Arrive in the late afternoon, Pennsylvania like a postcard of future foliage tours to come and the cashier at Wegmans decrying updated CDC guidelines. The host shows me round the cabin and explains how great the gun laws, you just walk right in and get your gun, but the lake is yours and the woods are yours and the silence, blissfully, is yours, so you just nod. When he leaves, you walk to the jetty and take all your clothes off, dive off the spider webbed ladder into quiet waters and when you come back up it’s as if you’ve forgotten everything that came before.
I do not pretend to come to the woods without intention, do not pretend vacation is a break without a goal. But today I spent half an hour staring at a fire, twirling marshmallows on a stick and marveling how age lets you wait a little longer, turn those white puffs around slower as they swell until they reach that perfect golden crackle, instead of setting them on fire and pretending you like em real crisp.
Some things have changed, some things have gotten better. You’d do well to remember that, when the embers die down and all that’s left to keep you company
is a mind running full speed
on empty.
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