Wild Kids & Druggies

Yesterday started off hot and muggy. I took my walk down the road and it felt like I was entering some kind of forest primeval. Pines and oak thick with kudzu rose up on both sides of the road and I could hear the whirr and whine of insects all around me. I saw tracks in the soft red-blonde sand, hoof prints of deer who had crossed the road in the middle of the night, the smaller prints from raccoon and possum, and even my own Nike prints from my walk the day before. The road passes over Gum Creek about halfway to the highway. I can hear the creek before I get there and it sounds like a vehicle coming up the road, so my head is up and I'm wary, ready to move to the soft sand at the side. The creek runs underneath the trees and bush, fast and slick, banked in sand. There's a deep hole on the left side, not big enough to swim in, and who would swim there, anyway? The whole place looks snakey to me. By the time I'd finished my walk, I couldn't tell the difference between the smell of the woods and the smell of me. I'd become invisible.

The road to the highway used to be owned by, or may still be owned by, Eglin Air Force Base. At one time, it was paved. Now, there's a patch about 10 feet long with broken pavement, the rest is sand and red clay. The clay IS red, but when it's mixed with the sand, it's a pretty color. If I could call it anything I know something about, I'd call it strawberry blonde. At one end of the road is the highway. I don't know what's at the other end, but I've been told there is a swimming hole where kids go to swim and get high.

And that brings me to today's topic. Yesterday when I returned from my walk, my father and one of the other men who work here said I should not walk on the dirt road, that it wasn't safe because of wild kids and "druggies." What kind of fevered addict would be cruising the road at 6 a.m., I asked. Still, it wasn't safe. My grandmother wanted me to take her pistol when I walked the road. I told her I'd probably shoot my foot off. Evidently, the sheriff has been patroling the road. There is a history behind the warnings and the concern.

But what a shame. We move 3200 miles to live on 500 acres in the middle of nowhere and I can't walk down the dirt road because of the kind of thing you expect in suburbs and cities. What irony. What disappointment. What does this say about our country, I wonder. Where are we safe? Maybe, only in our minds.

I'm still thinking about this. I knew I would have to give up my walks on the road when hunting season started, but I may have to take a reckoning before then. I told my father that my husband and I would mark the trail around the lake and I'd walk there. My grandmother, when she could walk miles with her long legs, used to go around the lake with all the ladies when the family gathered here at Christmas. But it's tough giving up the road. It seems like giving in. Do you trust God to protect you, or do you take the prudent and wise path and heed advice? We'll mark the trail and I'll change my ways.

This morning I saw a little snake on the road that had been smashed in the middle. It reminded me of what my husband always says when we pass a dead critter on the side of the road: God bless that poor animal. Now I do the same thing, say this prayer, not because it helps the animal but because it comforts me in some way. There is a poem by James Dickey. I haven't quite forgotten it, though it's been years since I've seen the words on the page.

Exercising early in the morning creates a fertile time for reflection and rumination. The rhythm of walking is constant, but the mind is free to roam, explore, take up one idea and turn another away. It seems I can turn on my legs and let them go while I tend to the mental store, sorting, cleaning, re-ordering. I almost think I could begin to write again this way, using this early morning walk as a wide clear space to set out thoughts, wind them up and see where they go. I've been thinking about writing again, not only here, but something substantial, something I'd want to publish. For years I've been away from writing in that way, but people who know me still ask; it seems important to them because they know it was important to me at one time. I wonder if I write again, will it come to me like my relationship and marriage did -- so easy, so natural, like stepping into a bath of warm, scented water. Will words pour out of me if I let them? There are struggles, questions I still need to ask or answer.

Meanwhile, I'll keep walking. On the road or on the trail, it's all good. I start off with the Doxology and end up thinking about the unfinished novel in the pile of stuff in the barn. The other day my father asked us if we wanted a gun. I looked at Ed. We had talked about this and decided we did not want to keep a gun in our house. Here's the irony: the opening scene of my unfinished novel has the heroine asking her estranged father to show her how to use a shotgun. Maybe that's what's wrong with the scene. Maybe it should be the other way around, like in life: a father wanting to give his daughter a gun for protection. How much can we protect ourselves, anyway? How much can we protect each other?