In the afternoon, my daughter and I drive south to Governor Dodge State Park. She asks for a hike in a park with a lake. Sure, of course. It’s easy here. We have lakes to please.
We follow a trail around the water. Hurried stories now, because there is little time. We have to fit it in.
It’s beautiful here. It is possible to understand that life can be at once simple and very magnificent.
I cook a favorite dinner and we eat it out on the balcony. It is past seven, but for the first time this year, we can do this. The evening is like a summer evening – calm, inviting, sentimental.
Before dawn, she catches her flight back to Washington and Ed and I set out east as well, but in a more rambling and rumbling way. She will be at her work desk by noon. Ed and I will be bumping along, hoping the 1992 Ford pickup will stay in one piece. We have a thousand miles before us today and another three hundred the next day. We’re equipped with sleeping bags and water in case we have a breakdown. If the roads are kind, I’ll post from North Carolina tomorrow.
