“She said it was only her second day on the job. She was frazzled, but in a smiling kind of way. “Three kids”, she said. “and ...” Her fingers shot up from behind the counter, as she started to count. It took her a while. The cash register was still calculating the price of my beer, and Goldfish. I needed something naughty, to fill the tin my grandchild would ask to open, in the future. I make small allowances for junk food, within reason. “Seven ... no ... eight grand nieces, and nephews.” The step-child count had seemed over the top, so I omit it here. “My husband has been .. busy”. I understood. She was way younger than me. I liked her, immediately. Guileless honesty is a rare quality these days. We all do what we can, with what we’ve got. “Then you’re happy to be out of the house,” I offered. She smiled even more broadly, and pushed her bangs from off a sweaty forehead. “Yeah, I guess,” she replied. We both wished each other to ‘have a good day’, what was left of it. Mine had been trying too, for different reasons. I got back in my truck, gassed up now, and ready for a cruise. On the way down to town, I’d switched off the automatic audio book, wired up to my vehicular audio. What was left of my day, needed reflection, and thought, or maybe just a quiet debrief. When you work for yourself, & seasonally spend too much time alone, these interludes become necessary. I drove on, with no particular route in mind, only the will to understand my own urge, to become closer to the real. It was too long since my last aimless ramble, my last sojourn of ditches, wayside places, and off track adventure. You don’t always get to choose your freedom, where, or when it will arrive. You have to rely on inner timing, a vague but pressing sense of magnetic north, to rediscover, on any given day, or fall backwards into, your touchstone(s) of sanity. Or, give into, as the case may be, an inexplicable over-riding sense, of insanity. To be quelled, soothed, and uplifted, by things far greater in their stability, like land. At least that’s how it works for me. I hit off on the hard road, then segued onto dirt, stopping once, no twice, to wade through knee deep snow, chasing images that called out to me, from that intangible calm. What makes the tears come, unbidden? The recognition you feel trapped, that you can no longer access the realms of joy, you used to feel? Perhaps. Or that life has taken you far deeper, on a much more rugged journey, than you are prepared to meet, or are just about to, or so it seems. The search is what lies in front of us, the unknowing, of whether our choices will continue to serve us, as they have so well before. Our downfalls, our stagnant cesspools of worry, our devastations ... will they still lead us with magical precision, with ineffable accuracy, towards what we truly need? The heart is a hunter, of this I can be certain, and only this. Gazing up at mountain peaks still snow packed, at hidden maps not recorded but in the experiences of some, I am a seeker at the font of a wilderness that only exists in my mind. One landowner has put signs up, inviting the intrepid to take on a maze of logging roads, while another declares that “trespassers will be shot”. This is a confusing world, to navigate. Even finding a place to pull off and just stand in awe of things, is imbued with suspicion, monitored for intruders - who might be friend, or foe? The right to roam, is unfamiliar, here in the US. Look it up. In the meantime, I guess I am destined to keep rambling, with all warnings intact in my brain. I can’t stop wanting to crest the graceful hill country I can see but not touch. Public trails are good, yet lacking. I love them, but I despise the system that makes them necessary. There is so much territory, so much beauty, residing within the shapes of creation, that are hard to get to, hard to break code with. I see myself as a tiny human, in an inhospitable hut. Hunched over a primitive mechanical device, tapping out signals, to my higher self. Please, hear me, my team. I know you are out there, just give me a sign. Short of that, I will keep driving. And stop, snap a few random landscapes, on my way home, to bring goldfish to their tin. Here, at mystery central, enveloped by the crescent delicacy of life, as spring sends up a few signs, a few dark, hopeful signals, to those of us anxiously awaiting the call.”
