Saturday, November 26, 2011

My November Evening Walk

It's mild tonight with a teasing south wind that's stirring all of the dried leaves and grasses and pine boughs into a susurrus moonlight sonata.  Everything looks so different at night, it's just like going away.  The large century homes alit from within and without; reflections on stained glass and chandelier, barely curtained windows affording generous glimpses of artwork and parlour and intimate glimpses of families at leisure and wistful glimpses through lofty dormer windows of a study with shelves of books and an aged head bathed in yellow light bent over, presumably to write, at a desk before the window.

Past that old street and the town hall; again lit, in preparation for something a little later perhaps because there's no one about, then past the Anglican church, slightly abuzz from a social event, smokers chatting outside by the door.  Across main street and along the sidewalk there, but only shortly, before I walk through the dimly-lit garden path to the park.  And then I stop, not for the first time, to look at the two tall weeping willow trees that frame the nook of "Max's Garden," only this evening with no one else around to hear the wind and feel the wind and follow the wind, it's "Judi's Garden." 

Past the nook it's darker. I've never walked here at this time of night before.  I know where the grapevines grow at the edge of the stream that I can now hear as it laps along and joins in like a harp, with the shimmering nocturnal symphony.  I picture the red-winged black birds and chick-a-dees that hide in the tangled caves by day and alongside me the merry ghosts of daytime populate the night air and make of an otherwise uneasy meander, a comforting but quiet reverie.  I close my eyes and lift my face to the warm breeze. I can feel again.  I breath in, slow and deep as the efficacious magic of the elements against my cheeks exfoliate once again the chains around my soul. I am alive.

At the end of the pathway before it turns left to the small wooden bridge where the lake meets the stream I am surprised to find everything - the pathway, the tops of the tall swooning grass fronds and the skipping wavelets on the lake awash in light cast from vigilant towers in the park beyond. I stop again in the centre of the bridge where the lake meets the stream and I look towards the lake - "Fairy Lake," but with no one else there to hear its giggling splashes and see its surface change from a murky black to an awe-ful spectacle of dark Persian blue and to hear me as I murmur, how beautiful, it's "Judi's Lake."

and now, time for tea...