Heartily sick of the conveniences of life, I felt the need to social distance myself. This was unrelated to any guidelines or recommendations except those aching in my heart for solitude.
I got off to a slow start and didn't get to the site until early evening. I was saddened to see this site of several years of turkey camp had been logged off. The beautiful tall timber is now gone, leaving raw, sap bleeding yellow stumps. Too late to start exploring for a new camp, I set up in the middle of a little patch of spindly doghair pines. And got dinner started.
Near 100 yr cast iron took care of both frying potatoes and thick.cut ribeye. As they sizzles in the black iron, I opened a bottle of rich Willamette Valley pinot. Slopping a little of the purple slurple in a coffee mug, I.swirled the bottle to hasten the "breathing". The dog supervised with an increasingly critical eye.
I sparked up the old Coleman lantern and the familiar soft roaring stirred the dark backwaters of memory bringing up the tastes, smells, sounds, and heartwarming feelings of many previous camps. Some were memories of camp with friends, but many more were of the solitude that heals what ails within me. It is a condition in me that cannot be cured or eliminated, only temporarily held in all too brief remission.
My physical body satiated, I turned the lantern off and poured out the last of the fine ruby juice on my mug. Darkness began to feel as comforting as an old, well-worn flannel shirt. My eyes adjusted to the scant light of the thin wedge of moon, low clouds scuffing across her silver face.
The rain came as I slid into my cot, thunder and lightning put on a show, a real rock and roll lullaby. I turned over and over sorta like a fish outa water, but I knew this was but the first night in camp. I'd nap tomorrow and sleep better that night. Eventually sunrise surprised me and I wondered when it was that sleep came stealing into the tent on it's silent moccasins.
Fog socked us in and coffee only just barely pushed the cottony wisps from my brain. Lena wolfed her breakfast and was off like a shot on her own secret adventures. When I adopted her, she was a feral. That will forever be a key component of her makeup. I suspect she needs this time as much as me.
So, yeah, I am as socially isolated as 4G let's me be. And, yeah, I am reaching out to the P.A. gang to post this. The Tennessee Classic was cancelled, dozens of other events following suit and lots of folks are hunkered in place, unhappy with conditions. I'm hoping for just a while, as you read this, that you can escape the confines of your immediacy to feed that within YOU that needs the treatment solitude offers. I am on less often these days, posting less and less. But I still care about and for each and everyone of you.
Be well. Take care of yourself as you take care of others.
