It’s
back to the fields we go. First there are some men working on some hydro lines
and the big trucks have cherry pickers up against the blue but mostly gray sky.
It’s as if one cloud covers everything. I have not seen the trains around there
in the two days I visited. I wonder what is up. And far off, more workers can
be heard, - their machines also. The lot is not too full and some people are
leaving. One just gets out and proceeds to walk some small white dog along our
path. We have to wait it out, but not for too long. We go into the fenced area
which is not to our liking, not our mode, - but it is currently empty in there
so what the heck, - better than sitting inside the vehicle. But a car pulls up
so we take a short run to the other side and start on our way, the way of the
path, the path of the way…
Sitting
for a bit, - we let the dog and owner make some time. It looks warm, but is
not.
Sometimes the sun wants to peak out, - but it’s a rarity. Minimal breeze
and it feels like a bit of rain might come. These promissory notes for the rain
that the breeze writes are penned often. Yet, it’s a long wait for the beloved
rain. When shall it come? Sometime. It has to come sometime to saturate the
earth and clear out the travellers, to calm and quell the dancing trees. Loquacious
rain. Good rain. Sounding all ‘round like a million marbles on the rooftops of
places. We will see. But for now, - no rain…
There
are some green fields across the way, - and more paths. The ubiquitous pine
cones of course, and strange white wildflowers once shelled up in a covering
now open, on the ground,- jus there,- and the little feathers of them make
patterns, are something, and seem to tell their own story. A branch here and
there. A log. An impossibly peculiar root system exposed up the way, right at
the other entrance to a forest. The dogs run around. Throw a stick and watch
them tinker and chew at it. Going further down, maybe a story below land level,
- to another series of paths, and nobody about, which is the greatest and most
sublime. Calm. Sun peaks out. Branches broken from a storm. Did I miss a rain?
Did it come at night? Did it come in the above board sunlight minutes and hours
and I forgot about it? Or was it the wind? Hard to know. Clean breaks. A
certain beauty and mystique in the wood and grain, pattern. It’s a side line, -
the fields are the chorus. Onwards and upwards we go then…
One
time a wild turkey flew out there, - but not today. Wild turkeys can be fast
when the intend on such. And it’s certain they can fly. I didn’t even see where
it did alight because it went over the tree line to somewhere distant. There is
not much going on around the perimeter there, - I can tell, can sense it. And
nobody comes over the ridge, which is nice. The solitude is a gift. The others
are at the beginning; - making a certain racket we cannot hear.
On
top of our summit we rest. Look out at the
view. Its taking a while for the
Evergreens to grow, - but they are taller than last year. Some pass, but most
thrive. In winter the snow sits down, a billion flakes upon the branches like
glitter on glue. In summer the rain stays in certain places as droplets on the
pine needles hunter and forest and light and dark green hued.
We
look at the old tree again; - the one where the small racoon hid and thought we
could not see him. Mostly we just sit for a bit. Some internal mechanism calls
for leaving. The minutes have grown to larger times. We go back along the long
and winding other side. An animal in distress calls out. At first I think it is
in the forest, but I realize soon it is from a ‘far and far’ farm across an
entire field. All we can make out is the shape of the side and roof of an old
barn. Is it brown? Red? It’s too far off.
We
are almost out and back towards the beginning. A few glances backwards, looking
‘back in turn’. Soon there will be mosquitoes and more birds, splashes of color
and distinct lines and shapes of clouds. Perhaps the sky will turn colors and
keep turning, capricious but benignly so. I would swear in the meantime I
sensed that promissory note the breeze brings, - the one about the future rain.
How
grand those summer storms can be when they do arrive.
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