2004-02-16 - 5:42 p.m.
I’m feeling tired today.
I’m not the only one. Beau is plopped down by the stove, not moving at all--though in fairness he has already been outside, which is more than I can say.
Last night we walked home in the cold and the dark, coming back from my parents’. Paul and David had stopped by in the morning and we went down together to spend the day celebrating our other brother's--Jeff’s--birthday. But at the end of the day, Beau and I were left without a ride home, and rather than ask Dad to take us back I decided we’d walk. A minor setto followed. Mom didn’t want us to walk. It was cold, it was dark. She went to get a flashlight and got Dad up off the couch on her way back. I said relax we’d be fine, took the flashlight and headed out the door, but hadn’t gone a hundred yards in the four miles we had yet to walk before I began to think: Gosh it IS cold.
But it was a cool night in more ways than one, so dark and clear that a billion stars were blinking in the sky above us. We took the Dugway going up through the woods. The banks rise up steeply here on either side and enclose the road, shutting off light. It’s primeval and scary; one imagines wolves or at least coyotes waiting in the wings, ready to pounce. In fact, last summer I saw two coyote cubs in the road at the top of the hill. There have also been reports of a bear…
I come up out at the top of the hill, orienting myself according to the big dipper suddenly emerging over my right shoulder as the woods fall away, and realize that I’ve been following the North Star. The big dipper points to the end of the little dipper’s handle and that is the way north, as any competent Boy Scout can tell you. I realize with a mix of amusement and chagrin that I am following a heading that will never get me home, walking exactly parallel to my driveway still a good two miles away.
