Page 22 - ContrastFall1987-1988

I heated a three-pound smoked ham I had planned to save a few
more days and they let me stay the night out of the rain. It drizzled
most of the night, keeping the insects down. We sat by the fire and
ate the ham, drank a bottle of whiskey that Christine was saving,
smoked and talked about music.

We talked about music as the embodiment of life. Music as a
form, an expression of eating ice cream, or riding a motorcycle or
slipping into a warm and tenuous dream of rain and dripping leaves,
dripping and tumbling down, falling always down to the soft ground;
to lush sweet ferns and to sunny days as a child chasing airplanes
high overhead and ignoring calls for supper just to see the sun set
behind an orchard on a sparkling green hill; of opulent mountains and
meager streets; of cities, lost loves and dead friends and memories; of
fallen men and eternity; of dew and sweet mountain heather and
waterfalls in the Shenandoah Valley.

I never saw Jack and Christine after I left the next morning but I
know they have to still be together. That kind of unique relationship
blooms lika rose, never to be duplicated. They fit right into each
other like roots in the rich Virginia soil. They grew love between
them and I could feel it, and I think the forest did too.

I think about them at the strangest times, while I'm baling hay or
just lying in the wet grass. I think about how I went there feeling lost
and dissatisfied with the human condition, with society'S attitude and
people in the city. But I came away with the dream of a world with
only life like the Shenandoah Valley.

for margaret

--David Owings