“I have walked out in rain — and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.”
— Robert Frost
On relatively rare occasions, my wife or I go it alone on our walks or rides into the countryside near our place. It’s not often that either of us ventures down that blacktop ribbon on our own, for we enjoy each other’s company. But this seems to be the time of year when our day jobs spill over more and more into the after hours, and whether it’s because of our busyness or our turned-back clocks, we have to put off our strolls until after dark, or not take them at all.
Such was the case last week when, on a warm and windy evening, I grabbed our flashlight, laced up my shoes, and took off on my own into the dusk while she was tied down to more mundane duties at an elementary school book sale.
Like most of the best times in life, my walk was unplanned and unscripted, an impromptu march into a colorful sunset, accompanied by unexpectedly mild November air, the kind that one likes to see blowing through bedroom curtains or hear rattle through fall leaves. I intended to tackle only half our usual distance, but quickly changed my mind after settling into a contented pace, comfortable in shirt sleeves and battered ball cap.
As I put a mile, and eventually the hassles of the day, behind me, I began to listen in my head for Robert Frost’s poem, “Acquainted With the Night,” for I had nothing special to occupy that space, and it seemed so appropriate since I knew I’d not make it to my back step before it was truly dark.
I have never been skilled at reciting poetry, an inadequacy that left me ridiculed at vacation Bible school programs and classroom re-enactments in my childhood days, but a line or two of Frost’s sonnet floated between my ears as I turned back east and headed for home, the glow of a robin’s egg blue and orange sherbet sky on my back. I knew I could more than mumble what few lines I could remember, for all that was in the woods and near the fields to hear my halting attempts were a few crabby killdeer and a neighbor’s always-confused rooster, who never knows what time it really is.
I have written often of Frost in this space, I suppose because his words come to me when I’m with trees and stars and quiet places, the kind of stages that he treasured, too. As in his poem’s setting, I looked up to see “One luminary clock,” this time in the southeastern sky, although the moon I witnessed that night was far from a full one.
As one who speaks from experience in dodging inattentive drivers and uneven roadsides, walking at night can be a call for hazard pay. We use a tiny but mighty light that flickers bright white through a bubbled glass lens, but we turn it on only when we hear or see a car ahead or behind us, for, although the light is silent, we feel it unnaturally intrudes with our thoughts. I’m sure that we’ve startled some unsuspecting motorists who never expected our light to greet them as they came up over a rise in the pavement.
On that night, I knew that all around me there were things creeping about. On more than one occasion, however, one or the other of us has startled a deer who was more concerned with a little spilled grain than paying attention to pedestrian traffic. My wife actually feared that one was about to crash through an unpicked cornfield and run into her bike as she pedaled in the dusk toward home a few weeks ago. I have merely watched them watch me as I walk along, snickering a bit as they snort and jump at my interloping.
We know the coyotes are out and about, too; we have seen them killed on the road; heard of neighbors who have lost chickens and house cats and rabbits to the scruffy gray-brown hoodlums. We have seen them high-tailing it across a field in the glare of our car’s headlights, and we hear them every night howling in the lonely distance. Our stereotype of them was shattered last summer, though. We found one along the road, dead just a day or two. It was as well-groomed as a parvenu’s poodle; its teeth bright white; its coat slick and clean. It appeared well fed; an innocent, wrongly accused of chicken thievery, perhaps…
In the chill of the low spots that evening, I picked up my pace until I could get back into the pleasantness of the southerly breezes and a place where I could take my hands out of my pockets. I often turned to look for Venus, bright and low in the western sky, while one by one I saw the stars turn on their lights for the night. It was perfect.
As I made the turn onto the road that would lead me home in just a few more steps, I recalled that Frost’s closing couplet — that rhyming pair of lines that usually ties a sonnet neatly together like a double-knotted pair of sneakers — has often confused readers. Is the poem about Frost’s melancholy, about his thoughts of suicide, of depression? Despite recalling some his words, I can say that I was feeling none of that.
The moon of which Frost speaks may have inexplicably, “Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right…”
For me, it was as right as it could get.
Mike Lunsford can be reached at hickory913@aol.com, or by regular mail, c/o the Tribune-Star, P.O. Box 149, Terre Haute, IN 47808. Lunsford will be signing his new book, “The Off Season: The Newspaper Stories of Mike Lunsford,” at The Coffee Grounds, 423 Wabash Ave., Terre Haute, beginning at 6 p.m. Friday. To learn more about the book and more signings, visit his Web site at www.mikelunsford.com.
Mike Lunsford
The Off Season: ‘I am acquainted with the night…’
- Mike Lunsford
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A walk in the woods
I went for a walk in the woods one day last week after work. It was a warm and green afternoon, and a fresh blue breeze blew in from the west like a new spring friend.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘Dowsers’ provide hope more than science
My grandfather was a man of God. Many times I saw him, his right hand held high in the air at his Wednesday night “prayer meeting,” praising the Lord before weeping at the altar on his knees. And yet, he was a “dowser,” a “diviner,” a “witcher” who, as a favor, would grab a forked sassafras stick and find water for some poor unfortunate whose well had gone dry.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: As of today, it’s unofficially spring
Despite the calendar telling us not to rush things, I think it is all right to go ahead and say spring is here. The Ides of March has passed, Easter is coming soon, and I have already been out in my yard with a rake, getting my boots muddy. It looks like spring to me.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Twain’s Sawyer helps us yearn for ‘wilderness of childhood’
My cousin, Roger, stopped in one day last summer for a glass of tea and a little conversation. Rog has lived an hour’s drive away for years and now, and besides summer reunions, I don’t see him nearly often enough. He’s a good man who has raised a good family, and he owns a healthy sense of appreciation for not only the life he has now, but also the lives we had years ago as kids.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Cheerful green of wheat fights winter blahs
There is a light drizzle of freezing rain tapping at the door of my cabin today. It is little more than a week before the words I am writing are due to appear on your breakfast table or work desk with your morning coffee and scrambled eggs. But I write when I can, and today, despite a full schedule of televised football games, and the stacks of ungraded papers in my briefcase, and a good book lying open on my nightstand, I am clacking away on a keyboard to the whir of a heater and the steady drip of my gutters.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: On the simple joys of watching it snow ...
It began to snow about 20 minutes ago, as I write this, light, wind-driven flakes that fall silently into my woods as I watch from a window.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: On this day above all, ‘Peace on earth, good will to men’
More than a year after his wife’s death, the great American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, wrote in his diary on Christmas Day.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Remembering a Lefty Frizzell-kind of Christmas ...
My brother and sister and I sat around a Thanksgiving dinner table a month ago, shifting in our seats just enough to make our yet-to-be digested turkey sit a little more easily, and, as we often do when we get together, we reminisced about our childhoods for a while.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The wonders of wading in ‘The Iridescence of a Shallow Stream’
I have no idea how many times I have written a story that begins with the wistful phrase, “When I was a boy. ...”
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Little man who came to dinner changes feel of household
My 7-year-old nephew, Carson, came to visit us last week. That in itself isn’t earth-shattering news, for he often drops by with one of his parents or the other, the last time dressed as a ghoul for Halloween. But for a couple like Joanie and me, whose youngest child is now nearly two decades past Carson’s age, having a little guy like him in the house, even for a few hours, takes a bit of adjusting.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Reflections: a bit of red glass and our daily thanksgivings
I sat in the half-light of my old desk lamp a few nights ago, a chilly wind blowing in from the northwest that made me appreciative of my long-sleeved shirt and purring heater.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Growing up — and ‘old’ — with many mouths to feed
At our family reunion last summer, I asked my brother if I could borrow a pair of photo albums he had put together. Over the past couple of years, I have committed quite a few of our family’s old yellowing snapshots to newly cropped and digitalized lives, and I wanted to do the same with some of the pictures John has collected for himself.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Violets in October – a pleasant surprise
I guess I don’t pay much attention to the weather forecasts these days because it surprised me a bit when our furnace kicked on a few nights ago.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A library is a good thing — even a little, homegrown one
I grew up with libraries, and I can’t imagine there ever being a time when I won’t want to wander one exploring it like some bookworm-Balboa, finding an author or title that I never really knew existed before. Creating those “Eureka” moments seems to be a dying interest now that so many of us download and digest books electronically without ever really considering that there just might be some hidden gem we’d have liked even more had we simply stumbled upon it on a shelf by accident. I think those moments of discovery are not unlike kicking up lost treasure a mile from where X marks the spot.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The ‘soothsayer’ who came to dinner
I’ve had a good time opening my mail these past few weeks. Sure, I still received the usual junk about lower credit card rates and satellite television packages, but the genuine letters made me smile; most were about a story I wrote in late August.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The agony of de‘feet’ has this writer on his heels
I don’t know if I can electrocute myself by using a computer and soaking my feet in a pan of warm water at the same time, but I am contemplating taking the risk. My feet, particularly the right foot, have staged a 10-digit rebellion over the past few months. After a half-century of commendable service, my pods are screaming to be taken in for repairs, a big inconvenience for a guy who works on his feet all day and whose “sole” form of serious exercise is putting one foot in front of another walking the local roadways.
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Mike Lunsford: Summer’s hidden beauty worth the wait
The great naturalist John Burroughs once said that nature teaches more than she preaches. I can’t recall a summer where that rings true more than this one, for that old sun of ours truly taught us a thing or two these past three months.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time to redefine the concept of ‘assisted living’
Although it has been nearly two months now, I can’t forget the few afternoon hours I spent on a hot June day this summer at a local “assisted living” facility in town. I had been asked to speak to a group of men there about Father’s Day, but for most part, the wonderful old guys who came to listen certainly made my day more memorable than I did theirs.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Observations on smooth stones and blue-green water…
It was raining when I began to write this. Although no one could rightfully call what we got this afternoon a “downpour,” it was nice to have my windows open to hear the steady drops of a passing shower tapping on my dry-as-dust deck and hard-as-concrete yard.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: This summer has us recalling the heat of ’36
It was “only” 99 degrees one afternoon last week when I decided to work on a backyard deck. With a jack and a drill and a little more sweat than I wanted to invest in the project, I went about the business of leveling its sags and dips a bit. The sun pounded down on my head and shoulders like a thug’s blackjack, but as I packed my tools and drank a glass of cool water under a big maple tree a few hours later, I couldn’t help but think about how lucky I’ve been these past few dusty and drought-stricken weeks. I have worked under this summer’s heat lamp for only a few hours at a time, but God help the roofers and utility linesmen and firemen, and so many others, who are out in it day after long hot day.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: We had no better friend than Andy Taylor
The world is a sadder place now that Andy Griffith has died, but at least we still have Andy Taylor.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Wading deeper into the subject of Blue Herons
Like a relative who has worn out his welcome, the hot, parched weather of this young summer has already overstayed its visit with us, so my wife and I have found ourselves walking our road later in the evenings to keep our feet cool and our backs dry.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Thanking two dads whose gifts have never stopped coming…
It is nearly a week until Father’s Day, but I have had my dad, and my father-in-law — a second dad to me — on my mind today. I wrote about both men just a few weeks ago, but I have set my mind to write about them again anyway. I don’t want this story to be sad; they both loved to laugh and wouldn’t want that. No, I just wanted to tell them hello, and to thank them again for what they still do for me.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Raising a flag for my father, veteran or not
My daughter, Ellen, and I stood at my parents’ graves on Mother’s Day a few weeks back and talked about how it couldn’t possibly have been so long since we lost them. My dad, for instance, has been gone for 16 years, and that is nearly unimaginable
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Time to become one of the boys of summer again …
Besides writing for a living, I teach school, and I’m not ashamed to tell people that I still love my classroom. I’ve been a teacher for 33 years, all of them in the same school district, and virtually all of them in the same building. But I also have to tell you that if the next few weeks don’t slide by pretty quickly, I may just let loose of the last thread of sanity from which I have been dangling for a while now. There are a lot of teachers out there who feel the same way.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time for us to get the real lowdown on dirt…
I have had my hands in the soil as of late. Two Fridays ago, I planted a viburnum bush, three chrysanthemums and a yellow poplar, not because it happened to be Earth Day, but because it was sunny and warm, and I had the whole afternoon to myself. The dirt I scraped out of and back into the shallow holes I dug near a backyard picket fence smelled good, and when dampened with a few sprinkles of water, it soon found its way into the deep wrinkles of my knuckles and under my fingernails. For the most part, I have nothing but good things to say about dirt.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Make big money: Raise worms at home for fun and profit…
When I think about all of the crazy things my brother and sister and I did just to make a few dollars when we were kids, I can’t help but feel a little sorry for teens this summer as they try to find jobs in what is supposed to be a very tight market. Money, to say the least, was a rare commodity when we were growing up, but you have to at least give us credit for trying.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d…’
Had white lace curtains been hanging in the west window of my cabin, I would have had a perfect Wyeth painting to watch last Thursday. A gentle breeze was wafting through my screens, and the sunlight of a warm late March day was fractured by the window sill as it poured onto my legs and feet. I could catch the scent of lilacs as it was carried in by that wind, and it and the subtle melody of the chimes that hang just outside made me as lazy as an old cat.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A report from the country as a new season brings sense of renewal
Regardless of what the calendar may yet say, spring has happened. It couldn’t have come too soon, and it wasn’t just last week and its windy 70s that have convinced me. I have been keeping a journal of sorts in my head for a fortnight now, stashing away reports of birds and buds and sounds in the crammed cabinets of my mind, all in a file marked, “The New Season.”
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Feeding time at the homestead draws a host of new guests
I stepped outside into the warmth of an unusually mild early March morning last week to do what I always do just before I grab my briefcase and book bag and lunch bag and head off to work. It’s nearly always dark when I leave, even as the sun gets up earlier and earlier in the late winter, so I often go about the business of feeding our cats with porch lights on and a flashlight in hand.
- More Mike Lunsford Headlines
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Raw: Trucker Bumps I-5 Bridge Before Collapse
Mayor: Person Killed in San Antonio Flooding
Suspect in Killing of Officer Found Dead in Cell
Raw: Texas Deputy Shot by Colo. Suspect Honored
Major Detours Following Wash. Bridge Collapse
Raw: Apple 1 Computer Sells for More Than $650k
Raw: French Soldier Stabbed in Throat Near Paris
Raw: Train Derails After Overpass Collapse
American Held in Grisly Czech Murders
High Wire Spectacle Thrills Crowd in Austria
Raw: Jersey Shore Reopens for Summer
Today in History May 25
Raw: Rescues From San Antonio Flooding
Raw: Gay Rights Activists March in Ukraine
Raw Video: Washington State Bridge Collapse
Bus Fire Kills 16 Children, Teacher in Pakistan
UK-bound Pakistan Plane Diverted, 2 Men Arrested
Officials: Tsarnaev Friend Linked to Slaying
Hagel Urges Cadets to End Scourge of Sex Assault
New Wheelchair Lift Promises More Access
Massive Flooding in San Antonio Area; Rescue Efforts Underway
Hope For The Boy Who Can't Smile
Young protestor goes viral on Youtube
Toronto Mayor says he's not a crack head
Maine island offers lighthouse getaway
Should We Prepare for Quakes?
Lynn Kindergarten Class Rescues Ducklings
Congressional gold medal awarded to civil rights heroes
Charles Ramsey visits Kentucky
Unique Display Greets Guests At Revel Casino
Cape Cod Train Service Worries Residents
BASE jumper rides snowmobile off cliff to honor dead friend
Bridge Collapse Survivor: 'Rough Day'
SHOCKING: School Guard Throws Girl Down Stairs
Star Wars X-Wing Star Fighter Made of Legos
Actress Amanda Bynes Arrested in New York
Singer Psy Has An Imposter
