Sunday, September 27, 2009

redirection

If I ever look back on this week-end, I’ll recall it as a time when I did what I long believed needed to be done: I latched on to a useful narrative and stayed with it.

It was, thank God, handed to me by circumstance. Ed wanted to work on the Ice Age Trail. I like the Ice Age Trail. I will, this week-end, think about little, beyond the Ice Age Trail.

Yesterday, we worked on building it. Today – well, actually today I cleaned the house and then worked at the little corner shop. But for an hour stuck between the two, and for several hours after work, I thought about National Parks.

Let me just focus on the noon hour. A brilliant noon hour. Almost threatening in its strength and magnificence. Still, anyone can tell that we are way past summer. The air is moving from warm to crisp. I feel the desperation that fills me when I am about to leave a place or time frame: is there something that I can do to keep a fragment of it after today?

It’s a good day, an important day, and it’s passing me by.

Noon hour. Ed and I drive west. Toward the narrow rural road that I regard as near-perfect. If anyone were to ask where, in rural Wisconsin, would I agree to live and prosper, I’d probably say somewhere close to here. (Alright, forget about the prosper. Prosperity is ephemeral.)


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A few more twists to the road and we come to a place of future Ice Age Trail activity. And on the other side of the road we find a path leading … somewhere (not clear where).

We haven’t much time, but we follow it. Because, well, there’s so little of the good season left.


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Yes, the emergent rusts and reds are beautiful…


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…but the meadows are dry, verging on overpowering you with too many earthy tones. Still, can you see the goldenrod? The little daisies? The bee on the violet thistle?


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This is where I want to hide, in days that I am running away from all that I should run from.