Spring has sprung in PA for sure. The April showers are here and have been here, on and off, for a week. I stand on the bridge over the culvert where I have brought Clara to fish. I wouldn’t bring her here now; I don’t want to instill any kind of discomfort for her to associate with the outdoors…not yet.
I stand here, though, not because this assignment forces me to, but because I want to bring myself to the heart of nature; to the wet, muddy, fecal matter of nature.
The grey vagueness of day is slowly folding into the darkness, but the rain persists. It drips off of my ball cap in individual drips, beads up on my waterproofed jacket. Yet, it streaks, it runs, it flows back to the puddle at my feet first, then back to the stream below.
I, too, melt, flow back into the stream of unconsciousness. Seriously, nothing is going on in my head. It’s as vacant as the clouded, moonless night, silent but for the irregular, persistent beat of the rain.
I wish I could say that I was transported back to trips into the woods where I sat around with friends who I haven’t spoken to in years, that I remembered our conversations over a fire spitting and sputtering, defyingly staying lit in similar rains. I wish that I could say that memories of rain-soaked fishing trips with my father, where we’ve stared at each other through the beaded-curtain of rain, smiling through soaked beards, lifting heaving trout out of the river into the rain.
I wish I could, but that’s not where I am. I am here; I am in the rain; I am not a tree, nor a rock, or a blade of grass bending under the weight of rain. But I am something like that, though, I don’t know what.
A car stops behind me. Maybe confused by the long hair sticking out of my hat, maybe confused because I’m utterly soaked, the driver, an older man wearing a green and yellow trucker hat, spins down the window of his Ford pickup and asks (almost stereotypically), “You alright, son?”
There isn’t any condescending tone in his voice, but general concern, as if he is my father, as if he worries if I’m sick. “No, I’m fine,” I answer.
“Well, you just looked like you were lost starin’ out in space like that,” he said. “You gonna get hit or catch a cold out here.”
“No, no,” I lie, and thank him for his concern before walking back over to my Jeep. He nods goodbye as he passes. I wave back.
In the Jeep, I shake off the wet chill, crank the heat, locate myself again. I wish I could say that I didn’t know where that locale is, that my existence is as fluid and consubstantial as stream. But I am here, now, again, within the world of man’s creation.
This entry reminds me, so strongly, of the importance of just being present, in each and every moment.
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