Several different shades of grey pass mottled overhead in stronger winds more decisive than these dancing chills below that keep my jacket zipped. It’s cold enough that my cheeks and nose are red, but not so cold to discourage walking these lake trails on a wet, late autumn day. It’s been raining and it will again soon, but for now it’s not. There’s no telling when it will start, but I’m betting I have enough time for a cathartic hike. I’m in casual street clothes and these same sneakers I wear everywhere, though there are probably better shoes for doing this stuff. Somehow I’ve never been able to engage in life that way that almost everyone else seems to, with the right shoes for various activities, the right clothes, a few different styles of jackets with understood purposes. I guess it’s not too hard to be so put together, but I’ve never been able to pull it off. The terrain here is a patchwork of grass fields and copses and thickets of short, crooked Texas pasture trees scattered over softly undulating hills that descend down to the lake shore. The beauty is subtle, not majestic. Some might even miss it. The colors in this filtered light are not so brilliant as a painter might assemble but washed over with dimness, like photos on the walls of a smoker’s house. Out here unplanned and alone I feel like this isn’t how most people do it, a familiar feeling. Maybe I should have invited someone along for conversation and laughter, for communion. Or maybe I should be somewhere else, somewhere brighter and more overtly happy. Maybe I shouldn’t duck and hide when someone I know enters the coffee shop, hoping not to be seen. Do we do instinctively the things that make us happy, or should we struggle against habits, exerting effort toward our own contentment? There are animal tracks along the trail, coyote and deer, but the animals that left them are nowhere to be seen. I can appreciate that, I suppose. Every time I hear a group of voices coming up the trail I feel an urge to dash into the trees. Turkey buzzards circle overhead. Maybe I should get involved in the community somehow. Seems like a good thing to do. The benefit it might be to others would probably be worth the time I’d have to spend in the company of the kind of people who do such things. Those people are great, and I appreciate their generosity, so why do they make me want to excuse myself and walk out the front door to find some quiet alley where I can sit against the wall and watch cats stalking birds or ants crawling up the wall? The choppy surface of the lake looks cold with small black ducks bobbing around in the reflected grey. I wonder where turtles go when ponds freeze over. Herons soar overhead, getting nowhere. There are probably other things I should be doing, but I sit down on the rustic wooden bench installed at the scenic overlook and invade the tenuous privacy of these avian drifters for a while, wondering things that do not matter, things that will not advance my objectives in life. It’s no matter. I didn’t invent any of these goals. They were given to me and I was too polite or bewildered to refuse them. Not that I resent them, exactly. They’re fine, and probably I’m better off for them. Still, it’s hard to put my back into them all day every day. I’m not convinced that they’re all really important or even appropriate. Heading back to the car I imagine a renewed calm and I credit it to this brief excursion, but I’m never sure. My knees complain a little on the hills, but some part of me suspects that the exertion is good for them, like it or not. Tough love, I’ve heard it called.
Hello, friends. I hope you're well.
Later. Love.
