Bonny Kangaroo

Every few days I take a walk through the woods behind my house.  I leave nothing but boot prints and take nothing but photos.

Exceptions to every rule.

This morning, I awoke early, heated up a cup of Uncle Lee's tea and sat on the back deck listening to birds and armadillos.

A cool morning.  Partly cloudy on the first day of March.  When are we supposed to be aware of the ides of March?  I don't know.

This quiet morning I heard the faint sounds of tapping coming from the woods up over the lip of the ridge.

So, I finished my tea, put on my hiking coat, grabbed my hiking stick and pointed my body toward the sounds that had since disappeared.

I don't believe in magic.  I believe what I see.  If a man in a tuxedo pulls a rabbit out of his top hat, then I figure he's using sleight of hand.  As long as I'm entertained, though, it really doesn't matter if the rabbit magically appeared or fell out of the magician's jacket into the hat.

I scared the armadillos back under the sunroom and the birds scattered ahead of me.  We respect the distance between each other.

As I climbed up the rock ledge, I listened for more tapping sounds.  I heard cloth rustling like a flag flapping in the wind.

Three ridges later, I saw dark mustard yellow and dark forest green stripes low to the ground.  A hundred paces in front of me a tent sat pitched in a small, grassy clearing.

Sitting crosslegged on a Mexican blanket in front of the tent was a petite woman.  Her long hair was braided into two thick strands of climbing rope, both of them about the length of my forearm.

"You are here."

"I am here."

"A beautiful day!"

"Yes, and a little cool."

"Have a seat."

I sat on the blanket and faced her, both of us crosslegged and leaning forward slightly.

When I read a story, I want the writer to tell me the approximate age of the people in a scene.  I look forward to other clues like facial blemishes, style of clothes, and body postures to tell me the people's lives before they speak.

This woman defied description.  Her skin was smooth but wrinkled when she talked or smiled.  Her skin tone changed as she turned her head from side to side.  Ribbons of gold and silver weaved in and out of her braided hair, fooling me about her hair colour.  Sunglasses hid her eyes.  Her zipup hoodie had the word "Bonnaroo" stamped across the front.  She wore new but faded blue jeans and muddied hiking boots.  Her hands were covered with gardening gloves.

She held out a small journal.  "Read this."

I opened the cover.  The first page said, "To Rick.  Thanks for everything, including our mountaintop excursions, glacier calving expeditions and zero gravity moonshots. Yours always, Bonny K."  Literally.  I mean the page actually spoke to me, no written words.

I turned to the next page. "Dear friend, we know the future for us.  We know our adventures live outside time because when others don't know the two of you exist together, then they have no way to compare you to them."

I looked up at Bonny.  "So you've already recorded our time together?"

"Every minute."

"For how long?"

"For the rest of our lives."

"So you know..."

"...how long we're going to live?  Yes."

I closed the cover.  "Do I want to know?"

She took off her glasses.  "Do you?"

Are you one of those people who like to read the first couple of chapters and then skip to the last two pages to see if reading the rest of the book is worth it?  I'm not.  I read the first few chapters and if I'm bored I put the book down.  I've found books in my library that I stopped reading when I was 15 and finished when I was 35.  Age and experience that you bring to your reading are what makes the book worth finishing, not just what the author put into the writing.

I turned the journal over.  The back cover told me, "Know the end and the end knows you."

I looked at Bonny.  She smiled and in her smile I saw the face of an old woman who has spent most of her life in the outdoors.

Popular novelists will tell you to hook your reader with the first word, the first sentence, the first paragraph, the first page and set the hook before the end of the first five pages.  If you want to be popular.

But there are those who purposefully write cryptic script.  Obscurity and obfuscation serve readers who want to wade through swamps to get to the hidden lair of a rare being.

I felt the weight of the journal.  A little heavier than it looked but not extraordinarily weighty.

"Do I want to read more?"

"Do you want to write more?"

"But you've already finished this journal, haven't you?"

"Have I?"

The paradox of time.  When I was a kid watching the Watergate hearings and holding strong to my faith in the leadership of Richard Nixon, knowing history would paint a poor silhouette of a man who held the power of the world in his hands, a man who accomplished more than his natural paranoia superficially indicated, my father told me that I was living history and would read about these days when I studied Western Civilisation in college.  If you've already lived history, why study it again?

I gave the journal to Bonny.  "I assume that what happens next has already happened and has not already happened."

Bonny set the journal aside and reached out her hands.  I pulled off her gloves and held her cold hands in mine.

Bonny relaxed.  "I have a whole set of blank journals in the tent.  We can write as many futures together as we want."

She turned and crawled into the tent.

I reached into my breast pocket and felt for the magic pen that never runs out of ink, given to me by a medicine man who told me the pen was destined to write the history of his people leading this nation, one tribe representing all tribes, time unimportant.  He and I knew he spoke the truth.

Did I say I don't believe in magic?  I will elaborate (but not laboriously).  I don't believe in illusion.  I believe in fact.  This pen has never run out of ink and thus never will.

I followed Bonny into the tent and forgot about the stuff I promised to tell you in this blog entry.  I disappeared outside of time for a while and can't remember how long I've been gone.  Bonny and I buried each other in our old age and then returned so I could hike back to the house to write about us.

Sigh...another lifetime lived, another "yes" spoken without saying a word.  How many lifetimes can we live?  How many loves can we know, each one from birth to death?

Bonny, dear Bonny.  Watching the fog roll in with you.  Watching Earth's atmosphere disappear.  Weightlessness for days on end... the wrinkles of your smile growing deeper with wisdom and love.  Then to close the last page of the last journal and start over... how can 80 years feel like one brief, happy moment together?