Backyard and Beyond

They say that the long and winding road leads to your door.Or, should you be going the other way, which is generally the way to start a walk, walking out that door, say, on a fine evening between four and six, one step after another, the road goes ever on and on, across the river and into the trees, through the Pathfinder’s sea of prairies and Scheherazade’s ocean of stories, skirting along Highway 61, all the way to No. 7 Eccles St., Ithaka, and its rooted bed — a Penelope for your thoughts, Leopold — with a side path to the Lonely Mountain and its soft underbelly of Smaug, or, taking the wrong turn, bobbing upon a coffin of wood that’s all that left of the old world.
Solvitur ambulando, said Augustine of Hippo; it is solved by walking. Meditation, exploration, transportation. You can do it by yourself, in public no less, or with someone, holding her hand, or with a group, one foot following the other. The Zapatistas say Caminando preguntamos, we walk asking questions.And when, in the Sufi legend, the thirty birds get to the end of their road, after much reluctance in starting out, and various adventures along the road, to find the fabled Simorgh, hoping this phoenix-like creature will lead them as their king, they find only their own reflections in the water, for si morgh merely means thirty birds in Persian. No path to wisdom leads to a king, though some may lead to a heart of gold.

John Gardner noted that there were only two basic story lines: you go on a trip, or somebody comes to visit. A life is a trip, even if you never stray far from home. But stray you should, far and wide, before…um, you know…

Dante begins Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, midway in the journey of our lives, by walking into the selva oscuro, the dark wood, that haunted European nightmare imported to the New World — O my America, my Newfoundland — along with metal axes enough to slay the beast. The particular woods illustrating this post are more silvery than dark, matching the midway silveriness of my hair on this, depending on how you count, my 50th birthday or the last of my 50th year on planet Earth.The long and winding road…