topography is a strange concept

topography is a strange concept to be so normalized in civilization, yet applied in such a limited way.

the house where I grew up had a steep hill above it

that continued on below, with our narrow driveway curving so slowly down to the road

that one dark, stormy night a stranger mistook it for a turn in the road itself

and had to come in to get reoriented in our home that happened to have the power out

and several kerosene lanterns set on tables

casting their murky, honeyed pools of illumination

far below the opaque space created by our 1920’s craftsman’s vaulted ceilings.

little did that visitor know that a dozen or so yards up from where she had parked her car

under silently swaying 80-foot monterey pines,

the land dropped down into a brambly ravine with a barely-accessible, unnamed creek trickling through it

before it rose up again to the aptly-named snake road

with its thin crescent of a city park, named shepherd canyon park

after that abyss it abutted I suppose,

mostly used by practicing soccer teams, whose colorful uniforms I saw flashing between trees in the distance

on the weekends from our side kitchen windows.

nor could she know that across the street from the bottom of our driveway,

just past the guardrail and a tight moiré pattern of acacias and broom bushes,

the land dropped down abruptly again to a second creek, where my neighborhood friends and I also played,

then rose up steeply to the edge of the middle school playing field, an incline I happily scrambled up many a time

for more rigorous exercise than I ever partook of in p.e. classes over there.

and of course how could she know about all the contours of that land,

owned by my parents or not, that I explored so much as a child

that I and my friends and even the dogs that ran through the woods with us

were more qualified to be cartographers of than the county assessor or any other adult surveyors in name only

of realms they had no rich, quotidian and magical, lived experiences with —

how could she, on that dark night or on the brightest day, or anyone really

know the nooks and crannies of a landscape shaped and shadowed by the footsteps of a small, specialized group?

this is true of so much more too:

there is the topography of family dynamics and history together.

there is the topography of our relationship with the love of our life.

there is the topography of our internal world of thoughts, emotions, and intentions.

each seems flat and linear to an outsider, with maybe some oblong concentric circles sketched in here and there

to indicate sudden drop-offs and ascents necessary for traversing this foreign territory,

but none but us can look across those

and know what a miracle it was to have made it to the other side.