“Nice rain, eh?” I said, referring to this mornings welcome soaking.
“Yeah – I hope it comes back soon.” The woman cleaning out her car agreed.
“Me too.” We smiled at each other as I continued my walk.
This was the only person I saw on a long walk down the road. I walked and walked with no destination and no idea where the road leads. But for the one neighbor, there seemed to be no life at any of the houses nestled into woods on either side of the road. Occasionally, a car drove past and I moved to the side of the road.
One stretch felt eerie – a stone building appeared abandoned, although, through little windows I could see the backs of canvases, jars on a sill. An artist’s studio? Across the street, from a closed-up looking house, a dog barked and the woods were dense making it dark, shadowy and creepy so I walked faster towards a break in the trees where the road was lighter.
With no schedule to keep other than my own, I wondered where to turn back but propelled on by my curiosity to see around the curve ahead, kept walking. There was another and another – the road twisting seductively on. I passed a home with garden gnomes, a thriving vegetable garden up near a house on a hill. A red squirrel and a black squirrel and always the river – never more than a few feet deep, over the perfectly rounded stones. Then, I rounded a bend and the river disappeared. Down through the lush woods I could see a slight movement of water snaking around rocks but could no longer hear the rain-like rhythm that has been a constant for these past two days and turned back.