Sometimes along the way

By Conrad Beaubien

The stillness in the air is simply felt in times of lockdown. Restless traffic hum, the noise of the world now muted. Trekking the trail with my donkey companion Thunder is a walking meditation, a stroll in the silence of the mind. Like all species, I feel that Thunder is a conduit between human nature and nature at large; between my heartbeat, his heartbeat and the heartbeat of the earth—most of it unknown. We hear that sound when the manmade fabric of the outer world is pulled away, much like at this time of year when the cloth of summer is shed to expose the bones, the skeletal rhyme of the horizon.

It’s an imaginary land in part for me, meaning that I will take in landforms to be held in remembrance, to be recalled when the leaves are full and the forest dense and the graph lines out of sight. These moments on the trail unfold stepby- step, much like the words of a poem where direction is only revealed one word to the next but not in its whole until the arrival place; a temporary end place, never final as hope is the thread of continuance, new words to walk with through time and space.

Mostly the poetry of intriguing journey reminds me that while I may have been in body here before, this morning offers a path anew, one through yet uncharted shorelines where daylight and birdsong, the creaking and the rumble of ice setting on the pond and the captive image of the heron nests in the tall deadened trees bring new meaning to yesterday: where the trees live on in the threshold of nature as telescopic supports for the incubators of new life, held firm and gentle, cradled in the hushed limbs of a deadened husk awaiting the herons of spring to once again herald life unfolding then captured in the magic of the sublime.

A walk with Thunder is much different than a walk alone because now we are six footprints, two heartbeats and oneminded upon the soil. The landscape, now a blank canvas, is set before me, a solid yet transparent window into an unseen, sensory world where all around I extend to define what appears to be images and pages of a script, something hatching on the other side of that veil that I may reach for in an attempt to translate onto a surface, much like the frost describes random beauty in ever changing light on the panes of my windows: morning and noonday sun remake the patterns until they are gone only to live in recall, in majestic form stashed in the upper shelves of memory.

I’m curious when I perceive Thunder to be curious. He will sometimes glance aside to the stir of deadened leaves on maple branches resting in a quieted breeze. He’ll pause if something seems to register that the bend in the path may hold uncertainty. Yesterday he made a sudden stop; his neck arched ninety degrees toward a far-off field painted in a January palette and texture of stubble corn and dirt. I watched as he watched in concentration through the light of start-ofevening. All the lessons are here he seemed to say; to be in the moment, timeless but for the breath and drumbeat of the soul; no quest in mind but to simply be, move at whatever pace is held. Now watching where he is watching I begin to see what he sees only maybe; is it the row of Canada geese perched among stubble corn all unmoving, undecipherable except by the radar of a donkey? This was important to Thunder to understand, maybe only for peace of mind or knowledge of the land he travels: Or maybe for no particular reason except that perhaps I may start to see; and so I began to count the heads of geese; two there; four here; three beyond, stilled in this now January night. I arrived at a count of seventeen when Thunder’s pause was done and he readied to move on. Sure I could have held the rein, but yet I too was ready for the next steps. This morning the Christmas cactus in my room yields beauty with its beads of infant blooms that shine among the petal stems of green, not unlike the cones of sumac out there under muted sky. The snake plant in the corner of my room will soon reach the ceiling and it feels like day-by-day I have been watching things grow or maybe it’s been week-by-week, whatever, time is stilled without a calendar and in the midst of bird count and arrivals from afar.

The journey of Walking with Thunder is documented at walkingwiththunder.com.