It is Nov 1st, 2010. We have had a short and late summer this year. However, fall is officially here. The leaves on the trees are turning shades of orange and yellow and are forming a bright carpet on the sides of the road day by day. Soon enough the trees of St. Edward's Park will be bare and I'll be able to see the sunset over Lake Washington through their skeletons. How different the view is season by season.
Often I walk my dog, Rango, on the trails, headphones on, lost to the external world of people but tuned into the sight of nature and into my internal world, wherever the music transports me.
Music is magical that way. It brings forward memory, dreams from the night before and emotion you thought was dead and buried over events long past or events you never realized had significant emotion attached to them at all. One day you find yourself listening to
"The cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man on the moon
When you coming home dad
I don't know when
but we'll get together then, son
You know we'll have a good time then,"
and tears are streaming down your face. For the first time in forty years you realize that you are grieving the loss of a father you never knew not because he wasn't physically present but because he wasn't emotionally present. As your fingers could touch his skin and feel his warmth, or your ears could sense the resonance of his voice or the rattling of his snores, so too you wish it could be so easy to feel connected, loved, and that you mattered to him. These are the types of things I think about when I'm listening to music and walking my dog on the trails of St. Edward's Park.
At the waters edge I remove my headphones. The gentle waves lap against the shore. The leaves rustle. A bird chirps. Kenmore Air passes overhead and the clopping of a runner's foot passes behind me and fades into the trails from which I came.
I continue my trek up the hilly trail, back to my vehicle, back to what awaits me. My focus shifts from the present to what's next. Anxiety and dread return but I know that on the trail, beauty surrounds me and peace lies within me. I need only return to experience it.
It would be three more years before I would realize that the experience of beauty and peace lies not out on the trail, but is accessible always within. How nice to find this bit of writing nearly three years to the day, to see where I was and to be grateful for how far I've come.
