The essay below was originally posted on 30 October 2011.]
~
A bright and cloudless day, following yesterday’s freak pre-Hallowe’en snowstorm. As on most Sundays, I walked the couple of miles to the library, to pick up any goodies they might be holding for me, and to return books I’m done with, even if they’re not yet due. It’s that early Jesuit training in deontological librarianism.
The
trek takes me down to the lake, around it, past a bower, and then to
the playing-fields, which stretch for quite a ways beneath the brow of
the library mesa. A bit behind the interfaith center, there’s an
obscure short-cut through a little isthmus of the woods, which I’d never
seen anybody use, and cuts about a quarter mile off the journey. You
wouldn’t even see it unless you were about three feet away from it, and
where it’s situated, you’d have no reason to suspect that there was
anything worth looking at and so you would never find yourself within
that radius of three feet. The only reason I found it myself is that
I’m always nosing about looking for alternate pathways to vary my
routes. Not opsec, really; just for variety. Anyhow I was quite
pleased to have found this secret passageway, and announced
conspiratorially to my wife, before revealing to her this new route,
that it was a secret known only to myself and one old elf. It’s the
sort of narrow gap a hobbit might pass through.
About
a month or so, though, as I was heading that way, I saw a bevy of
squad-cars, two in the road and a couple right up on the lawn. What --
was this a crime-scene? had a body been discovered in the little strip
of woods, pierced by a dagger of rare Oriental design? But they we just
doing casual cop things -- donuts, mostly -- and I never did find out
what happened there, since cops don’t like it when you ask them what
they’re about.
~
There’s
always something interesting to see, whenever you walk out,
unencumbered, into God’s green earth. Today there was a middle-aged
couple on a lakeside bench, sprawled together in a dramatic pose, and a
young photographer with professional equipment was snapping shot after
shot. The couple were notably homely -- no celebrities with paparazzi
in tow -- and seemed to love each other. Maybe hired someone to help
them with a scrapbook of their marriage. Well why not.
I
sometimes tip my hat to strangers, but of course many people don’t meet
your eyes. Today a couple of people I didn’t know -- a little boy and
perhaps his mother -- gave me an unusually prompt and almost effusive
greeting. I Hi’d back, but as I walked on, wondered: Did they figure I
was open and approachable because of my funny hat ?? (Rather sensitive about this, as you may know by now.) And then reflected, Those things probably do correlate.
Disappointingly,
there turned out to be nothing for me at the desk. The computer had
said the item had shipped a day or two before, but they don’t do
transfers on weekends, I learned. So I browsed the shelves a bit and
plucked off a big fat Steven Pinker, which you’ll probably be hearing
about in these pages before long. That’s what blogs are for.
~
On
the way back, curiosity got the better of me, and I went out of my way
to walk up to the shadowed northern entrance to the now-forbidden
crossthrough. The path was blocked by, not one, not two, but three new
signs, including one that claimed the area was under continuous
closed-circuit surveillance. To further defend against the anticipated
hordes of alpenstock-wielding Alpine-hatted hikers, a metal gate had
been drawn across the path, and -- not making this up, folks, go and see
for yourselves -- had piled a heap of branches behind it, as though
anticipating a siege. I considered simply walking around it, but
quailed at the image of me standing there, with my funny hat and Steven
Pinker book, while a SWAT team leaps out from the bushes screaming
FREEZE !!!
* * *
~ Commercial break ~
Relief for
beleaguered Nook lovers!
We now return you to
your regularly scheduled essay.
* * *
A
legal footnote, though. One of the menacing signs specified that the
area was a no-go zone because it is PRIVATE PROPERTY (a.k.a., in
Proudhon’s formulation, theft). Only… On this side are the
playing-fields, and yonder the interfaith center, both owned by the
township: the very township to which we all pay taxes. So how does this
little isthmus become private? Has Donald Trump taken to buying up
tiny speculative properties in obscure strips of random woods? Where
are our rights as a free proud people, the sons and daughters of
pilgrims and pioneers? I ought to write the township about it. As
usual, I won’t.
[For more from this pen: ]
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