Southern Comfort
A light fog sits in the field near the river as vegetation pops with drops of rain collected on its leaves during several passing showers through the day. A halo of light surrounds the street light near the barn, but there is no sign of the coyotes that appeared there last week. Maybe they have taken heed of my warnings – splashing the bushes and trees with my own pee – leaving a message they understand that says “Here is the boundary between us. Do not cross.”
Of all the places I have been, from the streets of Chicago to the rain forest of Tanzania to the bridges over the Kamo-gawa in Kyoto manned by chanting monks, I never imagined myself here in Carolina with the mountains in the backdrop somewhere through the darkness and the fog. Not that such things matter. Why should we be limited by our lack of creativity after all?
I came to this place because I had to. I needed a place to breathe, to take a respite however brief to view the trajectory of my life now in mid-flight. I needed the uncountable trees that I now call my own whose species are more foreign to me than the acacias and ficus species I learned to identify in Africa. I needed the river whose water I haven’t even touched yet, but take solace in simply knowing that it is there. Most of all I needed the freedom for my suburban soul to thrill itself before it lost the capability forever.
Those are the emotional reasons for coming here that don’t get explained to those I meet.
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