I was in a window seat on a Greyhound bus heading north. Ignoring as best I could the rumble and jostle of the bus and the low riffing voices around me in its rows, I was reading a school assignment, a book of theory, and here and there in the margins I jotted a few words to remember later. Occasionally, to stay alert, I'd put the book down and look out at the passing row crops and pastures divided from each other by thin lines of trees. Slowly, the miles added up and the shadows lengthened. Once, not far from the highway, in the sideways light of late afternoon, I saw a horse at the margin of a grassy field. It was agitated, fretting and shaking itself but going nowhere. The horse had halfway crossed the barbed wire fence, and was caught, the wire taut against its belly, the barbs raking there with every frantic motion. The bus moved on relentlessly, and the horse receded from my view, as the ones around us who suffer often do.
Luckily, in our musical universe other melodies are also heard. The other day we woke to fog in the neighborhood. I pushed the button on the coffee maker but before its steaming and snorting ended, I stepped outside. The temperature was mild, the air a little damp, and everything was altered by the fresh circumstance of fog. To the west, the taller buildings of downtown were now invisible, and the houses and greenery in the middle distance were softened by the haze. Up the sidewalk, only the nearest young tree was vivid, its globe of leaves and branches sharply defined against the gray sky. I don’t think I had ever looked closely at our neighbor’s tree before.
I took a turn on the river walk. Every half block or so, a runner jogged by heading east or west. One fellow heading west eventually passed through again pointed the other way. Cars were few, and even fewer were the walkers like myself. The river was high and glassy-smooth, reflecting the tall trees on the steep bank across the way. People tended not to say hello as they jogged past — they were there for their own reasons and this was their own free and special time.
One tall man approached on foot from the east. Against his yellow shirt, the long black lens of his camera had been visible from a good distance. I expressed admiration for the seriousness of his photo gear, and asked him if he posted images on Instagram or Facebook. Even right here in town, I knew that there are photogenic water birds in greater numbers than I had once guessed. He said that he mainly shared his photos with a few friends. He was just plain reticent about his hobby. I did manage to talk him into showing me something from the morning’s walk. On the camera’s digital view screen, in striking color, a great blue heron stood beak upward and feet in water at the river’s edge. I’m not sure who was more reserved, the photographer or the heron.
On other mornings, rowers have passed, most recently a twosome locked into the rhythm of their oars. In their sleek vessel, no coxswain called orders, so they pulled in unison to a beat only the two of them could hear, and like the horse, they soon receded from my view. We recognize and celebrate the beauty of activities people choose and practice hard in their own free time, don’t we? And on a walk like that one, as on the bus ride years ago, there are clues about the kind of world this is and the kind of beings that breathe deep here. But these clues are quiet, and they recede from view as the day grows busy around us.
