The first day of the new year

Twenty-twenty-four didn’t seem like a real possibility to a kid watching the futuristic fantasy Space:1999 on television in the mid-1970’s, and yet here we have arrived. Let this be the start of something better despite the prerecorded messages looping inside your head telling you otherwise. We are great and talented visionaries of demise. We have been well trained. Dystopia is so easily imagined. But what if we can conjure something else?

There’s no obvious winter here today, looking out through the window. I’m going to put my pack on and go for a walk in the woods this morning. I’m going to write 1,000 words today. I’m going to buy some spackle and start to prep the walls in the narrow hallway for painting. I’m going to shop for some 40 pound dumbbells. These are the things I will do today. 

The woods were waiting for me having changed some since my last visit. The road along the power lines runs up a short hill, bald after last Spring’s clear cut. The logs that once were trees there are piled neatly, obscenely, at the top. The site is always discouraging to me. My lower legs - shins and calves - are tight. I’m already feeling exertion. Always starting over is the curse of the inconsistent. 

The dirt road that descends the far side of the hill in a series of switchbacks is soft revealing deer and coyote tracks. It’s a little early for a January thaw. Once in the woods, I encounter a giant evergreen fallen across the trail. It seems to have split about ten feet up the trunk. The branches grew heavier on one side than the other, maybe, then the wind rose. There’s a zen lesson in there somewhere. Some of the branches are propping up the thick trunk, and I’m able to duck under without going out of my way. 

I take the same route as usual up to the pebble. Someone has removed a couple of fallen trees from the brook and its course is wider since my last venture through. There’s no ice at all in the swamp. The sun is bright. I’m thinking of the year ahead. 

Have you noticed that when you’re in motion - driving, flying, walking, running - you tend to think about goals and objectives? I have. I come up with all kinds of plans. My hypothetical life begins to fall into some sort of order during these times in transit. However, when I’m sitting still with time enough to put ideas into practice, I’m usually dull and inert. 

Walking up the hill to the first parking area brings the sweat out of me. Back in the woods, I roll an ankle on the trail, trip over sticks, slip on leaves, kick stones and roots. What’s the opposite of surefooted? Doubt footed. Let’s go with that. My booted feet are as deft as wooden blocks. There’s a process of acclimatizing you have to endure. You go through a sort of hazing before the woods let you feel like you’re anything else but unwelcome here. 

As I’m reaching the top of the last hill, I notice two dogs dressed in fluorescent orange vests trotting toward me along another trail. There are three people following them. I am not glad to see any of them. I’m ok with dogs, despite some early encounters with aggressive ones, but I’m usually annoyed by their people. One of the dogs, some kind of Doberman mix, slips around the boulder at the top of the hill to get behind me. He’s curious. “Hey Pup,” I say in that kind of high voice you use with a baby you’re trying not to scare. His people are approaching and they annoy me by not calling the dog back to them. I don’t even look at them.

I’ve reached my turn around point, so I execute an about face and head toward home. On the way back, the sweat is flowing freely. The pack is heavier than I remember it being and I know that I’m moving slower. Stop that shit, I say to myself, and just cover the distance. In the end, it’s 4.07 miles. When I get back into the house, I step on the scale. With pack and boots, I weigh in at 270 pounds. That makes me a little more understanding toward myself for all the stumbling and perceived exertion.

I took a shower and a twenty minute nap. The people who inhabit my dreams were speaking Spanish. My hair is as long as I remember having it in the last 25 or 30 years. It’s both too short and too long to do anything but look like a disturbed individual wearing a Beatles wig. That’s alright, I work from home, don’t date, and almost never go out. I usually remember to take showers, though that often seems unnecessary too. I think it’s a gesture to demonstrate to myself that I’ve yet to depart the civilized world entirely. Someone last week reached out to me to talk about a job that would allow me the opportunity to interact with others without having to manage anyone. The idea of something new sounded attractive for a minute, though I’ve yet to decide what, if anything, I’m going to do about it. 

I made the trip to Walmart and found the 40 lb dumbbells, spackle, canvas, sand paper and a bunch of groceries I could have probably done without and was astounded at the price. But what the hell, it’s stuff I’ll use. 

I took myself out for dinner to one of those Asian-Cajun boil places and ate spicy clams and shrimp with a Mai-tai and a beer. I’m a regular there. The staff recognize me. The owners are a very good looking couple who work hard together operating this business. I feel lonely when I see them together. Most of the time I don’t feel that way, but sometimes it gets me. When it does, I’m suddenly lost.