To Salt The Earth Behind You
By Mariel Wiley
Self portrait photo series by Mariel Wiley
Where I was born, the earth is made of salt.
Put spade to soil and six feet under the brine will rise to meet you. There is no underworld here, only sea. There are no caverns underneath, no reservoirs. No hidden mass of roots that stretch for miles; sleeping, speaking, breeding beneath your feet.
Where I was born, the earth is a skeletal thing, the remains of lifeless coral perched upon its spine. Trees and people alike claw the ground for purchase, for when the summer storms roll in we might be swept away. Plants cling to the surface there; their roots burrow into pavement, curl around fence posts. Cling for dear life to that bone island.
As did I.
And I don’t know why, because I never lived anywhere else. That island was the only true constant in my life and yet there still lived within me this baseless terror that it would slip away from me, or I from it. I used to lie awake at night, tears running down my face as the minutes melted away and led me closer to the time in which I’d be severed from the land that raised me. It was somehow both a home and a prison, a mother and a tormentor. I had always wanted to escape that island so badly, but I was afraid of what would happen if I did. Of tearing from the ground the roots I’d spent my entire life drilling into pavement. I was afraid that without that home I’d just float away, lifted endlessly upwards until the blue sky turned black and the familiar sounds of life disappeared into the vacuum.
But to stay in one place forever is not the way of nature. Winds and tides rise and fall and the moon spins on a dime and the birds fly south for winter and the glaciers dance inch by inch, and even the forests move; networks sprawling outwards and searching for something new.
As am I.
And let me tell you, that first step out of the nest is not an easy one, and the chances that you fall are very high. But when you hit the ground and stand up again, you realize that you weren’t anchored like you were before: you’re free. You’re drifting, you’re floating, but you aren’t being whisked away into the void; you’re running -- away from the moments in your life that rose and fell like Rome.
Remember to salt the earth behind you, so that no more empires from a past life can hold you down. You build new ones instead, rolling awake inside of you with each new footfall into uncharted soil.
