In Passing Thought.
I rode home with my SO and for the umpteenth time I watched the countryside going by, looking out across the now brown winter fields and properties passing along. Only months ago, these fields and plains were a brighter green with the mild days of Summer this year not being able to kill mush of it off.
Sitting there in the passenger seat, I felt myself just trying to imagine a different place, a different world. There comes a time when you realize you’ve been in a place for such a long time that all of the rest of the places you knew seem distant and even fictional, like you haven't really ever been anywhere else. It’s not a dread or a bad feeling, but there is something in you that starts to generate a wanderlust. You start to long for something, anything that isn’t just more of what you’ve seen for a long long time.
The thought of going back to the East coast and seeing those places again as well as new places there that you’ve never seen before, creates a desire to travel and maybe even a desire to relocate when you find a good spot to set down roots.
South Carolina is the furthest North along the coast I’ve ever been, and that was as a small child. I have only blurry memories of that. Moving somewhere to New England sounds like a new chapter in my life that will be filled with exploration and adventure.
I’m longing to explore and swing a coil across those older places with richer histories. Unearthing relics and treasures from the old times intrigues me to no end. Most of what you find out here in the mid-west is trash and old industrial junk. It will be nice to dig some colonial relics if possible. My metal detectors are ready to fly!
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Walking the deep woods of Georgia and hiking the Appalachian Trail were almost religious experiences back in the day, and I can’t wait to see those again as well as all of the rest that the East coast has to offer.
Georgia, out of all the places I’ve been, surprised me when we first came up there from Florida many years ago, long before Florida got so strange. Everything, and I mean everything, had the tinge of red clay. The only place I’d ever seen red clay as a child before that, was on a baseball field. I remember how bright and unique it was, standing out like those sports fields I saw and played on in other places in my childhood days. If you ever want to see what the soil on mars looks like, Georgia clay would probably be the ticket.
Florida was where I spent most of my childhood with my Mom and my stepfather. I lived there from the time that I was six and then on and off till I was in my late teens. I was graced by beautiful sunsets and a thunderstorm almost every afternoon. I can remember many times stopped at the edge of a vast field near our neighborhood with my friends just watching the lightning hit the ground from a storm several miles away, the afternoon sky becoming a darker blue-grey as it rolled in. Those same friends and I all would peddle home as fast as we could as the rain slowly began to fall in sprinkling taps on your head and shoulders. It wasn’t cold like the rain I’ve felt many other places. It was warm, nurturing, loving, at the end of a burning hot summer day, welcome.
Sometimes, I pop up Google Earth and I go searching to find what the place I lived looks like now. Bits of it are still there, but it’s almost unrecognizable. My friends houses are all still there, even the places we used to ride our bikes to, but it’s all so overcrowded now. Part of me wants to walk those places again, but part of me is sad to see how much of it has changed. I go on virtual drives around the old stomping grounds with street-view, and for now I get my fix.
I can’t believe that most of the common stores that we used to sneak out to are almost all gone. You know, they say you can’t ever go back to how it was back in the day, but boy do I still wish that you could.
There’s places I see in pictures and I swear to you, I can hear echoes from back then, the laughter, the sadness, even the smells and states of mind from when I was there. I still can remember the feel of the sand on my feet out on Pompano Beach, between my toes and sometimes hot, but somewhat fine, passing between them, like sand through a sieve. I also remember trying to get that tar off of me at one of those turpentine stations. If you swam out there, it was just a common fact of life.
Back up to the condo with family and a good dinner. I miss those days to tell you the truth. I’d go back to that time in one quick minute if I found a genie in a bottle. I feel that I lost something back there so many years ago, something that I cant get back.
Have you ever wept at the loss of your past? I think I have from time to time. I know I cant get it back, but still…
