems; they retreat into familiar obscurity. 
Quiet. 
Breath. 
Uncertain of the next chord to strike, but somehow relieved all the same. 
The reflection of my hands on pen on page on pull-down table top blots out the blackness below. 
The nose-tip of our plane-as-icon slides over Chicago, stretching a string of dots across the flight map in front of me.
Stitching up a wound, raw but ready to heal.