We went walking

In order to create a more perfect frame of mind, I decided to go out walking. I have a love/hate relationship with winter. I am so in love with calm, quiet winter days and nights, when every sound announces itself and is crisply enunciated from every other sound and occurance. I hate the windy, downright dangerous cold that chases us from cars to indoors and causes so many people to head for warmer climates. I love to walk, and nothing does better for my state of mind than to walk, to listen, to watch, and to air out the gray matter.

Not far from where I spent my formative years there is a park. My hometown is smallish, probably 5-6,000 and will never be much bigger, as it is totally hemmed in by a river, a highway (with another municipality staking claim to everything south of that highway), and two other communities right up against the borders, east and west. It is a pretty nice town, the folks there a bit too provincial for my tastes... and it bears the name of a corporate giant who used to run the paper mill in town there. The mill shut down in 2008, and the town is still reeling from the after affects...

One of the great things that the corporate giant did was donate land for my park. It's mine, because it's there for me when I need it. It's on a point in the river, that lovely river that I have saluted in blogs past - one of the few in North America that actually flows north. The park has softball diamonds, as my hometown is drunk on sports... it has a small playground, shelters for social events, a boat landing and trails. It's major claim to fame is that it has hosted the World Fastpitch Softball Tournament every few years dating back to the 1970's.

But my joy comes from visiting there in solitude. There is an observation deck that overlooks the river. I have written tributes to that as well. Tonight I visit that deck, brush off the seats and just listen. Wind way up in the top of the trees but I feel it not a whisper. Sounds of distant traffic from the highway bypass a mile or two to the west. An owl or two or three trading gossip in the distance... and hush of crystal quiet that both calms the soul and echoes of dark sadness and loneliness. I hear a train whistle... it is a freight train, but it evokes that mournful cry, as so often in the past a trains often were about the business of bustling someone away to somewhere else, and someone else was pierced by the sound of their loved one leaving...

After moments of this rarefied air, I rise to move and breathe in different air. I cannot bear this lovely symphony of sadness too long, or be carried off with it. I walk up the steps and am quickly on the road. I love crunching the snow under foot, as the snow that is falling is cold, not very wet at all, the temperature in the teens... This is not conducive to big snowflakes falling, but the ones coming down are persistent, and lovely, and piling up.

More tomorrow... I need to linger on this