A reunion of sorts

 I haven’t been to the woods for a while in these notes because I haven’t been to the woods.

In the days before the pandemic, people used to get what they called the flu, which was some kind of virus that wasn’t treatable and just had to be endured. I suppose that’s what I had. I was not sick enough to shirk chores but too sick to have fun.

Then, on a cold day, the big dog and I went to inspect a stand of beeches south of Stone Mountain, and it was almost like a reunion. Here are some lines from Naomi Shihab Nye that get at it better than I can:

 

Out here it’s impossible to be lonely.

The land walking beside you is your oldest friend,

pleasantly silent, like already you’ve told the best stories

and each of you know how much the other made up.

 

• Source: Naomi Shihab Nye, “At the Seven-Mile Ranch, Comstock, Texas” is in Hugging the Jukebox; New York: Dutton, 1982. But I have it in an anthology, Unknown Texas, edited by Jonathan Eisen and Harold Straughn; New York: Collier Books, 1988.