Despite being reared in an age of great scientific and technological discovery, I have always believed that walking into a breeze or looking up at the stars trumps the laboratory explanations for their being. That idea was reinforced in me again a few nights ago.
I am a walker, not at the mall or on the local high school track, but along our country road; I have written of that place often in this space. My wife, when she is not pedaling her bicycle along that same sliver of blacktop, most often joins me.
We do not dodder; we really pick them up and put them down as we race the sun.
But on an evening last week when she was typically working late at cleaning up the messes her elementary school library visitors had left for her, I struck out from our back step to walk into what was left of a gorgeous day, most of which we had spent behind the wheel of our car.
I knew the walk would help me work the kinks out of my back, but I felt that, even more, I needed to work a few out of my head, too. Most of us live in a noisy world; I fear we, as a species, have begun to fear hearing too little rather than too much. A typical downtown street corner usually blasts it pedestrians with 70 decibels or more of roar. Ratchet that up a few notches higher when adding trains and obnoxious car stereos.
We may be beginning to fear quietude, and, unfortunately, many people now link it to inactivity and idleness and boredom. I am concerned that fewer and fewer of us want to listen to the wind and to the skitter of corn leaves or to the chorus of fall’s last bugs. Just yesterday, it was the annoying drone of motorbikes and four-wheelers that I heard over the gentler sounds of our countryside.
Anyway, on that night, I laced my shoes, grabbed our Black Cat nightlight and an apple to help my stomach get through to suppertime, and took off with schedules and appointments and obligations on my mind. But within a quarter of a mile, I caught a scent of smoke in the air. It wasn’t from someone’s smoldering leaf pile or trash barrel or fencerow clearing; it was coal smoke, and the trace of it in the breeze soon had me sniffing the air near my grandparents’ house 40 years ago. They heated with coal, and it wasn’t odd at all to hear a huge truck loaded with the stuff ramble up their drive to dump its glistening black cargo into a basement doorway that led into a dark and lifeless room under their house.
Shoveling coal into their furnace is a great memory for me, as was the welcoming heat of their house after a walk up the drive to their place in January, but it was the scent that the coal gave off as its smoke wafted into the breeze through their cinderblock chimney that I recall the most.
Then, for the first time that night, I noticed how soft the evening breeze was as it touched my face. It was a kind wind, air that was so much more pleasant than the bitter slap that will greet us on our walks a month from now. It made me glad that I had forgotten my old khaki-colored ball cap as it sifted through my hair and moved the creaking stalks of uncut corn and skipped turkey oak leaves along the pavement with a scratch.
After I’d made my turn to head homeward and away from a sunset that had been painted in a color I have decided to call “Dreamsicle Orange,” I walked into a place where the woods reach out to border the road, a spot where I actually had to turn on my light to see, as well as to be seen by oncoming cars. The cool of that dip in the road had me zipping my sweatshirt up to my neck, and I walked with an odd, hunchbacked gate since my hands, including the one that held the flashlight, minus a finger or two, were stuffed into the pockets of my blue jeans.
As I hustled along, straining to listen for cars, I heard something — apparently startled by my scuffling shoes — crash through the woods, luckily away from where I was. It was probably a deer — they are on the move in herds right now — but it just as easily could have been a coyote. Whatever it was, I was happy to emerge into the pale light at the top of the rise. The incident had not startled me enough to find the need to whistle the rest of the way home, but it did make me realize that I was out of my element now that the sun was down. My eyes simply do not work as well as those that were undoubtedly trained on me from the shorn soybean fields and tree limbs I walked past.
I had saved my apple for the return trip, and so I pulled it out of a jacket pocket. I had bought a big bag of them — Fuijis, I think — from an orchard down the road from us, a place that I thoroughly enjoy visiting for its wonderful scent alone. It is a mixture of fruit and cider and earth. I crunched my way through a good half-mile or so before I tossed the stripped core into a ditch, and I realized that, because of its taste, I had apparently not tried very hard to keep the juice from dripping down my chin.
I have heard that as we age our senses grow dull, that the years rob us of sounds and flavors and fine print and the scents of our kitchens. I have had to explain for years that my own poor hearing was the direct result of a fever-filled weeklong illness before I ever went to school, and that well before I reached the age I am now, I began to grow accustomed to losing both music and conversation to a monotonous hum that is always with me.
The great astronomer Edwin Hubble once wrote, “Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him, and that adventure is called Science.”
I didn’t feel like a scientist on my walk into the breeze the other night. With my four-and-a half senses at work, I did feel like an explorer, though.
You can e-mail Mike at hickory913@aol.com and can write to him c/o the Tribune-Star, P.O. Box 149, Terre Haute, IN 47808. He will be reading from and signing his second book, “Sidelines: the Best of the Basketball Stories…,” at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Rockville Public Library. Visit Mike’s Web page at www.mikelunsford.com.
Mike Lunsford
The Off Season: A night spent exploring the universe
- Mike Lunsford
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MIKE LUNSFORD: We’ve created a honey of a problem
The Dutch clover is making its appearance in my yard this week. A cooler-than-usual spring has slowed its arrival by a few days, but it is here for now, bringing the honeybees and bumblebees with it.
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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.”
- More Mike Lunsford Headlines
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Unusual Heat Wave Bakes Alaska
Hoffa Mystery Still Fascinates After 4 Decades
Raw: Massive Protests Fill Brazilian Streets
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3 Charged in Ohio With Enslaving Mom, Daughter
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Fans Cheer Dramatic Heat Comeback
Ex-NFL Star Chad Johnson Out of Jail
Raw: Arizona Wildfire Scorches 8 Square Miles
Raw: German President Welcomes President Obama
Raw: 1 Dead in Shooting at Mo. Apartment Complex
Failed Cuba-to-Florida Swimmer Won't Try Again
Tiger on Sergio: 'It's Time to Move On'
Raw: Obama Arrives in Berlin
Raw: Marines Land Osprey on Japanese Ship
Suicide Bombs Target Baghdad Mosque, Killing 29
Obama Welcomes WNBA Champions to White House
Today in History June 19
Obama Seeks G-8 Support on Syria
Rihanna Hits Fan With Microphone During UK Concert
Obama Renews Call for Nuclear Reductions
Miami Heat Wins in Overtime
Fists, chairs fly in restaurant brawl
Journalist Michael Hastings Dies in Fiery Hollywood Crash
Hairy Leg Stockings Aim to Deflect Male Attention
Inside Kim Kardashian's Premature Labor
Three Charged for Enslaving Mother and Daughter
Spurs' Popovich has no problem with Spurs' intensity
RAW: NSA Director Says 50 Plots Foiled
Paige Butcher Scorches on Hawaii Beach
Video: worst way to load cargo onto a plane
Never-before-seen footage of '08 Times Square bomber
Obama: NSA Secret Data Gathering 'Transparent'
WATCH IT: Lil Wayne tramples American flag
Mariah Carey Looks Beautiful in a Tiny Cut-Out Swimsuit
Out of Control Boat Throws Passengers Overboard
See Lindsay Lohan in Rehab
