I drove along the river and through the countryside. Early winter, late afternoon light tipped what is left of the foliage on the trees. Dull yellows, oranges, and reds took on momentary radiance before a passing cloud muted the light. The light on the water invited leaping ripples to intensify before they flowed past.
The parking lot at Washington Crossing State Park was full. I turned left on Aquatong Road and drove along quiet back roads and through forests. A rangale of deer sat in the golden grass watching the passing car. Mine. The roads felt lonely today and I was grateful.
It's been awhile since I passed this way, and I ended up on an unintended road. Unexpected adventure. An explore, as I named these things for my children when they were little.
Let's go on an explore . . .
We'd take a road we'd never traveled before . . . just to discover something new.
Aways on, I turned left and connected again with my chosen road. I drove by the home of an old friend. She and her husband rented there almost ten years ago. There was an orchard and a big garden, a pond and a smaller, second house on the property. She kept it beautifully. These days it looks a bit rundown. The apple and pear trees look untended, and the small house by the pond has been leveled. A lonely skeleton sits on a chair in the front yard. It looks like whoever lives there now is doing some work and the space is in transition. At least, that's what I hope is happening. It was a magical place, once upon a time.
My winding path back to the river took me through forests and glens I've not visited in years. This is the thin time of the year and my journey a wild hunt to another place, another time, and back again. I'd been rollicking through my work this morning and early afternoon and a detour on a quick stop became a two-hour conversation that threw me off track, drove me to reclaim myself. That's what the Wild Hunt is, after all, a journey to reclaim and re-member the self. We don't know when it will claim us as its quarry, and often we don't realize we are hunting ourselves until we are deep in the thick of it.
I'm hours behind with my work. That may be an invitation to re-think my plan, to simplify. Get down to the bare trees of the matter and look at the structure. Honor the season.
Fall-ing In Love: 40 Days of Noticing is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.
Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.
