November 3, 2020

Night. Victoria on CD. I’m usually not up in the study at night, but the TV downstairs is full of election reports, and I don’t feel I can watch until the end is known.  All stands at the crossroads, all hangs in the balance, and yet I have been merry through the day; perhaps that is a sign, either of good tidings or resilience in the face of bad tidings.

Cleaned the pump and filter and ladled several pounds of needles and leaves out of the pond. 

Began walking the MST at Beaver Dam Gap, heading north. It was not one of my usual haunts, so it took me a little while to remember it, to regain the rhythm of the land. I’d received disappointing news in emails, so I went up with the intention of a Grand Confrontation in the wilderness where only we two could witness it, but by the time I got in position, all the energy, all the rage had gone, faded into the silver wood and the silver air. I resented it a little, but I felt the Lord already knew what case I would and must present. I am right in this, but even the right thing needs not always to be said. The air forced itself into the lungs. It was a little too cool for how I was dressed, but this made me pick up the pace, and needing to pick up the pace signaled to me that I could. Hiking stopped when painting began. I have noted this before, mostly to add that I am happy to be hiking again. It is different now. I am different now, some great conflagration spent and guttered out. Before under the greenwood I was often boiling with rage. Now, not that at all, but a spirit passing, calm under the cool dome as a child. I stood beside the trail and blessed the wild and beautiful spirits of the mountain, and I felt they felt me blessing them. The last music on the radio before reception failed was Prokofiev’s Romeo & Juliet, so I walked through the woods to the beat of “The Dance of the Knights,” an odd but pleasing effect.

I painted for the same length of time as it would take to raise a child. Perhaps that was given to me instead of a child, to spend my time and energy and money upon. If so, it was a thankless child, who came pretty much to nothing. I suppose parents too shrug and say “let it be.” Why did I want it so bad? Why do parents want children so bad? Make something. Leave something behind. Continue after–.

Drove south until I came to Pisgah, where I walked one of the trails that leads from the Pisgah parking lot to the top on the Bull Gap tunnel. Great icicles gleamed from the north-facing cliffs. I plucked one and put it into my mouth. It was a new adventure in thirst-quenching, pure and cold and airy, with a delectable stony after-taste. Many people speaking Spanish in the parking lot. Met, one each on each trail I took, a woman in an orange jacket, each with a dog. A black dog and a red dog. We commended the excellent day to one another. On the slope of Pisgah I watched a vole–excellent in tininess-- scurry from one side of the path to the other. Each time in the woods–in this dispensation– I’ve seen an iridescent black beetle scurry among the fallen leaves. Different ones, I suppose. If the vole and the beetle are being presented as my spirit animals, I know I am in for a time of condensation, concealment, hidden ways. This is well.