This year, we arrived at
the Blue Ridge cabin in deepest summer. The sunshiny, glossy greenness and
lushness, the piercing light is indescribable, and, because we’re perched
beneath a mountain road, there is a sense of drowning in the color green. The
last visit was early October: Yellow and scarlet leaves crunched beneath
our feet. I remember feeling old, like I was dying. It was as if some essential
piece of me was shriveling and deteriorating and I could do nothing to stop it.
This year, again, I transformed into an odd, silent creature. But this time I
wasn’t dying; I was being altered. Under the Tulip tree, I sat astonished by
the sheer weight of my grasping. Every few hours, the little Toe River train
whistled by, slinging itself around the river’s curves, screeching through the
thick foliage. When I sat meditation, I imagined filling the coal cars with all
manner of things: grief, irregular souls, unrealized hopes, fears. I listened,
sometimes in the dark, as the little train dutifully rushed memories through
the fireflies and, finally, into nothingness. Over the days, I grew sleepy-eyed
and indolent, senses open and listening.
