Where Do I Begin...

This morning I was in the middle of Ohio taking note of the places and the people I encountered during my trek to Pittsburg. I would drive a little and stop to jot a note here and there. Sometimes I would recall what was over a rise or around a bend. A short space of road whose canopy was so dense it left me blind in the night, also an eerie memory. So much has changed in less than three years with urban sprawl, natural disasters (wind and ice storms) and decay of old structures that I fancied or visited on my way. I stopped at a cemetery where I had to fall asleep from exhaustion high on a hill next to a set of three cypress trees whose trunks had grown twisted together like the family buried there under. When I slept with them three years ago the middle tree was fading from a lightening strike that tore a crevice in its trunk. Today you could hardly make out that there was once a strike at all, like the faded letters of the elders sandstone marker. Things change, fade and return to dust. They kept me safe that foggy and cold morning; I remember them... The towns folk don't remember the family name. The next morning, I spoke to the grandson of the cemetery owner who knew all the living inhabitants in the county but not those of the family whose stones he had cut and weeded around as a child.

That was not the only tree I slept under that exists now only in my thoughts. So many things changed, I noted a few.

Then it was off to the great unknown! I drove from downtown Pitt into Maryland and am now close to the bay an hour north of Virginia. It is long past dark and this parking lot is safe enough. In the morning we will begin to work our way down to our destination point, which is our begining point and subject to change. Like the man said in the Harry Neillson tale of Obleo and his dog Arrow who were banished to the Pointless Forest, "Ain't nothin pointless about this gig."

Dig?