End of the Trail
"I am not happy." There's a wrought iron piece on a weatherbleached lamppost of a warrior in saddle, marking the foot of this private road and property. It is on the left, tucked in where it is protected. An oiled walnut gunstock. Unlevel terrain; a brook never put to use and unnear any dwelling. A tree fit for gallows; a glass bottle no longer made, heavy brown glass and clean gritty mud. Further up, an exposed sunbleached skull of a small animal on thin rocky soil resting on basalt ledge. There were so many features of the land that seemed to have been ignored or long forgotten; I was grateful for that. It became my home and it was vast and hidden and I hoped it would last as long as I.

The sun in the field described itself to me by its piercing thinness. I did look directly at it, taking the experiment on good authority (mine). A finished cardboard box, almost woodenly solid, concealed under damp needles of pine which are always brown and close to the soil. Storing it there seemed acceptable to me. Sharing the secret, equally so.

A deep pit that nobody dug, too small to be any feature, and the wheat grass followed. Walking isn't the right word -- I fell from foot to foot adaptively to pass near it. Countless times footfall was deeper than expected, even when shin met rock instead of soil, and I did not tire of it, nor the word for shin or for sprain, fracture -- I wondered what people were discussing and quickly forgot my own injuries; I wasn't looking down unless something bright and discrete caught my eye.

I never saw people roaming the woods; the occasional report of a firearm sounded miles away and I did not understand my found privacy and the abandoned utility of the land, and it was like that everywhere I went. Rock-collecting only enhanced this point of view; it has lasted a lifetime and spread like wildfire to every valuable thing, be it artifact or something in the world. The world was the landscape of forest and rock and meadow and pond and brook.