Well last weekend in the Appalachian hills was remarkably restorative. I marvel at it myself, heady in my still extant restfulness. An '04 Christmas gift from mom & dad, the just-a-bit over 24 hour excursion was well-spent at least in the earthly sense, which I'll re-live now for re-experiential porpoises.
oh, but we landed on that wind-bitten hill about 4pm, in time for a first hike - just a half-hour or so, to scout around and admire and begin to inculcate the view. It's still ritual at this point.
After, we watched one of the VHS tapes lying around, a movie titled “Fifteen Minutes” starring Robert DeNiro. Cotton candy for the brain. I slept and slept and slept. Ten hours till a new man. And in that morning the sun streamed in like a champion. The window over the bed beheld a wild expanse of woods. (Oh the woods gave up their leaves so soon! It feels a personal betrayal. Let but a few break convention!) The sliding glass doors held a picture book view from ten feet above the ground while the small circular hottub on the deck sat like a future promise.
Our dog Obi was chompin’ at the bit, knowing that hikes were in the offing. We lit out like a couple Huck Finns, but the hike was short-lived. I’d had visions of our ’01 visit to Hocking, my first blog post, this same time of year, this same lucky sun-warmth, when we contemplatively-read while sipping sophisticated coffee in the unrepeatable ten a.m. light. There is nothing more civilized than reading while sipping from a warm mug of coffee on a sylvan November morning. Nothing.
So Obi and I circled back and we ensconsced in the beauty of the little cabin, her pine boards full of dark ciricular knots that looked like areolas. I read with the leisure of a man with time to quaff, like a man with nothing but cold pints ahead. From an array of twenty books I picked up “1916: A Novel of the Irish Rebellion” and read long, like a wide receiver heading downfield. Slipped into the near recliner and read like the wind, then later slipped into the hottub with a cigar and the view.
My body temperature warmed enough to sit out on the front porch and I thought how much I love country front porches. I sit out on the back porch a lot at home, but there is something about a front porch. The feeling of home ownership (or rental-ship) and of holding down the fort. Or maybe it’s just the better furniture and the different view; the simple creature comfort of a bench and a stool for my feet.
Soon it was noon-thirty and the Buckeye-Michigan game was imminent. If I was to hike it’d have to be now. Tanned, rested and ready, I headed out into the whiskey-still brill sunshine, Obi at the leash. We gaped at the view, the view of a house on the far hill standing as a castle in the mist. There is something in long views that is deeply affective. I gazed at roads that itched to be traveled as we walked down long Berry Road. Obi saw bucks top-heavy with antlers but we couldn't catch them; I made the token effort for his sake.
Back at the cabin, having missed the first quarter, I had a couple St. Pauli Girls during the Great Game. And great it was, one of the best games we'd seen all year. Steph came home from shopping with lunch from the Amish restaurant and food up until now had seemed a nuisance - I had my first real meal at two-something. Broasted chicken and mashed potatoes…yumm! The game went down to the wire but took with it our mini-vacation. We celebrated the Buckeye win with a hike in the dying light along the property, catching views of far houses sitting in their Little-House-On-The-Prairie dignity.
The sun went down, as it daily will, and we packed up and headed back home. But the memories of that big white-curtained window with the view of sun-clad trees resonated and lingered like the words of an Oirish novel.
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