Page 9 - WTP VOl. XIII #2

A woman exits the loop trail behind the boathouse. We stop to chat. “There’s a lot of poison ivy,” she says. “Yes,” I say, “and the leaves are really big this year and getting more virulent.” “We’re doomed,” we say to each other. Although I believe that, I can’t say I know what it specifically means. Just that the world is get- ting more dangerous.
We’ve canoed here a hundred times but today mis- judged and got stuck atop three submerged stumps. We’re literally stumped. It feels like we’re in a car- toon, paddling, going nowhere. We try to push off, pull ahead, any direction without tipping. It reminds me of the one time I drove a forklift, got myself cor- nered and for the life of me could not figure out how to back up, the steering being opposite to every other vehicle I’d ever driven. It’s not just the lack of mobil- ity but complete lack of control that frustrates and embarrasses. I’m not one of those helpless people, I want to say. I’m that capable person you see walking. And now paddling, yes, well underway.
I pause to let the truck hauling a cement vault turn left into the cemetery. The backhoe is already there. The body’s probably all dressed up in a coffin some- where. It seems momentous and solemn somehow, this passing of the truck. I wave at the driver who waves back, like there’s nothing to it. He probably does this all the time; it’s his job.
Because we have no idea what’s ahead, we can’t re- sist forecasting what’s ahead. Something’s coming, we think, check out this wind, wild and weird. It’s got to mean something, right? Just look at those crows gathering, these clouds accumulating, leaves swirling, feathers falling, starlings lifting. Each must foretell something, we tell ourselves. But why? It seems to me we’re worried about the wrong things. We’ve been taught to fear old women and dense groves of trees, instead of oafs in office and deforestation.
“Road Not Maintained In Winter,” the signs says as I drive to the trailhead. Not maintained in summer, spring, or fall either I want to add. But I sort of like this rocky, rutted old dirt single track, full of puddles, narrow between lichened stone walls, that leads to a cellar hole grown over with maples and oaks. Some- one built this with their hands 200 years ago, to make a go of it, of farming on a New England mountain side.
Two middle-aged men compliment me when I arrive at the summit, as if I’ve accomplished something truly astounding. Made a real go of it. Do I look old to them? Or is it my eye that’s still black and blue from tripping on a curb? Both? It’s amazing you hiked all the way up here, they seem to say. I hike here all the time, I want to tell them. Instead I say, “Good for you too; you made it.”
A little girl runs toward the memorial tower on the mountain summit. “Mommy, it’s a lighthouse. Your daddy lived in a lighthouse. Look it’s a lighthouse,” she says. “It was my grandfather,” says her mother, “but you’re right. It does look like a lighthouse.” Except for the absence of a light, I want to add, but don’t. The girl is too excited and mom is beaming at this unexpected find.
Behind the chain linked fence at the day care, the kids run and run, screech and laugh, drive plastic cars into plastic houses, then run some more. One has a mohawk. One wears a tiny top hat. One just stands and watches all the others run and scream. I’m sure their parents love them; I’m also sure they’re happy as hell to drop their kids here every day for a few hours. I never really liked it when mom dropped me off at my grandparents, but for her, it must have been sweet relief.
A young red-tailed hawk circles our neighborhood all day, calling and calling. It’s what I hear stepping out of the library; even pumping gas its cries peal. I’m hungry, it keeps saying. Calling out for food, but now it’s on its own. The adults have flown. Life’s different. Adjusting’s never easy.
A woman bends down to hold her dog as I pass. “You’re quite the walker,” she says. “Yes, I am,” I say. I change it up every day, but never really change. It feels good for someone to acknowledge it, but really is it anything?
Johnson’s poems and creative nonfiction pieces have previously ap- peared in The Woven Tale Press, Abraxas, The Meadow, Dash, Front Range Review, Aji, Oyster River Review, and Trampoline. She lives in South Hadley, MA, and her commentaries can be heard on nepm.org.
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