20 August 2007, Day One
Stoll Trail
My shadow grows long and still I press past the time I feel that I should prudently turn back. I am driven, like Heathcliff, by the hope of encountering ghosts of my beloveds. In my case the ghosts are two twelve-year-old girls dressed in bandanas and giddy laughter. We stopped to swim off Scoville Point on a warm July afternoon seven years ago.
Today is late August and I sense the difference in the light. The water is a deeper blue. Wind is strong out of the east, unimaginably flung by the power of Hurricane Dean, 2000 miles and half a continent south of here. I’ve not reached the place I’d hoped to and yet I am turning back. This trip is filled with goodbye and the awareness of death – knowing that I could live 40 more years and not step foot again on this trail that I love.
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