Living In Pictures, Jonesborough TN

Black clouds move their chairs over this Norman Rockwell town, preparing to sit and give up a bit of rain. From the Cranberry Thistle Coffee Shop in downtown Jonesborough I sip their brew of beans as I have every morning for three days. They are very kind, trying to feed my pack as much coffee as they pour in me. I'll love the fresh beans on the trail. As I write, Nancy whisper's to locals about what the walker at the computer screen is doing after he passes through their town. My feet are wiser dogs now. They lie under the table and sleep while they can. They stretch, yawn, and then roll from one side to the other. Dogs know when the rain is coming. Words more than clouds of black hold me in this wicker chair. It is the first week of camp and I am in love more than this trail heart can bear. Trouble is that I am so over stimulated I don't know which pretty girl to carve out my heart for. Yesterday I walked these streets of photogenic facades feeling like I was home in Stockbridge Ma, or Great Barrington. I walked into The Lollipop Shop on Main to look at all the treats, and vintage reproduction children's peddle carts and trikes. Grabbing a handful of dark chocolate, I made for the register. My pack was back at the Franklin House, so this man didn't know my face or story. With a tender smile the older gentleman simple said, "No charge." With my feet under this desk I am still running way ahead of myself.
This town was not a notch on my compass. Coffee. The magic walking bean became my magnetic pull that made my inner needle wiggle. "OLDEST TOWN IN TENN." Thats how the sign read as I broke from intent to desire. On the right as I came into history I saw a library on the right. Many days had passed since I had last found a computer. A week? Tapping computer keys was another fix that I needed to fill.
At the counter of the library I gave a quick introduction, never sure how I'll be recieved. It was not the laying out of words with thought. As a cowboy claps the dust across his pant legs with his leather gloves before entering a house from the trail, I have words that I clap against my sleaves to take the road from my shirt. Quickly, questions come to me from the ladies gathered at the back tables. There are many smiles. Smiles are good. At a computer screen that still reflected me pulling notes from my journal bag, I had two invitations for lunch from separate locals. The library ladies asked first so I was to become their guest of honor. Dona called reporters until they came with pens pulled from behind their ears. Dona called them all. Through a lunch of still warm fries, and barbeque chicken on a toasted roll I told stories that pulled half a dozen women away from the table, past the creeks, to where the moose still runs. We talked about snow. We talked about the change of a man, moving toward purpose.
Before lunch was over, Dona offered me a room at her bed and breakfast up the hill. I returned to the computer after press pictures flashed, and Dona gave me directions to The Franklin House, an 1840's house that she rebuilt with her husband Charles with sweat and love. An hour into being in Jonesborough and I had two separate offers to spend the night. Again Dona was first, so I became her guest.
Bed and breakfasts are God's gift to the traveling man and woman that acke for grandmother's smells, a mother's attentive coil of deep towels by the bathroom sink, and meals that made you want to pray while you ate even though you just said grace. The Franklin House moved one night into another, and then slipped another under the door while I slept, or was it while I walked through these streets that made me want to collect all those I love in my eyes so they too could see this town too without the hurdles of my words. History came here to visit, then decided to stay. Jonesborough was a pretty girl winking at me, as her hand found mine under the table while her mother served me pie.
Last night, Chuck, Dona and myself had to chew quickly though our dinner at the Dogwood Lane Resturant, which of course is a cruel sin when the mouth begs to linger over flavors the mind forgot existed. We had to get to a poetry reading, and talk at the town's visitor's center. George Ella Lyon, who was also staying at the Franklin House, was the award winning poet we were quickening to see.
As the microphone teased George Ella by working, and then not, the three of us found our seats up front. I was glad I could see George Ella's mouth. I was thankful I could watch her eyes. Sitting on a fold up chair, I watched a near stranger toss us words I had never heard arranged so startlingly before. Listening to George Ella, I silently prayed that the word 'stranger' would be removed from between us. Listening to George Ella made me want to go out into the back yard with a mason jar and a flashlight, and collect words just for her. George Ella made me sit up inside and wiggle arrows in my ears so that I cold push her words deeper into my paper brain.
As I listened as if I was ten and in love with my teacher, George Ella announced that a special story teller, and traveler of small town America was in the audience. Sitting in the front row with arrows sticking out of my ears like breadsticks I heard my name come to me in Ella's voice. As I was asked, I stood waving to everybody. My mouth wouldn't work. George Ella had been visiting students and encouraging them to collect stories in journals in the town school. They were in attendence. When the talk came to an end, and some students recieved awards, I tried to swim through the croud to George Ella but it was futile. Right away, boy's with fathers, and girls with mothers asked me for pictures with the walker propped beside their child. Soon I went from a stick figure trying to get a handle on the moment , to a character telling boys how to pee in the woods so no noise was made, because they asked how I releaved myself. Boys! Twenty feet from where George Ella signed her books, I walked around an invisible tent miming the art of voiding in a circle around a tent to keep the bears away. Parents roared at my ridiculous dance.
I scared them with the thought of large bears around my tent, as much as I made them cross their legs to avoid an accident when I made them laugh long and hard with my potty dance. The highlight of the walker show and tell was when I let the children wear my grizzly claw that was never away from my heart. All the power of my stories was pounding in their young hands. You would think that I would have to tell them to be careful, and not to.... I handed them the warm claw from around my neck. Young fingers held the claw and beads as if the bear could waken. I smiled and said nothing. More pictures.
George Ella made eye contact from where the tide of people moved out into the night, and smiled. In my heart I knew that we would talk till late into the night. In my mind I knew that we would share words smooth like wine that we would have to sip slowly and quietly, or our heads would hurt. I held George Ella Lyon in my hand like the grizzly claw was cupped in the hands of the boys. The bear was waking, so I listened.