Mortality Walk

Age, not the physical grinding of bone; not the deep fatigue of flesh wanting to shed away from a soul; rather, age, the loss of that youthful gleam that once made days feel mysterious and new, creeps in, I think, when you stop caring enough about the details around you to act on them, when questioning becomes an end in itself and not a means toward exploration, when life (the minutiae of it) can’t move you anymore. I walked back barefooted from the compost bin head down, watching the sandy, scrub ground pass me by, and I saw an upturned mushroom, white stem, white cap, laying on its side knocked down or half eaten, or something. It was an opportunity for questions and speculation and field guides and a tiny measure of adventure, but I walked by, maybe satisfied in having noticed it all, and I knew in that instant I was old.

I took my annual mortality walk at Morgan Creek. High water forced me to roll up my pants, hike them above my knees, and wade my sun-starved, hairy thighs across the flooded bridge to reach Mason Farm, bracing against the diminishing but still impressive wrath of water, feeling freshly placed sand and twigs and squishy, horribly-imagined things under my bare feet. The river, glutted from Hurricane Florence and then its remnants, had, days, hours before, flattened the dense undergrowth of paw paw and spice bush, so the bank was newly alien, unlike I’d last seen it, devastated - a bit of an exaggeration along a creek bank in a flood plane - changed, altered for years and years to come - quite fitting for a goodbye North Carolina hike. A few remarkable, husky paw paws survived still upright. I managed to shake lose a some fruit, break them open, squeeze and slurp the overripe, custard filling, roll my eyes back in sweet ecstasy, and stuff some into my shirt pockets to take home to plant in the garden that already felt like it no longer belonged to me. The deep memory pool beyond the dike, the endless question of water, the mosquito bath, had tripled in size, was consuming the forest, was some kind of death or gravity well from which the forest could not escape, a sharp, sandy event horizon over which a river birch fell and poison ivy still grew according to its old reckoning of earth mass and sunlight. The expansive nettle patch was flat. I’m sure it was still sharp - I don’t know. I felt instead the anarchist jab of greenbrier on my civilized feet. The green stalks were all covered over, hidden under laid down grass.

Later that week, we were north of DC, into Pennsylvania (Scranton) in some kind of Texas-wannabe restaurant-bar, and we sat ourselves in the back dining room (non-smoking - who knew that was still a thing even?). The place felt like distilled, rust belt, nick-knack, dust settled and layered for so long it turns to oily grime, reminiscence. I’m obviously projecting something because in reality it felt familiar. Susan and I grilled the waitress over red meat. “Is there red meat in the gravy?” “Better hold it just in case.” Being allergic to meat doesn’t exist up there. As out of place my alpha gal made me feel, when the waitresses brought out a little cake and sang birthday wishes to a neighboring table, I smiled and joined along and felt like I was making a difference in someone’s life, and maybe the life was just my own.

North more to Ithaca, zipping by goldenrod in every state. Green tipped, blazing yellow, rusting brown. Amazing purple and crisp white aster against the gold. I feel like I haven’t seen fields like this for years. So maybe the hard goodbyes of the next months will be worth the golden fields.