The older man and I stood for quite some time seeking shade as southerners do in exposed sun and talked of the property there around us when we happened to meet and i guess it was inevitable we would if still unexpected in that usual solitude. I have watched as Huron learned to swim chasing ball off dock with increased trusting confidence over these past months on the adjacent parcel the guy checks on for an absent neighbour directly on the spring fed lake which has held its share of memory of this south for me over 20 years living in it the heat of summer the fickle mockingbird song and flash of spiked tail feathers and lightening storms which strike real fear, hard frosts even and him his whole life here in south being second nature. Birmingham might have been his hometown but this south stretches rubbery, enduring like bamboo grown wild and he gravitated here after living in Destin before it exploded with traffic, heightened embarrassing commercialism. He pointed out a modest bushy tree to me i would have missed before but now identify with a small guide book in hand as i do in Michigan. I want to know the names of things beyond their shapes now as if that will lend more clarity, signal an authority i could never totally believe in anyways. Not in this life.
“Its a sparkleberry and they say its the hardest wood you can find and the birds go nuts over its small grouped black fruit.” He also knew about the fox and it had been he who had marked the gopher turtle hole with a stick where my other dog Norma would sniff around the huge critter or one of his family caught out in the open back in the day when i took the girl for swims down there and she would drink wine at home falling into the melancholy spell of “Band of Horses” and all the ennui of that time but now the earth speaks more clearly of that which human voices sluice via past traumas, conscious motive. He said foxes weren’t that great at digging and would borrow the holes to raise their kits in sometimes and the idea of nature repurposing itself hung in the thickening morning air.
It was clear that Bob in his early 80’s held some wisdom for me even as i am goddamn old enough now but somehow have avoided the burnishing of maturity. I flirt with 23 year olds like the thick legged and eventually bemused girl who sold Dean and I beer off a cart on our modest golf course here the other day and we had played just one other time all winter and this could be the last for awhile and she had an unusual name and a cryptic tattoo on her neck and later briefly her own story when she relaxed into the idea that i am always like this and with most people. There is sanctuary in the rough, on the fairways and overhead a large bird you can pretend is a bald eagle and for $35 to connect, even with a small ball but more directly with one human you know so instinctively and well and another if only tangentially is being in the moment apart from all the steps to come.
I liked that word “burnished” as
used in a post a few weeks ago even if she was describing the way her hips and joints felt rejuvenated after yoga or a similar exercise. That stuff i’m clueless about having taken for granted bodies in motion as a carpenter assuming not much else was needed to limber it. Bob the man i had warmed to on the same dirt drive the i one where i had put the binoculars on the golden retriever up by this hole just the week before and realised with a yip of pleasure it was a fox and told my dog that and his ears perked up but just for a moment, he had been no stranger to bodies in motion either. Nonetheless he offered that walking 2 miles each morning kept his stomach flat when he told me his age and i grunted and he patted it like a canvas stretched tight as a drum and smiled adding as proof “and i drink a six pack every night.” I appreciated that as an invitation into a future i could live with, a comforting burrow of hope and talk came easy the dog poking gently between his legs with the ball and i bent over to get it as he bent as slow as what i have already sensed is my future and we joked about that too. His wife wheelchair bound had been paralyzed with a stroke on one side of her body 20 years ago and had not been able to say but a few words since but sometimes sang out a cherished song out of nowhere. A more than competent woodworker it turned out he described how he had fabricated a bench seat in the shower for her and accommodated sharp rim of tub with a rounded and polished hardwood guard, sanded, stained and durable. I had before noted their home on the main road and its arched trellises amongst the sprawling sand colored pavers and he described the process of making templates for the wood first out of cardboard and transferring it to smaller lengths of wood to get the bend. We were talking the same language even if there were intervals where i’d loose the thread or question the assembly part.I am in the process of switching dens as the departure for Michigan’s Upper Peninsula gains momentum and proximity not just in the physical concrete detail but also the onset of more than the usual introspection squeezed like emotional nostalgia like sap dripping from a sugar maple warmed under an April sun. We are the trees in the forest shedding as necessary, bending to the elements, hardening our barks even while nurturing the other living creatures around us with shelter or food or a contemplative perch if only briefly.
Last week the discovery of an old passport elicited a quasi-confessional and perhaps some mordant brooding on mortality thrown into the mix of a lifetime captivated and shaped like constant lap of waves on shoreline etch into rock identity via passions, willingness to accept vulnerability As more boxes were sorted through i sifted through journals undertaken sporadically and over a half century and a few were stuffed with letters i had forgotten. A few from the german
girl and some letters of hers written towards the end of our relationship which made it clearer decades later there was another party to the hurt i took selfishly to as my own portion and now decades later only finally validated if still regretted, that lack of closure.
She reached out and took the promise this large country has to offer and that was what drew us together and sent each on their fated trajectory to define it for themselves. There was even an image of the bed and breakfast cottage where we had reclaimed overwhelming curiosity of discovery after the reunion on road after splitting up hitchhiking and she had told me she would wait in the next village and it was getting dark and my heart sank as at first the road appeared empty but as i approached a huddled form came into view by its side. It was she reading a book probably Kerouac crosslegged in thick wool socks and looking up at me with equal relief yet laughing off the idea she would abandon me. I will take the boxes with me as talismans now if not touchstones for what is still to come, the honest if seemingly untoward appreciations ahead and explored within sheltering distance of the pre-burrowed holes. The crates which held the numerous albums i finally discarded will be re-purposed now as well, containers for what remains to be seen. It is best to travel light if self-sustaining to be prepared.
Apple’s Archive!!!!!!!
“We are the trees in the forest shedding as necessary, bending to the elements, hardening our barks even while nurturing the other living creatures around us with shelter or food or a contemplative perch if only briefly.”
Pretty damn fine stuff here Apple! I could’ve picked almost anything to re-stack, but of course I went with the nod to my brother. I enjoyed the hell out of this. How soon before your departure?