walking the past

It’s January and today we walk atop a frozen mud road. It should be a snowy road, shouldn’t it? I find myself asking, was it like this last year or ten years, twenty - twenty-five years and I’m walking down Bourke Street in 100 degrees heat, I’m not here at all. I just don’t know. I tell myself that today this is how winter is. There is evidence of the storm from two weeks ago laid bare by the thaw and the rains when it should be frozen and snow covered. Shouldn’t it? Today’s winter distracts me from today throwing me into a life long practice of balancing past and future in order to make today okay, doable, passable, enjoyable. Today is the middle child.

The ferns are revealed deep green and the grasses scappy strong and firmly rooted. Unlike like their ephemeral friends long gone by the first snow these fellas hold on to the ground as steadfast place holders. A stream flows beside the road, rippling over rocks and pours freely through the culverts. It is the sound of sugaring season. But that’s March, right? Winston runs along the stream, jumping across when the edges fall away in to the ice cold water. A chipmunk catches my eye. It runs with the lightness and silence of an elf. Light, like Legolas. I would sink and fall if I tried to do the same and yet, I walk today without leaving a mark on this frozen road.

Yesterday’s warmth is imprinted in the road. The hooves of next doors stallion who bolted through the opened gate as the stablehand, back turned, wrestled with the feed bucket. The prints of the stablehand pressing into the ground as they ran after the horses mud tracks. The mud preserved my neighbors yak tracks reminding me she too is out walking this road. I note the tire tracks that brought my kids home safely after their day out. All of these things make good company today. In this lonely drab January day.