Return Toward The Sun

Just outside Alexandria, I have been laying low for nearly a week at a home of new friends. Not eager to brave up to the one-hundred plus degree days, I have enjoyed the company of Ty and his wife Kat in Pineville as days repeat themselves. Kat is Lynn Wood's daughter, owner of the Birdman in Saint Francisville. For under a week I have enjoyed their company, but I can't wiggle my toes here till fall. Even fall here gives no promises out of this fire. No matter how many days that are taken away from this heat, the heat waits me out patiently until I return to my nature. Walking.
It is early Monday morning. It is time.
As it looks right now, my days will be walking hard into mornings until my head starts to swim, after that I can only steal bases from tree to a puddle of shade of an old silo until the days burns itself out into the 80's and 90's of evening. There is a fear not unlike that of skating fast on thin ice. I will walk, and then listen. This year the feeling of missing snow came early. Spring was little more than a word. Now snow, and the stiff acke of winter at dawn are a billion memories away. Texas is calling however softly. It will be a good deal of time before the miles become easy again after a rest in a/c rooms. That is the tax of a rest. In this brow beating sun I'll pay any tax for a while. In the end, only the slow unraveling of my feet through towns west and north will provide the return of cool evenings that will allow me to welcome more than a bit of sheet over one shoulder, no longer waiting hours for the heat to finish radiating off me so that I can hold a few hours of sleep. Any real rest to come is a carrot on a stick a hundred miles long. Every morning I must wear the same carrot in front of me or my feet will forget that it has not always been this hot--nor will these summer months remain as intolerable if I keep walking.