Denver was essentially a cow town turned hippie haven when I first set down roots here in 1972. Located on the last miles of flatland before the Rocky Mountains, Denver’s ecosystem is dry prairie grassland, treeless except for what grows along the rivers and creeks. And that would be Cottonwoods.

After we landed, Bob led us through Denver International Airport to the train, to the rental car shuttle, and to the National Car Rental lot, and within an hour or so we were at Mahlon’s door. He greeted us with great hugs.

Mahlon’s apartment was clean and tidy, a loud nose-thumb toward the “sloppy bachelor” trope. Seriously, uncluttered counters and (yes, I got a glimpse into his closet) clothes hangers all spaced two inches apart. There was just enough of everything and not too much of anything.

After lunch, I excused myself for some outdoor time. Mahlon walked me out to the sidewalk and pointed south, “Go down to Pecos and back,” he said, then turning, “And if you want more, walk up to the light,” he gestured towards Huron Street.

I strode off briskly like a loose pup, resisting the urge to leap into the air until I was respectfully out of sight, overjoyed to be moving after the long, sedentary morning. It was a spectacular day. Cool air, warm sun, Colorado Blue sky (we call it Carolina Blue back home) with flowering shrubs and lavender flanking the wide, level sidewalk. This being Colorado, one of the healthiest states in the country, other people were about: jogging, dog-walking, and pushing strollers.

This is when I spotted my first wizened Cottonwood tree. I stood in reverence, my affinity for Denver blossoming in my chest.

I remembered riding borrowed horses along the city ditches in the ’70s and ’80s and our rides on Jesse and Penny down to the Big Thompson east of Loveland in the ’90s.

A couple of days later, we had lunch with Molly and Shane and their longtime friends, Alex and Jade, at the Lake House in Littleton. Molly has several times mentioned how much Alex reminds her of me, and this was our first opportunity to meet. Molly was right, Alex and I have similar profiles and many traits in common. Someone mentioned that we should adopt Alex and Jade, and Bob and I enthusiastically agreed. So now we have five daughters!

Molly and Bob took the opportunity to catch up while the rest of us walked the Clement Park Lake Trail. This time I couldn’t help myself. I took off running and Jade sprinted to overtake me in her dress and hiking boots. Laughing, we returned to Alex and Shane only to burst into childish exuberance the next time either of us had the urge. Soon we were straying from the pavement to chase fat-bellied prairie dogs, Alex calling after us, “Don’t touch them! They’ve got mange. Maybe Bubonic Plague.”

A pair of boys wheeled towards us, asking if we’d like them to catch a prairie dog. “Yes!” we screamed and they flung down their scooters. The larger boy gave chase and at the last minute the chubby pest dove into a hole with a indignant chirp.

The smaller boy crouched low like a border collie, milking the limelight, and crept towards another plump rodent. Then with a wiggle of his hips he flew forward. For a minute, we thought the boy would win, but his intended target also scampered away unmolested.

We were more than halfway around the lake now and Jade and I had settled down, chatting idly with the adults about movies and such. We came upon some old Cottonwoods and I shared my thoughts about reconnecting to my years in Colorado and about how much I loved climbing trees as a child.

Jade, too remembered fondly her tree-climbing youth. “I haven’t climbed a tree for ten years,” I said wistfully. “All I need is a limb I can reach and I can walk my feet up the trunk,” I said. “The trees at home all branch out too far up to reach.”

“What about this one?” Jade asked and a minute later, she was up and urging me to try.

It was a hard-won battle. Grasping the branch nub, I got my right foot wedged between twin trunks, and willed my leg to raise me from clinging to standing while Jade cheered me on. I doubt I would have made it without her encouragement.

It took a long time for the euphoria to dissipate and settle into my bones. Since then I’ve felt connected and rejuvenated, and sure that I won’t ever stop absorbing the world of people, plants, and animals with childlike delight.

First stop, Japan, a.k.a. Tami and Arlo’s house by the pond. Arlo, Kristen, and Tami put out sandwiches and deviled eggs, and Kersten brought a plate of coconut almond macaroons. Great way to fuel up for a woodsy hike!

As Tony, Susan, Megan and I were walking down to Japan from Susan and Tony’s house (Inkberry Hill Farm), we were passed by a car peopled by men in dark suits. Our first thought was, Mormons? but it turned out a pre-party party was already going on at Japan.

Tami’s mother’s partner, George, passed a few weeks ago, and his and Anne’s families would soon be elebrating his life at The Plant. I had a whale of a good time yakking at a whole new group of people who hadn’t already heard my stories. Kudos to Tami, Arlo, and Kristen for making both parties happen!

Per Carrie’s request, we stopped at Delphi to see the gardens.

Kersten and I have grown close from years of weekly walks and hikes.

Tony led the way from Delphi to Inkberry Hill via new trails he and Susan made in the ten months since they moved into our neighborhood.

The trails lead to the green burial ground at The Sanctuary of the Burrow, were many of our beloveds rest and where Bob and I will ultimately spend our last days in earth.

Susan and Tony put out deviled eggs, pineapple, watermelon, and cheese and crackers. The temperature was pushing up towards eighty, so the watermelon was just what we all needed. Tony and Susan had new windows installed last weekend and I think Susan picked the perfect color blue to set off their yellow house.

When we were sated, we took off down the Elephant Trail.

Turning right before reaching Stinking Creek, we hiked up and over The Beeches trail. I’m not gonna lie, I was often short-winded. Every time I stopped to take a photo, I had to run to catch up. Also, I’m seventy and it was hot.

At the top of the hill stands a group of mature beeches, hence the trail’s name. Thank you, David, for taking my picture.

Another right and now we’re on the Northwest Passage, heading south towards our place. Our crawlers had stopped to discuss some point of interest, but by the time I caught up they had moved on. Eleagnus is my best guess, as eradicating it and other invasives is top of mind for all of us.

It’s pollen season and our footwear grew more yellow with every step.

Last stop, Trouts Farm, where Bob and I put out drinks coolers, a hummus and veggie plate, cheese, chips, and crackers.

Our back porch on the north side of the house is perfect for entertaining with its wood flooring and eclectic chair collection.

How nice to spend the day with friends, and even nicer to reach my favorite rocking chair and pull off my shoes and socks.

Here are links to previous Trail Crawl photo essays:

[Trail Crawl 2022] * [Trail Crawl 2019] * [Trail Crawl 2018] * [Trail Crawl 2017] * [Trail Crawl 2016] * [Trail Crawl 2015] * [Trail Crawl 2014] * [Trail Crawl 2012] * [Trail Crawl 2011]

What I know of Chicago came from movies and songs. Like High Fidelity with John and Joan Cusack, Jack Black, and Tim Robbins. Or Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago, a song that will now play in my head for this entire post. And I hear they like their pizza super doughy and cheesy.

So, when Bob proposed we spend a couple of nights in Chicago on our way home from Lake Mills last September, I said, “Why not?” I’m an open-minded sort of person, and since I hadn’t broadened my horizons in years, it was high time I checked out The Second City.

As per usual, Bob made all arrangements and accommodations. All I had to do was tag along, gaping at the sights, and I did that handily. Also, as per usual, he secured us a nice suite in The Hampton Inn, this one housed in the historic Majestic Building and located in Chicago’s Theater District, inside the Loop.

Our first morning in Chicago, I walked downs eighteen flights of stairs for coffee and muffins. Hotel stairwells are a great way to escape the air conditioning and uncramp my legs from travel-sitting. They feel like a cosy secret, an echoey haven for die-hard walkers. I rarely encounter another human in my stairwell meanderings.

What a surprise to fling open the door and find what used to be the outside wall of the Majestic! Apparently, the Hampton Inn stairwell was added onto the outside of the Majestic, probably years ago.

I felt like an archeologist as I stared at decades-old pigeon poop on brick and stone, and in that moment, my heart opened up to Chicago. I could see New York’s familiar grime and fancy architecture in this sealed-up space-time portal. I now knew something about Chicago that may not be so evident to others, and that knowing made me feel like an insider.

When I did my research for this post, I read that the Majestic was a Shubert Theatre, just like the eleven Shubert Theatres my grandpa ran in Manhattan and I wondered if he had ever been to this one in Chicago.

But enough insider stuff. It was time to get outside and act like tourists. There are plenty of parks, museums, and art in the Loop. Our first meander took us a few blocks from the hotel to Millennium Park, home to Chicago’s iconic Cloudgate which most people refer to as “The Bean.”

We had a lot of fun playing around near the 110 ton, stainless steel sculpture. It’s like a giant fun-house mirror.

Sixty-six feet long and thirty-three feet high, the Bean is made of polished stainless steel and was installed a mere twenty years ago.

Another interactive feature at Millennium Park, the Crown Fountain splash pad, involved water and two fifty-foot towers made of glass blocks projecting video of real Chicagoans.

We sat near the splash pad with gelato cones from Amorino, a busy, brick and mortar shop near the park.

As I was finishing my cone, two young men approached us and asked, “Are you happy?” Well, of course we were we said, and one of the men filmed us telling the other man all about it, and so we got ourselves on YouTube. (briefly at .08, then 5:54, and longer at the 6:26 mark)

Cities are such an odd mixture of work and play. Who keeps all of this clean? I kept asking myself. As a tourist, I focused on the bright, potted flowers and art installations, but all I had to do was look down to think about the maintenance. The street sweeping and lawn care, repairs and garbage removal. There are legions of workers making a city shine, but none know how to get rid of flattened gum. And actually, that gum sparked an affinity for Chicago, New York’s sister in grime.

We walked about eight miles on our one full day in Chicago, beginning at the southwest edge of Lake Michigan, past the many joggers and strollers.

Bob wore a blue Hempsmith tee under his button-down so that he could send Arlo a photo of his clothing line being worn in Chicago. And because Bob believes that tie-dye is always a solid fashion choice.

We couldn’t have asked for a brighter, more beautiful day, I thought, as we made our way into Grant Park.

The Clarence F. Buckingham Memorial Fountain is made of pink Georgia marble and was installed in 1927 by his sister, Kate. We had stumbled upon one of the largest fountains in the world and my respect for Chicago was growing by the minute.

The bronze, Art Deco sea horses represent the four states bordering Lake Michigan: Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan.

City parks are a refreshing distraction from the concrete jungle, a place where geese graze just like anywhere else on earth.

And Squirrels forage for whatever they can scratch up.

Back to the gum-crusted, crumb-dusted, but not poop-smeared streets. Kudos to Chicago’s pooch owners for doing a great job of cleaning up after their pets.

Birds tell us it’s okay to breathe the air. When we moved to coal-sooted Tianjin, China in 1998, I knew we were in trouble as soon as I realized there were hardly any birds.

You will know me as a tourist because I have a camera and it is pointed up.

Bob crosses a bridge alongside some mildly-disturbing art.

The Chicago River Riverwalk offers lots of places to sit and eat and there were plenty of people doing just that, but we kept on walking. When a fire boat drifted by, I thought about how cool it would be to see them suck water from the river and shoot it into the sky.

Muffins long ago digested, we stopped for some of that world-famous Chicago Pizza, a not so big one, and ate it all. It would have been wrong to come here and not eat their pizza, but I’m too old to change my allegiance to Brooklyn Pizza with its thin crust, black dough bubbles, and scant sauce and cheese.

Towards the end of the day, I was really hitting my stride, as at home as I could be.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was playing a couple of blocks from our hotel, so we decided to cap off a perfect day with a play. We were, after all, staying in Chicago’s theatre district.

It felt good to sit down after a day on our feet and we settled into our plush chairs for some first class entertainment.

Bob caught the sunrise on Monroe Street on our final morning in Chicago while I was upstairs doing yoga. I am grateful to him for my cultural adventure in the Second City.

Chicago’s Loop is a lot like New York’s Times Square without the food carts, honking cars, and pot fumes. Comfortably familiar with a few nice surprises. The next time I see Chicago’s theatre district in a movie, I can say, “I’ve been there!” I’ll think about the gum, and the birds, the fountain, the fire boats, and the secret facade hidden within a stairwell.

Twenty steps, a hundred, and everything disappears—the unfinished bathroom, the circular saw on the front porch, the tile saw in the back yard, and the stacks of tile and grout and lumber. Your new reality becomes a distant memory.

It occurs to you that this is last year all over again, and here you are seeking refuge amid the trees again. Last year they took Bob apart, then put him back together, and finally sent him home to recover inch by slow inch until he could walk to the bathroom unaided.

This year your contractor friend, Trip, and his sidekick, Jerry, opened up your floors and sistered in new lumber to make them well again. They tore everything out of the master bathroom and rebuilt it from the subfloor up. A complete re-do requiring ear protection and thrift store sheets over furniture and daily vacuuming.

The trail you made three years ago hardly needs to be marked any longer. You nudge a toe under a fallen branch and flip it into the tangle. No dusting necessary out here, only flinging. You snap off a leafy limb that might have made you duck. Nothing is going to slow you down. You can smell the water in your mind.

When you reach the creek, you listen to it gurgle for a few seconds before stepping onto the rocks. You choose one in the middle and sit facing upstream. So much lazy water. You wonder when the drops sluicing past your rock fell from the sky and how far they have traveled.

You realize you are looking at the flow of time, and you try to imagine what your life would look like rendered as a creek. All those years funneling towards the trickle beside your outstretched feet. The water talks itself over the little gap and spills past.

You stand, turn, and sit facing the other direction. Now you are looking into the future. Water flowing downstream towards the Cape Fear River basin and out to sea. You see a lot of rocks and not much water and you laugh at the allegory. The life ahead won’t be so wide-open easy. You are slowing down, hurting more, remembering less.

The creek turns and vanishes, refusing to tell you what happens next. You sigh and push your body back to standing. Push past your new creakiness, shake off your lofty musings—the justifications and the doubts—and point yourself towards home.

Leaves dance above your head, and you straighten, lengthen your stride, happy to be part of this day. Just another trickle of time to be savored, then released and sent along its way.

STARTING OUT

FIRST STOP

ONWARD

MEGAN’S BOTTLE TREE

SECOND STOP

ON THE MOVE AGAIN

STINKING CREEK

THIRD STOP

FOURTH STOP

Another year savored and digested!

Here are links to previous Trail Crawl photo essays:

[Trail Crawl 2019] * [Trail Crawl 2018] * [Trail Crawl 2017] *
* [Trail Crawl 2016] * [Trail Crawl 2015] * [Trail Crawl 2014] * [Trail Crawl 2012] * [Trail Crawl 2011]

Two rivers meet at White Pines—the Rocky and the Deep—before continuing towards the Cape Fear River Basin. We seldom see white pines in the surrounding, loblolly-heavy woodlands, but they flourish in this park’s ecosystem.

Kersten is delighted by how quickly we arrive at the trailhead, and after two dashes back to the car—Kersten to shed her sweater and I to retrieve my hair tie—we launched our Thursday morning adventure.

The trail is well-worn, the trees marked with colored metal discs. We decide to start along the Green Trail, switch over to Black, and return via Blue.

Tiny, white flowers are the first to draw our attention, their lobed leaves sheltering emerging blooms with a tender embrace. When I later learn their common name is Bloodroot, I think about the unprovoked bloodshed in Ukraine. We stoop to examine one after another until we’ve had our fill and can walk by without bowing to their simple beauty.

A glimmer of water catches our eyes. “A verdant spring,” says Kersten.

“A what?”

“A verdant spring. I read about this the other day,” she laughs.

My phone erupts in a calypso tune, and for a few minutes, Bob joins us with talk of salamanders and trout lilies. I tuck the phone into my back pocket, thinking, what a good sport he is for supporting my post-retirement pursuits.

Kersten takes note of a toppled tree with roots like ram’s horns, and she tells me about her father’s habit of scraping at root balls in search of treasure.

“He found a lot of arrowheads that way,” she says. I’m embarrassed that I cannot remember the year of his death—such a momentous event in my friend’s life—but am unwilling to pick that scab by asking.

We walk in companionable silence, breathing in the warm, piney air, thinking about our fathers and some of the good moments we shared with them.

“A trout lily!” I say, crouching over a tiny yellow flower. Kersten bends to examine my discovery. “They only bloom for a few weeks this time of year,” I say. “We can’t be far from the river, now.”

We reach the confluence where the Rocky pours into the Deep. “This river,” Kersten looks to our left, “doesn’t seem to be moving. It just gets absorbed by the other one.” We stand there for a minute or two, absorbing the negative ions, taking in the weathered sedge and the rocks, pondering the interplay of passive and active, trying to picture the journey of a single twig making its way to the Atlantic.

We continue along the River Trail with the Rocky on our right, pausing to look at sunbathing turtles and greeting the occasional fellow hiker, beaming as people do when surrounded by tall trees and moving water. I expect our smiles have a similar cat-that-ate-the-canary vibe. We’re all getting away with something, sharing a great little park in the middle of the week.

Invigorated with negative ions, I continue out to the grasslands. The golden stalks rustle in the light breeze. My thoughts churn slower with every step. It takes about half a mile to transition from driving to walking. I’d been moving so fast, lurching from one task to another, speeding around in my car. I turn left after a nesting box and in a minute I can see the lake shimmering ahead. Then I hear the Hum.

~*~

At first, I only heard it when I got up to pee at night. It seemed to come from the exhaust vent. I’d stand on tiptoe, straining to hear. It is decidedly a hum, the incessant weaving of two low notes, kind of like a dissected busy tone: HmmmmUhmmmHmmmmUhmmm It reminds me of a foghorn.

“Do you hear that?” I ask Bob one morning after the refrigerator shut off. He lay silent, straining. “I think I do,” he says, but neither of us is convinced.

By then I’d been hearing it for months—since midsummer at least. “It seems to be coming from inside the house because I don’t hear it outside,” I say. “Do you think it’s just the hum of our electrical system? If so, why would I suddenly start hearing it?”

“Do you want me to turn off the main breaker?”

“Yes,” I said biting my lip in gratitude.

Bob disappears into our bedroom closet and shuts everything down. He comes back to bed and we hold our breath. “I still hear it,” I say. Dang. Must be an earworm. Or aliens.

I wondered if someone has put up a server in our neighborhood. I’d read about a man who started hearing a persistent, barely-audible hum. He walked until he found the source, and discovered a windowless building full of computers.

Or, maybe it’s coming from the nearby quarry. I had not heard the rock grinders at 3M (Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing) for a while. Maybe they’ve changed equipment. But then I hear the grinders again, and along with it, the hum.

I google “low hum” and read about “the world hum” which apparently only 2% of the population can hear. I read about regional hums, like the ones in Windsor, Aukland, and, Taos.

I decide it’s either environmental or low-frequency tinnitus—between 75 and 80 hertz. My brother, Jamie, who suffers from tinnitus reports hearing a much higher pitch. I discover that when I plug my ears, the humming stops. Jamie tries this and still hears his 4,000-hertz whine.

~*~

We live by sight, sound, and touch. When the sky darkens during an eclipse, the birds go to roost and the insects sing. When the insects start talking, I wind down my day. I hear the hiss of a pot about to boil over, or the whump of a wreck on the road outside our house, or the moan of my man in pain, and I jump into action.

It takes a few weeks for me to sleep through the night in a new place. I wake with every new sound, sounds that eventually become part of my new realm of consciousness and not cause for alarm.

Mrs. Kravitz, from the ’60s TV show Bewitched, was ridiculed for her vigilance, but she wasn’t wrong. Someone needs to pay attention. My horse, Jesse, used to stand at the edge of the field while his pasture mates lay in the sun. Rarely did he take a turn at sprawling in the hot grass.

Like Mrs. Kravitz and Jesse, I took it upon myself to pay attention. “You were the centurion,” my mother used to tell me. “You’d stand at the doorway watching the boys play, and you’d let me know if anything went wrong.”

I ask my friend, Kersten, if she’s been hearing a low hum—a new neighborhood sound—and she says yes. My heart leaps. Maybe I’m not crazy after all!

Bob is sure he hears it now, too. “It sounds like a surging motor,” he says, making the hum from behind closed lips. A surging motor. That makes me think about 3M again, so I open Google Earth Pro for a bird’s eye view of our neighborhood. What I see there blows my mind.

In March of 2021, there were two main quarries not far from our house, grinding away at rock, day and night.

By April 2021, Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company had added a third quarry a quarter of a mile closer to our house.

Meanwhile, they ramped up production in one of the original quarries.

The sound was alarmingly loud as I stood in the road snapping these photos. I felt like a spy, and it shook me when a pick up truck approached. I waved cheerily, hid my camera, and walked purposefully back to my car, fighting the urge to look back. Did I see a gun rack? Was I too close to his house?

The lake grows closer and I can smell the damp mud ahead. I am not alone, I think. I have the Moncure Hum to keep me company. As quiet as a beating heart, the sound that will likely follow me to my grave.

On February 22nd we found ourselves at Reid Heart Center in Pinehurst, a forty-five minute drive south, awaiting open heart surgery. It would be two weeks before we returned to Moncure and started putting our lives back together.

I stayed in Pinehurst during this time. When I wasn’t loitering near Bob’s hospital bed, I paced the corridors with my flip phone pressed against my head. I slept on a vinyl chair that stretched into a bed if certain parts were pulled in a particular sequence. The long nights felt like slumber parties with their whispered blood draws and dark conversations, Bob and I laughing with the nurses as if we were in on the joke.

After daylight I walked big loops through the sprawling FirstHealth parking lots, confused and bereft. The old Bob was dead and no one knew who would emerge in his place. I distracted myself by searching for a migration of robins that swung through the pines as noisily as a troop of monkeys.

I started walking the Pinehurst Greenway and it became my path to enlightenment, my lifeline, my escape and solace. It was the next best thing to being home in “our” woods.

On February 26, I walked the greenway for hours, ringer on high to receive nurse Steve’s operating room updates. They’ve made the incision,” he said at 8:55 AM. At 9:29 he told me, “They’re having trouble. The heparin isn’t working, so they’re trying something else.” And later, after they got Bob hooked up to the heart/lung pump, he called to tell me the snipping and stitching had begun.

I watched the sun light up the pines, and rather than return to Reid Heart Center to wait in the lobby, I lay on a trailside bench and talked on the phone.

We left the safety of ICU on March 5th and began the slow process of recovery. Lucky for us, Bob’s three daughters flew in to ease our transition.

Rewind to December. This is Bob before the bottom fell out of our lives. He was no longer up to walking the mile down to Stinking Creek, so we were enjoying a minor expedition slightly beyond our back acre. “I’m getting old,” he would say, unaware that his heart was starving for blood.

I was trying to recreate MC Escher’s Three Worlds with this photo of a stream that I cross on my way to the creek.

Sometimes I look up and see the moon and am reminded of an after-dinner walk with Haruka. We took note of how the moon followed us through the woods, sometimes disappearing, but always reappearing — a comforting constant.

I called Haruka from Pinehurst and let her absorb my fear and exhaustion. “I am always with you,” she says. “Like the moon. Remember that night?”

I didn’t see any beech trees on the Pinehurst Greenway and realize how much I miss the Queens of the Forest after we get home. I love how their roots climb over the leaves to ascend their smooth trunks.

Beech trees wear their leaves like tutus long after all the other trees have dropped theirs.

Their marcescent amber leaves brighten the winter landscape.

I named my favorite beech tree Carl, and our friends built me a cedar bench for my 62nd birthday so I could sit beside my favorite tree in comfort.

When I come across a broken tree, I wonder how I might have felt had I been standing here when the wind swooped down to rip it in half. I marvel at the surrounding trees, still straight and intact, and going about their business.

These two trees are locked in an angry embrace.

When the wind stirs, they groan and whine. I stand and listen until their sonorous torment pushes me down the trail.

Shortly after we got home, I hiked to Stinking Creek to look for signs of spring. I watched the waters flow past the turtle-shaped rock that I have stood upon so many times.

I searched the flood plain until I found some Trout Lilies, a tiny plant that only blooms a few short weeks in April.

When I saw that first yellow talisman, I knew that everything was going to be all right. Delighted, I walked home renewed, springing off the balls of my feet, ready for anything, ready for more.

If you enjoy stories about nature and inspiration, please get yourself a copy of “Nature’s Healing Spirit: Real Life Stories to Nurture the Soul.”

Carl lives on a wooded promontory with a view of the flood plain. Mainstay in an ever-changing world, he’s been standing tall for decades. Yesterday I walked the half mile through the woods to spend time with him. I went in the morning before it was hot, armed with a spider stick, and prepared to retreat if accosted by too many black gnats and mosquitoes. But summer storms have reduced the spider webs to bearable, and mosquitoes and gnats were also at a minimum.

My legs are strong and sure on this familiar trail. I hit my stride about five minutes out. I’m drenched in living earth, fragrant with pine needles and leaf mulch. Generations of trees surround me, from tiny sprouts to giant sentinels. The air hums with woodpeckers and cicadas. I swing my head to the left when a squirrel rustles in the undergrowth. Sometimes deer startle me, leaping up and blasting away like gunshots. Once I came across a fox, scratching fleas. Another time, a Barred owl swooped down to take a better look and flew back to its perch to keep an eye on me.
Carl receives me in his reassuringly taciturn way, eyes forward. He reaches out with solid, steady limbs and I feel safe. Without a word, Carl and I are in our happy place once again. He is a beautiful example of his species, an American Beech. Or perhaps he is, as I often joke, a son of a beech. Nature gave Carl markings that resemble a human face on the side facing the stream. He has a jaunty mustache with a twig sprouting from the corner, like a pipe stem or cigarette. This year a praying mantis chose to build an egg case on his cigarette.

Old forest lore referred to the majestic beech as Queen of the forest. Their trunks are smooth and straight, mottled with white and gray spots. They have the peculiarity of retaining their leaves all winter, only losing them when new growth pushes them out. Their leaves provide a spark of ocher in the cold, monochromatic months. Surely this tenacity is one of the things that appeals to me as I walk towards the winter of my life.

The neighbors pooled their resources a couple of months ago to build a cedar bench for my sixty-second birthday. Lyle and Amie loaded it in the tractor bucket and carried it to Carl’s side. Jason and Doug dug holes and sunk the legs into the earth. It is sturdy and wide and smells like my mother’s cedar hope chest.

I climb on and sit, legs dangling. The size of Carl’s bench turns me into a youngster. I lay back and peer up through the understory at the sky. My heart swells and my eyes get moist. Time stops. I’m alone and connected. There is only this moment and this place and yet I’m aware of all the moments of my life. All the good ones, anyway.

I think about my friends who cared enough to add this bench to my favorite spot. I recall our many shared meals, the birthday candles and wishes, and remember delicious Sunday dinners at Nana’s. My thoughts wander forward to our daughter Emily’s wedding and our first glimpse of her baby boy. I think about Bob and how lucky I am to have a partner that gets my twisted sense of humor, and how relieved we both are that he is well and recovering his smile.

I caught part of the TED radio hour the other day. They were talking about aging and time. As we age we become more positive, yet joyful occasions often bring a tear to our eye. We find ourselves experiencing the past, present and future simultaneously. Surely holding our grandson for the first time will trigger a montage of feelings; all the way back to Emily as a tiny girl, and fast forwarding to imagine little Nolan as a grown man.

This is why I visit Carl in his special place. To think, remember, imagine, let go, connect, rejoice and weep. Carl seems to understand, he never questions. He just stands there with his cigarette and looks off across the ages.

The American Dream is alive and well just around the corner, a short walk from Trouts Farm. This manifestation of ‘50s-style prosperity — a collection of family homes on wooded and rolling land — always cheers me up regardless of how much doom and gloom I’ve glimpsed in the morning headlines.

The first part of my walk is not calming. I hurry south along the Moncure Pittsboro Road with its narrow shoulder and loaded logging trucks. When I hear one hurtling towards me, I clamp my teeth shut to protect my tongue like I used to when working with young horses, and step into the weeds until it roars around the bend. I’ve learned to close my eyes until the slipstream has come and gone before stepping back onto the asphalt.

But it’s usually only one or two trucks before I emerge onto the wide, gravel entrance to the hinterlands. The first thing I see is the old Midway General Store, so named because of its location halfway between Pittsboro and Moncure. My next-door neighbor’s father ran the Midway from 1949–1968, back in the days before paychecks flattened and everyone went into debt. I like that the family kept the storefront intact; it’s a little piece of local history preserved, the clipped lawn a harbinger of more civic pride ahead.

This well-tended road curves through the woods, taking me away. The first time I walked here after our return from the dusty squalor of Kumasi,  I noticed a pattern on the shoulder and my mouth gaped open when I realized that it had been seeded with grass. And when I stepped into the sunlight with the view of neatly-tended hay fields, I was flushed with gratitude for the people that care enough to tend this land.

The image of these orderly acres would return to me during our repatriation phase, helping me override the fears that we were old and unemployable and would not be able to successfully resume our lives here in the states. We’ve been home nearly six years now and those seedlings have grown into a green carpet.

These days I am often joined by my friend Judy. She meets me at the end of her driveway where the road turns left through the trees and we continue on around the bend to where the landscape opens up. The man largely responsible for keeping paradise intact is the nicest of people. I can tell it’s him even when the sun is glinting off his windshield because he doesn’t just wave his hand, he waggles his fingers. He often stops to chat, leaning over his steering wheel or throwing a foot over the side of his golf cart, with his blue heeler, Cricket, smiling beside him.

Judy overwintered her horses in this pasture for a couple of seasons to give her own acres a rest. We usually stop to take in the view and appreciate the barn at this point, remembering when the horses were here: two bays and a grey.

Sometimes Judy brings ZuZu, a sturdy Boxer who loves to run and nose around.

Even on cooler days, Zuzu jumps into the pond where the horses used to drink, bending forward like zebras.

I was by myself the day I saw geese on that pond for the first time. The light was spectacular and so I had taken a camera to try and capture the allure of my morning walk.

This is the view that I see shortly after turning around: a lone Tulip Poplar with a juniper tutu flanking a hayfield, with the barn and the pond beyond.

When I return to the pond, the geese waddle up onto the bank and launch, flying over the trees towards our house.

A bit further, I’m back into the shade and heading towards home.

Nearly every day, sometimes in the rain, I step into this place of casual order and reaffirm my belief in a future that’s not on fire, or heavily armed, or being knelt upon. This milieu of The American Dream, born of generations of hard work and family money, is a remnant of the years between The Great Depression and Reganomics when we were assured of education, healthcare, and the right to thrive. In the coming days, as we wait for the election and a vaccine, I may find myself seeking equilibrium here more than once a day.