Boonesville, Mississippi

Yesterday I left Natchez Trace Parkway for Boonesville. I played spin the map. Boonesville is where I asked more of my walk cards to be sent, so here I am re-stocked in a another town. After a week and a half on the Trace reality my has shifted. Trash on the side of the road has become interesting again. Old dogs again run at me with mouths wagging more than tails. Their teeth seem more rounded, barks less intense, smooth even. It is refreshing to exit this world, stepping onto a road where everything is like a golf course, and men scurry about in white trucks if a branch lands near a picnic table. It is sweet when all of the grass can be measured...for a while. After a few days, solitude becomes isolation. After a week and a half alone I am ready to try to bribe the warden.

The corner I planned to travel through in Alabama is already behind me. I have no ghost stories. People were friendly to a distraction...when I saw them. A line of touring bikes hurl past with a woman's voice yelling out,"Where'd you start?" Of course I yell out Maine. "Maine,"screams the line, one after the other?"
"Well, welcome to Alabama!"
"Picnic at Colbert Park, just after the Tn River bridge. Your invited. Two o'clock." These are the instructions that are compiled after all the riders have passed. "50 miles/50 years birthday party for Rosemary," trails the last of the conversation behind the peddlers as the fly off to the sound of chains and gears in flouresent yellow shirts.
Before it is 2p.m., I have met Dr. Mims family, and battled my way through the mind altering hickory smoked pulled pork the doctor smoked himself, corn, bake-beans, fruit salad, a couple of ice cold drinks, and homemade pecan pie. Dr. John Mims is a conversationalist of the highest order. While I fight to keep my paper plate clear, we travel back in time to World War II, and fly over enemy islands. The family is introduced to me by Doctor Mims one after the other as they arrive. Although the doctor id in his eighties we are from the same material, if I may compliment myself. Alot of people have mentioned that they would love to carry this staff with me. John is the first man that I believe.

Too soon, and way too fast , all of the valued guests are back in their polished SUV"s to returning to teaching, or leading in various colleges. I feel like I've dropped out. Sunglasses are through hair and over ears, engines start, then silence. The sound of Rosemary's son playing a birthday song on his guitar that he wrote for his mother still floats above the water, into my head. An old lonely man sits on a picnic bench under a drouping tree down at the shore, pining for his late wife. My watch is not wired to my day anymore, so I go down to the old man watching a stick bob in the water.
"You walked here all the way from Maine," asks the ninety one year old mouth without any teeth?
"Yes sir. Yes I did, I reply knowing it is a winding up , rather than a conclusion."
"I just can't see it. Wasting your life like that. All of the people's that wrestle, and wait. That ain't no kind of life. No sir. If I had all my years to do again I'd never sell a one to bigin the foolishness your carrying here."
My eyes were on the water. I looked enough at my counsel, so I stepped inside. In some respects, the stranger was right. We thought a long time like that, sitting there with that old wet branch keeping time as good to watch as any flicker in a fire pit.
I love old things, always have. The more I tried to fix some of them, the more I mostly broke. We talked about a young man walking across America trying to find himself. We did not talk about dead wives, or being so lonely your blood dries up like putty around an old window casing.
We got in his old rusted pick-up so I could help get the pop cans out of the surrounding garbage cans, because my friend was too stiff after sitting. Reaching into old trash barrels I smiled to myself. My walk is strong in me. It can take a good poke. For a moment I was old on that picnic bench, my heart all stiff from sitting, and a young man was given to me so that just for a moment I could forget about loss and discover I'll never really be left alone unless I want to be.