Three afternoons in a row, I run along the rail trail and pause at this ox bow in the river. The Lamoille is beginning to gather its water might here, a handful of miles from its northern headwaters at Horse Pond. The dry air smells of pine needles heating in the sunlight, a scent that reminds me of camping in childhood. My parents, rich with wanderlust, never hesitated to tie sleeping bags and tents on our old green Jeep’s luggage rack, pack a family duffel bag, and head out for a month or two of open air living. Those days, a dollar would get us a night in a national forest.

This run is a flat span, nothing remarkable in distance, a path through evergreens, along farms, across a few dirt roads. Late afternoon, I’ve seen no one here but little yellow butterflies, the crows of course gleaning in the cornfields, three swimming otters. The tourist at the trailhead with his watercolors and brush.

I’m a collection of shoulders, hip bones, ankles, a jostle of organs and tendons and my own unceasing thoughts, curious to see this river in the foliage that shifts and mutates each afternoon. Again, disease taught me how strength can fetter me, fetter you, more fiercely to this mortal world.

Returning, sweaty, I pause at the bridge where the man is painting. Each afternoon, we admire this season’s extraordinary beauty: gold and crimson. “Little patch of Vermont wild,” he says.

The night before, under a waning moon, a friend and I walked along this trail. The night folded around us. The starlight thin threads on the running river. How far will we go? we asked each other. Owls called. The night spread around us, infinite. Forever, I thought.

….. and thanks to another walking companion who introduced me to Lyanda Lynn Haupt:

“Hope is not a remedy or even a substitute for the despair and anxiety we face in the modern world, but a companion to these things. Mature hope involves a willingness to allow that brokenness and beauty sometimes intertwine.”