The
trucks whizzed along, eighteen wheels and sometimes cabs w/sleeping quarters.
You can see the lights and the metal and the logos and the rest. What a force
they are. We slip into the off-way, and down to where the dog walkers park.
There aren’t too many vehicles then, and its middle morning. The sky is not
bright and clear on one hand, which is fine, but it also lacks ominous foreboding
clouds and textures on the other. It’s just covered in a gray. It’s not
pollution, not there. It’s just that the clouds have dispersed themselves out
everywhere, shapes that have gotten too large and lost all contour or hold, -
and there is nothing but gray and gray and gray. Give me the blue, or give me
the black. Sometimes the gray is hard. Nevertheless, we continue on.
It
would be easy to lie, but lie I won’t. Whatever coyotes and deer were there,
well they have migrated for the time being to somewhere else. I went deep, -
the long way. Remember, - I am going the odd way, - towards the left, to begin
with. The ones that even go there take the first path in. Some, more
adventurous souls, well they go to the second. I took the third. It was as if
the spirit said the way was safe. And it was, - and it was almost too safe. It’s
where the two coyotes came and watched us before. But there is nothing there
now. If you go past the abandoned car, you are quite far. The ground looks
stable but it is not. Someone was there, and left a birch branch walking stick.
I picked it up and used it, - feeling the ground. It was wet under the leaves,
and sunk quickly, almost like quicksand in a movie. We continued on.
Soon
we were at the bottom of the valley. Often I stopped and stood in utmost
silence. There is silence that we think is silence but that is only relative
silence. There are still sounds. This was actual silence and it was weird.
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. The trees covered the sky then, and I looked at the
impossibly large root system of one that had fallen over a long time ago,
laying on its side like a monster or like a soldier or like something, some
kind of sight as it were. We went upwards, and the walking was slow. The
leaves, mostly yellow, made of themselves a carpet on the forest floor. The
spirit had said to look up, before, and so I did, - and when I did I saw a
small fairy flying but perhaps it was not a fairy but a flying ant or some
other type of insect. The grapes, the berries, the raspberries, the buttercups
and the various wildflowers, - even those that survived during the Indian
summer, - had all disappeared. Just trees and trees and trees. We continued on
the top of the valley and up to where I know the deer cross sometimes.
Soon
enough we were out in the open fields. No counterpoint or juxtaposition or
foil. No ‘other,’ really, but that was okay. We took it for what it was, and
encountered it all on its own terms. The dogs ran back and forth, played,
jumped, turned ‘round and ‘round, sniffed, seemed all in all to be content and
even happy. At least, I thought, we did not run into any others and have to
worry about leashes or talk or such. But the sky, - opaque, no sky at all
really, - does not make for inspiration one way or the other. That is okay. We
are in it for a ‘slow penny not a fast buck as it were. We are die hards. We go
rain or shine or snow or whatever wants to present itself.
On
the way back, there was more of the same. Many wild mushrooms announced
themselves on logs and trees. The sand and the pebbles, the leaves, shrubs, -
the same pathways, some plain and open, others a bit more labyrinthine and
darkened, - presented themselves. We stuck close to the earth, our noses to the
earth, our faith in the earth, our spirit to the earth. The earth is not bad, and
besides, as aforementioned, the sky was not to really be found. Soon enough,
with so very many steps behind, - as we began the way out of the valley and the
open spaces and the forest too, the sounds of the trucks could be heard again.
Sounds that stretched out from machinery and searched for a place to make and
echo or resonate, but instead seemed to just keep on going and going and going
across the world like that ubiquitous cloud cover itself.
--------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment