While visiting a state park the other week, my husband and I were caught in an unexpected thunderstorm that almost cancelled our tour of the original grist mill and surrounding buildings reconstructed on old foundations of an industrial pioneer village. We decided to wait out the weather and try again. And I’m so glad we did.
As we rounded a bend on the path, mists from warmer water in the creek lifted into rain-cooled air and surrounded the old mill with a patina of history. In nostalgic twilight I caught the scene on my modern phone, creating a tintype tribute to how I’ve felt this month.
The past has haunted, comforted and compelled me in October, as I traveled from the dirt driveway of forgotten feelings to a slippery sluiceway of future fears. I drove my aging parents forward through historic battlefields the same week that I flew back into my present, trying to regain who I was before the past caught up with me.
Throughout this month I heard old stories retold with names changed, facts filtered and time warped into a different ending. The cracks and faults of long ago deeds have been obscured by misty memories and foggy searches for an easy way out of impossibly hard problems. What has been said before will not help us now, and yet I’m drawn back to a simpler time, that probably wasn’t so simple.
Suburban Satsangs 