Articles With the Tag . . . walking

You can usually spot the ancient sycamore teetering bank-side, leaning over about thirty degrees, patiently waiting, month after month, year after year, for the day when it slips the bonds of its streamside earth and crashes into the water.

. . . And oh my, those roots. Underneath the massive sycamore sits an exposed tangle of underground limbs — wet, flexible pipes as thick as your leg, with a shadowy cover where no sunlight penetrates.

And from somewhere subconscious, a part of me made the choice . . .

“I’m gonna stay on till dark,” I told Smith. “I tied on a dry-dropper, and I’ll cover the edges.”

I watched Smith walk toward home, toward the rest of life, into the lights, into the warmth, into the friendships. I stayed with the river and remained alone — pensive in the rain, resolute in the wind.

You’re alone, and it’s still not enough. You can feel the pressure of communities, of people and things. It’s coming from behind. You want to feel lonesome again. So you walk.

This place is yours again, if just for a while . . .

You’d walk twice as far if it got you here every time . . .

It started with a walk. When the short gravel-to-dirt trail melted into weeds and underbrush, I followed the narrowing path into the woods. And when that too ended beside the small river, I cut to the right and forged my own trail beside the water’s edge . . .