You're a poem of mystery/You're the prayer inside me.

So I'm stubborn. Ruthlessly so. When it comes to taking someone's advice in regards to music or movies or which book to read, I tend to adamantly refuse to do so until weeks or months after the fact. The lines that title this blog are part of an Iron & Wine song; Iron & Wine being a band I flatly refused to listen to, simply because everyone and their dog seemed bent on telling me how good they were. How I'd probably never heard of them. I'm stubborn about taking advice. I'm stubborn about letting go.

I let go totally once. Three-quarters of the way up a mountain face, trying to run a line back down, dangling from a thin, green-barked tree. Hanging into a glacial waterfall.

To be fair, I didn't get hooked on a 'pure' Iron & Wine album, but rather a collaborative EP called "The In the Reins EP". Iron & Wine collaborated with a band called Calexico to produce the record, and it is this record's title track that's caught me thus: a low-toned string harmony behind a deceptively simple-sounding acoustic guitar. And then out of nowhere, a deep, strident voice that sings over the instrumental in Spanish.

The singer sounds like he's ready to give up, and yet, is still noble, and there's a nobility to that, too, isn't there? Being left standing alone and choosing not to follow what's moving away from you. I lost my line coming down the scree. I had no choice but to leave it. The sun was out.

Iron & Wine came to Anchorage last year. By the time I caught wind of it, the shows were both sold out. Back then I didn't really care. I wasn't aware of the EP that would knock my wind out. Of course, back then, I didn't know why I'd want it to, why I needed the strings and that noble Spanish verse. I didn't know that without them, I couldn't cry.

The sun was out but glacial runoff is never, never warm. It was either this, or go back up the mountain. And the tree was slick, so I let it go.

It terrifies me that it's all out there now, here, typefaced and silhouetted against, well, the Internet. As if by my own hand, by choosing to put it into words, I've already lost you. Oh, not entirely. You'll resurface someday, while I'm still chilled from this fall, from the lung-crushing weight of the plunge, legs shaking, chest contracted. You'll say hello, maybe. Maybe you'll ask how things are for me. You may very well say nothing at all.

Because that's how cold it is, how indescribably cold, that water. And I knew I could get out of it, and the heat still beat down on the top of my head, while above me the scree rattled: another runner coming down, someone else either very confident, or completely lost.

I'm stubborn, you see. Stubborn about letting go. Save for that one time, just once, up high on a mountain whose jagged scree and dusty, narrow trails cradled me. Save for the day we met, the day you walked out into the sun from the confines of a coffee shop and shook my hand.

Behind me the little tree snaps back into shape. In front of me, though I don't know it yet, you bend to pet my dog, the straighten again. Somewhere in the middle, I'm holding out for the sight of the trail again. Somewhere in the middle, I'm holding onto you.

But I knew this was it, didn't I? I knew the second I laid eyes on you that in one way or another, this would be it for me. I repeat this over and over and over, to anyone who asks. To some who don't.

I turn the first track of my first Iron & Wine album on again. And I run, now, years after cutting my shins & bruising my hands on the rocks on that mountain. Outside where it rains, where the rain makes tears and sweat taste like the grass that grows where river meets sea. And sometimes I find I can cry.

And most days, I find, one or two things drop, like my body from the cliff face, like a bird diving for moths. Most days, I find, I let a little more go.