When the storms end and the first rays of the sun finally penetrate through and around the dark clouds and the temperatures rise, that means new potential has returned. For the last while, it has been impossible to really do anything other than exhaust existing provisions and rest and stay as warm and dry as reality allowed, and usually that meant not so warm and only moderately dry, but that didn’t mean it was bad because it wasn’t. It was fine.
I stood and stretched and felt that it was less cold and I brushed my clothes clean with my hands and re-adjusted my shoes and tied my laces carefully. My shoes are moderately holed after much walking in all sorts of weather. The left shoe appears more well-worn than the right. It has one more hole. But they both still function and I am appreciative.
At the bottom of fences, when the snow begins to melt, that’s where objects with potential often first appear, having been blown there by the winds of storms, soaked in rain, frozen in ice, collected and trapped for unknown periods of time. That’s where I always begin, walking, bending down, poking gingerly with my stick. On this day, my first sense of encouragement came from a silver glimmer that became a piece of foil. I picked it up and examined it and it was in good condition so I folded it carefully and put it in my pocket. Then I kept prodding, moving wet snow with my stick, finding nothing else, so moving on, farther down the length of the fence to where it changed direction. I kept following.
At the base of the fence’s rusting corner post, where it vanishes into the ground, I found some cloth, not much, I initially thought, but perhaps enough for something. My first glance though, had been deceiving. The cloth had appeared smaller than it really was and, when I pulled it from its place and examined it more closely, I was able to unroll it and feel joyous. Underneath its coating of semi-frozen mud and dripping snow, it was red with black checks. It had no holes or tears and not even its edges were fraying. It had survived the season well. I outstretched my arms and shook it until it was as clean as possible considering the circumstances, then I tucked it into my collar where it would be safe from disappearing.
I continued along the circumference of the fence towards the next corner, to a mound of dark ice which I lightly kicked with my right foot, using my less-holed shoe, and then I poked at the space with my stick and I uncovered, with gratitude and immense surprise, another shoe. It was black, solid, well-laced, with a thick dark sole and, most fortunately, it was left-footed, and when I tried it on after emptying it of ice and dirt and then wiping its interior with my sleeve, its size was appropriate enough and, though moist, it was comfortable. The Universe has provided, I thought out loud to myself. In no other way could a single moderately well-fitting healthy hole-less shoe be deposited here, at the bottom of a fence where society people don’t even walk. It would have been a divination for those who believe, a lucky random moment for those who don’t. I offered thanks and hung my own shoe over the top of my stick for safe-keeping because it still had value, maybe not as a shoe, but for something that I couldn’t imagine yet.
The fence, thereafter, offered nothing further, I knew after completing its full circle and arriving back at my point of origin. Two spots had seemed promising but, after careful examination with hands and stick, shifting the soft snow and melting ice in the direction of existing rivulets, I only found more snow and ice. There was one very small multi-cracked plastic cup. I considered it briefly, wondering if it could be transformed somehow into a tool, a cutting utensil perhaps, if I broke it into shards. It was too fragile though. It didn’t survive my efforts, which was fine because it wasn’t obliged to survive.
I left the fence grateful and walked in the direction of a trail that I knew existed and that I had traversed several times before, during similar seasons in earlier difficult days when I was less familiar and, therefore, understandably more anxious. It led farther away from where I had started the day but the sun was still shining and the season of bad storms was over and the breeze was idyllic so going farther away was not troublesome. The trail was wet and somewhat puddled, but, with less snow than I had expected thanks to already considerable melting, I was able to step carefully and pretend that my stepping was a game. Only my right-shoed foot felt the moisture. My left foot, more protected now, was pleasant.
Near a group of trees, in an opening that was sun-targeted, the warm rays unhindered by the leafless branches, I saw, or perhaps I imagined seeing, from my distance, a circle of rocks protruding through the melting snow. When I approached, my thoughts were confirmed. Sometime in an earlier season, the rocks had been arranged into a ring. I poked at its interior with my stick and then bent down and moved snow with my hands and exposed, with effort, what was left of charred black embers. The space, a fire pit of a previous time, contained nothing, yet it inspired me to investigate its surroundings. If, as would make sense, it had been used for cooking, the possibility existed that left-overs could still be in its vicinity. So I stood straight and began to walk deliberately, testing first the ground closest to the rocks with my stick, listening and feeling carefully, but noticing nothing. I then expanded my search, always walking in slowly-expanding circles, always with discipline and always stopping when even slightly curious. It took patience. I noticed the sun’s rays shifting, angling differently, indicating the passage of time, and then I observed an irregularity. I bent down and shifted snow and uncovered a half-full bag of still-frozen bread and, beside it, a half-full jar of still-frozen red jam. Both were safe. They had slept icily in their place, too cold to be spoiled. I opened the bag and I opened the jar and confirmed their goodness and was filled with gratitude. The bag had drawstrings at its top and I used them to tie it securely to my wrist. The jar was small enough to fit in my old left shoe that was still hanging from the top of my stick.
I kept looking, slowly and patiently, perhaps greedily since the day had already been so favourable, and my efforts were awarded again. Near the bottom of a tree, under snow and partially decomposed leaves, was a full and unopened bag of cashews that enthralled me and confused me at the same time. It was a most fortunate find. But the people who left it, I felt concern for them. If leaving it was an error, I could be forgiving. But if leaving it was because they had an arrogant sense of entitlement, because they didn’t care about waste, because they felt they could always just get more whenever the whim hit, that was upsetting. I considered these possibilities briefly, then let them fade. These thoughts, after all, were nothing but my own projections on people I would never know. Nevertheless, I wished them well. I wished that one day they would learn not to take goodness for granted.
Not every day is like this day, when I started with hands empty and finished with hands full. Sometimes the emptiness at a day’s beginning is equal to the emptiness at its end. In my early times, I can now admit wholeheartedly, such results caused me disappointment. But, as I discovered and allowed myself to accept, it was solely my own fault. My novice perspective had encouraged the disappointment. A disappointment, I realized, can only come about if there is a pre-established expectation. So I obviously had the expectation, consciously or not, that, every day, if I searched, I would be rewarded. I believed on some level that I deserved to be rewarded. But really I deserved nothing. The Universe owed me, and owes me, nothing. When I accepted this truth in its entirety, everything then seemed suddenly effortless and proper and disappointment disappeared. And then I was unpressured by existence.
It was a long pleasant walk home, interrupted by nothing, nearly dark by the time I ultimately arrived and folded back my tarpaulin door and entered my shelter and leaned my stick against the earthen wall. I placed my newly-discovered bounty down and then sat next to it on my blanket and opened the bag of cashews. I ate them slowly, not all of them, only a very few of them, and I took swigs of cool water that was once rain from a glass bottle that I had found on an earlier trek. Then I untied the bag of bread from my wrist and selected a single slice and I opened the jar of red jam and, with a wooden spoon that I had uncovered near the base of a different fence after a season of different storms, I applied a small portion onto the bread and consumed it. The jam was raspberry. The bread was rye. I said thanks out loud.
AImage: A post and wire fence in the snow by JD Black at pixabay.com
