In the winter the paths are so clear. They’ve been cleared for you by machines with hammerhead noses. They’ve been cleared by other footprints trying to do the same thing through the snow and ice – just find a way through it all. I think the paths through life are laid in the same way – except we are the first ones to walk them, the first and only ones. We have to be the hammerhead noses. We have to tiptoe over hills. We have to make the path without really even knowing where we are going until we’ve gone. It takes looking back behind us to see how much work we’ve done, the curves, the v’s, the forks in the road where we started one way only to come back and go the other. If we all could see our maps what would they look like?
I had a dream last night I was at a river. I was near the sea, but standing in front of a slate-watered river. I knew I had to cross it to get back to the sea, but I didn’t want to. It was too wide, too deep and I didn’t feel like swimming. So I turned around and went another way. And eventually, clomping through green marsh, I came to a pass in the river – it looked just as wide, but when I got closer I noticed a large boulder under the moving glass of the water. I realized I could walk the entire length of that boulder to the other side and not have to struggle with swimming.
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