Wednesday, August 13, 2008
FROM MORNING DRIVE JOURNAL
AUGUST 14, 2002
A Canadian greyness led our way home from Northern Light Lake where we canoed for several days and spent the loveliest of Sunday afternoons. It was as close to heaven as likely I'll ever get. The world couldn't be more different than the difference between Fairwater and the Boundary Waters. There, water is the element; here, despite the name, water is not the essence of our existence. There, we had to rely on each other; we had to carry everything; we had to watch every turn. Here, we can ignore our neighbors; we can go to grocery whenever we wish; we often proceed blindly on auto-pilot. There, one small action has large and continuing ramifications; here, what we do gets lost in the daily stew of living.
Coming home from the Boundary Waters was not an ending but a beginning. M. and I shall return to the adventure again and again, I think. The door to still another world has opened. We are blessed, then we are blessed again.
It's a grey morning here, familiar birds, familiar green world, a truck on the highway in the distance, a shifting of gears.
Life will always be what you want it to be, or never. We are happy with what we are happy with, or we are never happy. You go away but you're never gone if your unhappiness remains.
I'm north of Fairwater now. It's a grey, hand-down day, mist or haze in all directions.
At Five Corners, a grey goose in the farmyard struts its stuff, flaps its wings with some importance, its neck extended. It is only a farmyard goose; it is everything.
AUGUST 14, 2002
A Canadian greyness led our way home from Northern Light Lake where we canoed for several days and spent the loveliest of Sunday afternoons. It was as close to heaven as likely I'll ever get. The world couldn't be more different than the difference between Fairwater and the Boundary Waters. There, water is the element; here, despite the name, water is not the essence of our existence. There, we had to rely on each other; we had to carry everything; we had to watch every turn. Here, we can ignore our neighbors; we can go to grocery whenever we wish; we often proceed blindly on auto-pilot. There, one small action has large and continuing ramifications; here, what we do gets lost in the daily stew of living.
Coming home from the Boundary Waters was not an ending but a beginning. M. and I shall return to the adventure again and again, I think. The door to still another world has opened. We are blessed, then we are blessed again.
It's a grey morning here, familiar birds, familiar green world, a truck on the highway in the distance, a shifting of gears.
Life will always be what you want it to be, or never. We are happy with what we are happy with, or we are never happy. You go away but you're never gone if your unhappiness remains.
I'm north of Fairwater now. It's a grey, hand-down day, mist or haze in all directions.
At Five Corners, a grey goose in the farmyard struts its stuff, flaps its wings with some importance, its neck extended. It is only a farmyard goose; it is everything.
