We drove through Hunt and Ingram on our way home Sunday. The power of water was on full display. The cliffs were washed clean, and only the biggest trees remained standing beside the river. The works of man were ravaged, too.  Cars beaten flat sat beside the road. Houses emptied or swept away dotted the landscape. The slate was wiped clean and it was difficult to see what stood where.

I am home from a camping trip that reminded me of camping trips of old. At several points there were seven children all under the age of eight, running through the camp, splashing in the river, and making joyful noise. The fourth generation. And we were light at least one family who is away in Virginia, with two more children. Of course, there were bumps and bruises and a tear or two, but it was the normal stuff of little learners, learning.

I was thinking yesterday about the imagination of our ancestors, those early humans who trod the landscape figuring things out as they went along, learning. They lived short, brutish lives but they found ways to make them longer, and safer. Of course they made mistakes along the way, and we’re still making mistakes, but we’re still learning.

I took a short walk yesterday in the early evening hours. The moon was well up, sitting high in the sky in its first quarter phase. It felt close as though I could reach out and touch it. The unlit half of the moon was clearly visible if you looked long enough, and I had the time. As I looked, I thought about all the people before me who had looked, especially our earliest ancestors, as they walked around making sense of the world.

There was a time when I dutifully squeegeed the water off the shower glass and walls. Then that time passed. I am now paying for my sins. For the last week I have stood, fully clothed, in my shower, working with vinegar, lemons, and elbow grease to remove the built up scale off the glass. It is, to say the least, tedious work. But I am emerging victorious. To a degree. There will be no perfection, but it will be better.

I just found a burr in my hair which makes me think I might be sitting around too much. Although, I do a lot of work outside and it’s possible it just blew in there yesterday, or maybe it caught on one of my gloves and I scratched my head. At least I hope that’s the case. I’d hate to think I walked around all week with that burr in plain sight. I’d rather not be one of those old men who looks like he just rose up from the dirt. I have a better self image than that.

My time traveling self went on an adventure last night. At about 3:30 this morning, I found myself back at my first job out of college. I wanted to give my young self some advice. But I knew it was too late, so I just felt sad and spent a few moments wandering around looking at the awards on my office wall, wondering why in the world I felt so self-assured, and thinking about the mistakes I made.

I think I have a neat and tidy life. Everything well ordered. Everything in its place. Then I clean a closet and mysteries unfold and worlds come unlocked. There’s a box full of small dolls my wife collected, featuring a geisha under glass that I bought in Tokyo. The Wilson family bible once again sees the light of day, a book most liked printed in the 30s, a compendium of births and deaths. A program for the first game ever played in the Astrodome in 1965 sits in its protective envelope.

I have a bobo on my forehead. I hit it with my trunk lid while putting a sack of topsoil in the trunk. I felt very much the fool then, and I still feel very much the fool. Apparently, fully opening my trunk lid is a skill I have failed to master, even at my advanced age. I compound the sin by having done it before, reaching in to get my golf clubs. You’d think I’d learn, but apparently it is not a lesson my brain wants to register.

We have a dedicated wildflower garden. It was beautiful for a number of years. But an over abundance of red ants and wind combined to turn it into grassland. What seeds the ants failed to take into their burrows, were blown on the wind to other yards and fields. I can’t do anything about the wind, but I’ve dealt with the ants, and yesterday I reseeded the garden. Today, I’ll do a light topdressing of soil, and then it’s the winter-wait for spring.

I got my flu and Covid shots on Friday. One in each arm. Both arms hurt. No reaction otherwise to speak of from either shot. I feel protected now. But there’s no telling how any of the bugs might mutate, so I’m still avoiding crowds in tight spaces if I can help it. I’m in the old demographic, and have no desire to join the dead demographic. Besides, I’ve got plenty to do around the house.

I have six glass balls, each a little bigger than a baseball. They’re clear with bubbles in them. Two are tinted gold, or maybe orange. They are flattened a bit at a point so that they sit steady when placed and don’t roll away. They used to have bases that lit up, with a light shining through the ball. There’s only one base left. It, with its ball, is on the mantle. The rest sit on window sills to catch the light of the sun.

It’s a cool clear morning here at my semi-country abode. I say semi because the big trucks whine down the highway on one side. I say country because the heifers and their calves are standing in the pasture on the other side watching the house. One of the calves is eating at his mother's buffet. I went out to say hello, and they just stood there, looking. We’ve always had the cows and the calves, but the highway sound has grown over the years. Maybe they’ll put in a by-pass because civilization is noisy.

The thing I most enjoy about the re-exploration of my classical music collection is the time it takes to listen to one work, and the attention that needs paying to do so. If I look away for even an instant, the music becomes elevator music and when I look back I have no idea how the music got to where it is or why the composer wanted me there. I’ve picked up the stylus and gone back more times than I can count this week.

From what I can see with the naked eye, the moon has company this morning in the eastern sky. Castor, Pollux and Jupiter are hanging close at hand, with Venus down below watching at a distance. Two stars, two planets. It’s a nice view from the end of the porch. Of course the water tower is there too, just above the tree line. It’s home to the radio that sends me my internet signal.

I started writing down one path this morning, got to the end and decided to double back and do something different. Partly, the original idea seemed sort of half-baked and it failed to get my heart racing. Of course, I don’t generally want my heart to be racing, but at least I like to feel pumped, even if it’s just slightly at what I’ve written down. Oddly enough, the callback came when I took a short break and walked outside. It’s nice and cool this morning.

I noticed an odd little detail in the coverage of the recent celebrity killing. There was an abundance of video footage of the shooter before and after the event. Good quality, too. And I imagine what we saw was only a taste of what the authorities had. It appears we’re on TV way more often than we realize, in places we might never expect it. Being of a literary bent, it reminds me of the Big Brother in George Orwell’s 1984. He was always watching.

The recent rains and coolness have returned a little color to the land. Where once it was all about brown, the green is back. I had to mow for the first time in a month yesterday. Not an onerous chore because of my big riding mower, but dusty and noisy even though I wear ear protection. I even did a little weeding in the north garden, trying to free it of grass mostly so that the other little plants could grow next spring.

They peered inside my body to look at my prostate and found nothing of concern. Now we’re left to wonder what’s up with my slightly elevated PSA numbers, although it’s likely to be only my age, which is advanced. So, we’ll watch and test and I’ll get to know my urologist, just as I know my cardiologist, my ENT specialist, my vascular surgeon, my gastroenterologist, and my GP. A phalanx of well educated people doing their best to keep me alive.

I appear to be in that time of life when medicine is now the rule. In the last five years, I’ve had an aneurysm repaired, my back adjusted, skin growths removed, and my head scanned. And that doesn’t count bouts with Covid and sinus infections. Yesterday, they took a picture of my prostate. Who knows what they’ll see. The last one in March, a casual look, during scans to check my stents, was normal. So, anything there hasn’t been there long. Of course, the unknown is always imagined as the worst, but we’ll see.