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Home Away From Home
I went hiking yesterday up in the Shenandoah National Park. It felt like I was the only human up in there. I had to walk along Skyline drive for about half a mile to get back to my truck after the hike and not a single car passed by. I of course was travelling with an entourage of women--Missy Elliot, Gillian Welch, Francoiz Breut, (Miss) Catpower, (Miss) Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Neko Case, (Miss) Belle or Sebastian, and (Miss) Mick Jagger.
I wondered at first who's footprints I was following, a heavy person for sure, their prints had broken all the way through the hard packed snow to the dirt and rock of the path. They were old prints, that you could tell because they had no definite shape, the edges of the snowprints were melted, leaving a design that did not compute inside my humancentric frame of reference. But of course we are not alone and the prints belonged to a bear, this I realized when I saw a print with full definition, so I became super self aware for a few minutes, which did not hurt me.
But was this one last romp and feed before hibernation and am I edible? I can't see serving me up at a dinner party of people, or bears, you were trying to impress.
I just poked myself in the eye so I'm crying a little.
The path turned into a stream once or twice, water flowing out of rock, maybe not THE source, but a source, so I had to sit on a flat boulder at one point and consider it all. Actually there were two streams, both of them just began out of the side of the hill and flowed down the slope into the canyon into which I was descending. One stream was to my left and the other was to my right. The left stream had white water, the right stream, the stream that was actually the path, was more of a flowing trickle.
Just saw a shooting star out the window.
I think it was the Hughes River I kept having to cross, and the water was up a little and some of the large boulders which would normally rise above the clear cold water and act as stepping stones, were submerged. Others were coated with ice. I belabored over the idea of crossing each time, once crabwalking awkwardly over an icy log. Missy Elliot said I look like a bitch doin that, which hurt my feelings, and I told her I would not bring her back out here if she was going to talk like that. Neko Case smirked, she's a hard one to read. Miss Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, she kept wailing that she loved me like no one else did but she would not hold my hand, so I had to question just what was the good of that love.
There was a locked up cabin at the bottom of the canyon, the Corbin cabin it is called, and before and after it remain the faintest signs of a life long ago. A piece of a wall here, a diverted spring there. The park ranger at the Thorton Gap entrance had sold me a map after I asked her to suggest a nice five mile circuit hike and I kept referring to it but as simple as the map was I could not lock into it. It did not seem to relate to anything I cared about but at the same time I did not want to take a wrong fork and end up halfway to Old Rag. Francoiz Breut would look over my shoulder but she doesn't speak much english and when she pointed at the soft, rip proof, water proof map, and said, "we here," I had to wonder if she meant, "yes, here."
Hookey In The Park
Well my 21st century east coast tenure number one is about up, I just emailed someone that I was finishing up here and getting ready to leave next week, which now that I say it, I guess I need to contemplate my movements a little. Okay, done. I'll just do what work I can do and then pack my tools and stuff the day before I leave, and then leave. Assuming nothing weird happens, I'll probably come out this way again in the Spring.
You know, I think it is precisely that place between assuming that nothing weird will happen and knowing that something weird is going to happen is what gets me out of bed in the morning.
In bed this morning I did briefly contemplate that nothing weird was going to happen, ever again, and that we were all (sorry to include you) cardboard cutouts haphazardly positioned and repositioned and sometimes pasted to the manilla paper background drawings of a sweet but slightly demented child. A child with generic talent keeping it all inside the lines.
Yesterday was the first day in a week without snow on the ground and now they are calling for more snow and/or freezing rain off and on over the next week. I guess I've had a fairly good taste of real winter (not Montana or N. Dakota severe but still...), even though I'm leaving two days before winter starts.
I haven't talked to any of my New Orleans bosses in five months. They will be angry. They may not let me work with them. I may not care.
Another fence board blew off in the night. I may fix that later, after I get done playing hookey in the park one last time.
One last thing. I have seen that mountain to the north glow red in the morning but right this minute it is glowing purple. Purple mountain majesty, dig?