Literary hiking?

Roc here. Had a fine day yesterday. I called in sick because my stomach hurt and I hadn't gotten much sleep. But I felt better about ten, and went hiking instead of worrying about the 12,001 things that need to be done around the house. "When you feel like you can't get away, that's when you need to get away." One of my rules for living that I've not followed very well the last few years. And you all remember my essay in Galen Smith's Upsouth, the one that began, "For the office-bound I heartily recommend the mid-week hike." (I'll have to post some of that old stuff.) Anyway, the temp was 15-20 with a stiff wind, but I have some good gear and I was ready. I wasn't really hiking hiking, I just had in mind a two hours' walk up a trail in the local state park, a route that I call "The Active Senior" (an hour in and you pass right by the picnic area bathrooms). The Alberta Clipper had come through during the night, so a clear blue sky and a half-inch of powder provided a fine backdrop for the stately gray trees. It's a very nice trail, lots of up and down, crosses a number of small streams, and ends in a stand of tall firs. Good tall trees all the way, too, and--there's those bathrooms.

But what I was getting at: When I stopped and listened to the streams, I heard I'm going out to clean the pasture spring and Watch the water clear, I may. Whole, apropos phrases from the aforementioned essay sprang unbidden to mind. I recalled a poem I wrote thirteen years ago, when I was very unemployed, and writing and reading a whole lot. I've been very nostalgic the last few weeks and I'm sure that's part of it. But it made this old Buddhist realize--thoughts and associations don't necessarily "cover over" experience. Maybe they intensify it. At least literature does. Maybe that's why John Updike wrote, "Reading is the best part of life" (Bech: a Book).

Even better, when I got home I felt like reading poetry. And I discovered a poem that was new to me. The poem was Galway Kinnell's tribute to Robert Frost, which I had never read before, in a book I've had for twenty years. Kinnell gratuitously uses phrases by Frost throughout the poem to illustrate how deeply Frost has entered into and deepened our American consciousness. The discovery made a perfect ending to my day.