The Dirt wrote:Murph, I've also have heard it to mean 'to understand, with empathy'. (There are others too, if it is googled.)
That's how I meant it with your travels in apple country....
I understood you, Pete; fully, and much appreciated every word.
My apple quest expanded. I drove right back up there yesterday - unfinished business, you see. I had not explored a forest of conifers along a ridge, for some time now, and needed it again. However, this time I was awake to more.
Thursday's drive to Upstate suggested I had not been paying adequate attention on Monday's drive. From Scranton northward, every hill and valley looked as though Somebody had gotten the Crayons out again, overnight, just to intensify the whole statement. Every shade of lipstick I had ever seen was now out sunning itself and giving the world a kiss. I asked myself if two days could have made that much difference in the colors surrounding me in every direction. Or was the rising sun blazing through every leaf what encouraged everything not green to increase its attitude?
Colors didn't simply amaze; they refreshed. In fact, it was a good thing all those colors weren't voices in some wild opera because nothing could have been heard above such a chorus. The entire landscape was issuing a challenge, daring anybody to take only one look. And cohorts participated this time, hard at work consipiring to give a good lesson in who actually was boss.
Petunias peered out from porches and along fences, still holding onto a bright attitude and grinning up at folks from where they had played all summer. New mums added to the show and, obviously, had no intention of being ignored or sidelined. They seemd to have little smart-alec grins on their pompom faces saying, "Quit messin' around and pay attention!" Even sumac and poison ivy did their luminous bit to add to the conspiracy to dazzle.
Maybe it was the approach of Halloween or perhaps the whole ending feel to Autumn that made me notice, amidst the entire show, several low fieldstone walls maintaining vigilance at their precincts around cemeteries. Ancient, thin headstones leaned vulnerable profiles in awkward directions, marking the places where lives long turned to dust had stopped.
Overgrown fields partially concealed exhausted tractors and clumps of rusted machinery and parts, too old for me to have any idea what their use had been. The occasional barn or outbuilding seemed sufficiently tired and faded to surrender and fall right over and not force the effort of staying upright throughout another winter.
And in the midst of it all were the cows, still there, obviously out for another afternoon with friends, reclining under trees, with nothing on their minds.
The Tioughnioga River did its casual, shimmering, emerald best to impress, at times too intensely for a direct look. It was seductive. So, on this 88degree day, I decided to wade in up to my knees, at most, wearing my sneakers and clothes. Most of the river was barely knee-high and made for a safe (and familiar) adventure. It glistened right alongside me, in nearly every direction, making it seem like I had stepped into a river of mercury, not water. Its cold touch made me take even deeper breaths of the scene around me and fill up with it all. I felt grateful. During the slog back to the car, I was sure I was ten again (or was it twenty?) Maybe, just a happy 66.