Sleepy Gap and Elsewhere

 

October 3, 2020

Hard to justify having no time to record a journal when there should be nothing but time. Moving forward steadily, but not speedily, on two manuscripts, as unrelated as it is possible to imagine. Applying myself nobly to gardening, digging new beds, yanking old ones out of their armories of weed. Bought most of the dirt I’ll need till spring. Yesterday I planted iris and crocus and spring beauty and blue anemone. 

Trying to live up to the expectations of my step-counter. Half the recommended number– about 4400 steps– is pretty much what comes naturally in a fairly active day, though I have taken to strolling the greenways by the river to raise the number a little. This is excellent, considering the extreme physical inertia of the first part of my quarantine. Today I drove to Sleepy Gap to hike on one of my most familiar trails. It being a sunny Saturday of almost unbelievable sweetness and clemency, even the Parkway had traffic jams. Ran into people and their dogs at the opening of the trail, but deeper in came the solitude and almost disturbing silence of the mountain. The paucity of wildlife often disturbs me there, until I consider that on the trail one is nearly at the top of rugged mountains, and all the sensible creatures will be far below, at the deep woods and the creeks. Even after all that I’m only at 58%–5009 steps. Big handsome man ran past me in both directions, going and returning. Admired that he had enough wind to speak to me. Wind is exactly my issue. Wind has always been my issue. From the first time I remember exertion at all–running as a kid– I knew that my lungs shut down long before anyone else’s. Age has not improved that. I do find that there is a plateau, and if I can make it for a certain period of time, gardening or walking–it gets no worse, and even settles back and becomes a little easier. Such it was at the beginning, and evidently will be at the end. I have made a career out of not mentioning this. 

AW interviews me for the GLBTQ archives. I was deep into it at one time, one of the foundations for a while. I wonder who else remember that? 

I do not watch the presidential debates. I understand that neither old man covered himself in glory. The hell-hound’s covering himself again and again in blood and shit seems to make no difference to his ignorant base.

 The hell-hound has contracted Covid, and with him a host of White House personnel and Republican senators–including our own Tom Tillis. So large a slice of karma–all of them virus-deniers and ostentatiously mask-less at rallies– would be implausible in fiction. Everyone is careful to keep the schadenfreude in check, though some of us are surely asking ourselves the question, WHOSE DEATH WOULD MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE? 

Hiking was replaced by painting at one point in my life. One has just so much leisure time, and must choose where to spend it. Painting is gone now, at least for the moment, so maybe the wildwood comes back. I remember noting in those long ago years that I would go into the woods and immediately submerge into a revery of fury, recrimination, debate with God. Sometimes I saw nothing. Today I noted that I was happy, the whole way. No ancient arguments. No blasts against present resentments. The hymn “Immortal, Invisible” played in my ears for a while, I think in response to the rhythm my feet were keeping on the trail. All in all retirement–if that is what is to be thanked–has been congenial to me.  I have wasted hours of it, but not days.