Steel Magnolia, Circa 1983

Back in the day, I was a little bitty thing and I had no idea about anything at all. My melancholy was rooted, I imagine, in books, in a prodigious imagination, in the romance of not being known. Jane Eyre was the type thing I fantasized about -- the allure of truly being an outcast. That photo, unearthed in my purge, was taken in August of 1983, right before my junior year in college. Or maybe it was 1984, right before my senior year. I was a little bitty thing and I had no idea about anything at all. I don't remember the names of either of those men -- the older one was the professor who led me and a group of young people through a part of the Adirondacks that summer in a quasi-survival trip. We carried 70 lb packs on our backs and hiked about fifty miles in, I recall, and it was incredibly difficult. It rained a lot, and there were days when I focused only on the boots in front of me, hauling my own up and out of mud. I didn't sign up for this trip because I was destitute or a former heroin addict or because I was grieving a dead parent. Remember, I was a little bitty thing and I had no idea about anything at all. I signed up like I do a lot of things -- impulsively, and when I made my way to Syracuse and then on a Greyhound bus to Potsdam and then to meet this group of strangers, all of whom were experienced hikers -- well -- let's just say it was one of the most formative experiences of my life. I had never been hiking and the only camping I had done was probably in my back yard as a child. At the end of the ten days, I was awarded a Steel Magnolia award, and I remember how proud I felt. In fact, I might have just gotten the award when this photo was snapped. I came down out of the Adirondacks dirty and tired and grateful. I checked into a hotel by myself, ordered a steak and baked potato, took a long bath and got on with the rest of my life.

Whispering Pines

Do you know that song, a Richard Manuel/The Band plaintive cry? If you find me in a gloom, or catch me in a dream --

I hear that song in my head today as I scurry about, mailing packages, filling out forms, going to the grocery store, diapering and dressing Sophie, fixing her hair and putting her in the backyard swing where she'll sit just for a minute, while I write, I said, and I gave her, it, the swing, a shove, told the dog to stop barking and ran up the back steps into my room, inside my room, my lonely room, there is no in-between. What else comes to me but songs from other lives, that other life, that I penned in small spiral notebooks, in tinier script, even a poem in French that I picked out of a stack the other day, opened and read, remembered.

Pour la premiere fois
j'ai vu la Saturne
et je pense a toi
deux lunes autour d'une
lumiere brilliante.

I spent two weeks hiking in the wilderness of the Adirondacks one summer between my junior and senior years. I had Pascal in my head, read St. Augustine on a bus with a big girl named Cheryl, wrote character notes about moon-faced women and boys tripping on LSD, camp lantern lighting the page. Our instructor was bald and stooped, a leprauchan who knew the names of all the trees and plants, the rocky paths, the peaks. I came back thin, so thin, from twenty mile hikes, seventy, eighty miles in, a sixty-five pound backpack wrapped on my already small frame. I wore a blue cashmere sweater with cables, thin in spots, and when we climbed down and dispersed, I spent the night alone in a hotel room in Syracuse. I shaved my legs in a porcelain tub and sank, deep, into hot water. I ordered steak and a potato, had it delivered to my room and devoured it like a beast. The next day I flew back to school, was met at the airport, I think, by a boy, but I can't be sure. I can feel you standing there, but I don't see you anywhere -- I will wait until it all goes 'round -- With you in sight, the lost are found --