The glossy pages of outdoor magazines are the admission tickets. Nylon and Gore-Tex nomads. Lovers of the adventurous life with paid time off. Communing with nature while eating astronaut food under the stars. Always keep it moving. You have to match the speed of gravity to stay in orbit. Don’t stop, or you might get lost… or just displaced.
Back to the land hippies spring up like flowers in shelters built from the ruins of industry scattered across the landscape. Avoid the rat race. Avoid the poisoned food. Avoid shaving. Avoid scary Jack who lost his mind way up the creek one day and has been hunting for it ever since. Avoid going to town if possible. And never go south to the Big City or you will probably get lost… or just displaced.
Pioneering profiteers rumbling the earth with the crash of money trees. Damn the creeks, and damn it all. Mill the timber and milk the earth for all it’s worth. God knows it will waste no time consuming you when your time on her surface is done. So do what you can now for the ones you love. And keep an eye on your little ones. Don’t let them venture too far from their homes. They could easily get lost… or just displaced.
Smoke and fire. Souls released to the heavens as blood returns to earth. Apologies for mentioning a massacre, but nothing can erase the memory of a small child who hid from the light-skinned newcomers and watched her older sisters heart cruelly cut from her chest and her body and heart both left for dead so that when the child finally emerged after the murderers were gone she knew not what else to do so she stood in the blackened grass and held her sisters heart in her hands. And cried. Lost. And now displaced.
Homes of rough hewn redwood full of drying fish and baskets full of baby sisters laughter. A bird that visited each morning, turning it’s head just so. They thought it silly. It thought them beautiful. The grownups had worries that traced back for a thousand years at least. The little ones barely remembered breakfast and wanted life to stay like this forever. So they decided to never grow up because if they did, all would be lost… or just displaced.
-Matt Beard