Heat
I never liked the hottest days. I'd keep to the trees, plan my route near water. Or just swing the days away in the hammock I'd set up in the shade of the pines along the riverbank. The most earthly of sounds: the rush and roar of running water, the lap of waves, thunder before a fall of rain. Water flows, you see, in the country I remember. Ice flows, too---I know, I know. But not on a human scale. There's no playfulness to ice. Its creaks and groans stand in for thunder here, and children whimper when it rumbles and shakes our walls, just as they did back Home in the heart of a storm. This new world is cold and drear most days, and the years unending. Yes, there's majesty here, majesty galore. But my mind keeps going back to the hottest days. Painting Cooper's old barn in the baking sun of an August afternoon. Crossing the talus slope beneath Chalice Pass in a late September indian summer....