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Of pumpkins and bean fields

September 1, 2010 by indjohnson

A single pumpkin remains on the vine in the side yard, its dark-green shell tinged with orange, as if dipped in dye from one end, the colors in stark contrast to the dirty-white that leaches once-vibrant leaves of a plant now turned too old.

We harvested yesterday, Hope and I, pulling two pumpkins from that solitary patch, the plant sneaking out of the compost pile and across the yard toward the house, like something you should fear. All the while, our garden plot sat dormant. Too much rain and too little free time at the root of our procrastination, until May became mid-June, and that brown patch of earth filled in green and was mowed, grass our only crop.

Those two pumpkins, large enough to require a full-on embrace to lug them to the front steps, weighed heavily in our arms as we stood there, eyeing pumpkins already filling that space, last week’s haul of plenty. So we continued on around the house to the side door, finding room there, carefully setting our latest pickings in place on the sidewalk and lowest step.

We aren’t the only harvesters.

A young farmer a mile and half south on the Pike is combining soybeans as I drive home from my ride with Dave. It’s the first bean field I’ve seen taken in. Others will follow within days, no doubt, including several on today’s route, roads in Rush County I haven’t taken in the better part of two years. The change of scenery is welcomed, despite an obnoxious wind — the first downright gusty day of an unusually kind summer.

More than just seeing rows of soybeans ready to market, skeletal plants, their bones the color of bark, and beyond the sight of adjoining fields of corn, lanky figures with ears drooping toward the ground, as if in total discouragement, there is also the smell of the season. The mustiness of pollen blown from stands of ragweed. The crispness of fields baked by 90-degree days and dehydrated by the driest August on record.

We make these rounds amidst the ruckus of crickets burrowed deep in ditches — hearing the soundtrack of an autumn that creeps as surely as pumpkin vines, staying low to the ground, for it’s only the first week of September, but edging closer to where I live every day.

I hear and smell and feel the season, so deep within me, the soil where my dreams grow, this time of longing and discontent that I have walked through most of my adult life, where changing colors of leaves contrast with my own urge for something different. At no other time of year do I want more for that which I don’t have. A house in the woods. A certain security.

But I have learned to close my eyes against desire. To look around at what I possess, and at that which possesses me, finding the good in it.

Today I carry yesterday’s memory. Of a daughter and two pumpkins. Of a place she’ll not forget, no matter how far she may eventually move from this land. And that’s enough.

42.12 miles — Rush County

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Trail conditions

August 15, 2010 by indjohnson

Clouds overhead.
Mute.
Marching toward Ohio,
thunderous voices now hoarse.

Clouds underfoot.
Gruff.
Roused angrily by my passing,
footfalls like party crashers.

Voices outside.
Brash.
Wildly shouting intoxicated vows,
conversations in an organic bar.

Voices within.
Still.
Speaking of days lost,
summer’s epitaph on the forest floor.

Run: 4 miles, trails — Westwood Park

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Things untold

August 14, 2010 by indjohnson

Too many things left unsaid.

A small cemetery skirts the southern edge of Willow Branch. White marble slabs face west, waiting for the sun to set, while a carved limestone monument in the shape of a tall tree stump glances at the county road, a stone’s throw from a small grain elevator. I’m looking at the markers all the way past.

But I don’t stop.

Wildflowers fill the ditches. Cattails rise from a marshy plot bordering farm land. Sheep crowd into rectangles of shade beside a shelter in an open field.

But I never remove the camera from my jersey pocket.

Today is about nothing but the miles. And the heat.

I see a great blue heron to my left, its eyes moving to catch the sound of me, then wings lifting it to safety on the other side of the pond, the awkwardly built yet amazingly created bird flying as if in slow motion. All the while momentum carries me forward, my mind already back on the road, no posting of notes in some mental file to be accessed later. Already tired of writing when I haven’t even started.

Too many stories still unfinished. Too many blogs unpublished. Four going back to RAIN. More never started.

So I ride in blinders. But I can’t ignore the heron. And I can’t close my eyes to the ironweed and the headstones without running off the road I’m on.

Yet I know there’s more there today than I can say.

30.01 miles — Henry and Hancock counties

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Come August

August 2, 2010 by indjohnson

The date bothers me.

It’s early August.

Sitting on a log in an arena of sound, the falling of an occasional leaf the only movement, I try to still my mind, but it’s as active as the voices of ten thousand anthropods beneath this canopy of green and blue, each seeking to be heard.

Those articulations — the uttering, stuttering of creatures smaller than my thumb — define this season. They are part of why I have come here, seven and a half miles deep into Westwood Park, following a dirt trail often no wider than a skillet. I need a safe haven, hoping to quiet whatever makes noise inside me. But I’m failing.

It’s early August.

In the music of a different place, I find my senses equally attuned. Lyrics convey the shattering immediacy with which a mood can flip. In recent weeks, the song I keep returning to is Dido’s “It Comes and It Goes.”

It arrives when it feels and it takes what it needs / And it leaves before I get to know

No lock can prevent the intrusion. And at no time of year is that thief more likely to ransack my emotions than now. When July wanes. When August waxes. Feeling summer turning a corner, I steel myself and wait.

But calendars aren’t all it takes.

From my log, I’m aware of the bandit within me, picking pockets where I store the things I hold the dearest, until I’m numbed by what’s left. Magnificent oaks tower overhead, but disarray holds my attention. I see it in nature’s random placement of trees and plants, in the rolling landscape that tumbles into a ravine and clambers up the other side, in the juxtaposition between a sapling that might still take root here in a century and the drooping, sickly colored mayapples that won’t last until the first frost.

The mayapple will return. On time. In its season. That much I understand.

Today there are also chance encounters, like the owl that swooped from a tree and flew past me. We shared the same space momentarily, me on my bike, the bird in the air, so close I could feel the powerful strokes of its wings. Just as soon it was gone.

It comes and it goes.

I should be thinking about that owl. Here at the top of Westwood, I should breathe easily. The worst of the hills behind me. Only two and half miles back to the trail head. Sitting in my favorite spot. Once again in the woods.

But I know the month. And the emptiness of my pockets.

It’s early August.

The date bothers me.

10 miles — Westwood Park

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Inches away

August 1, 2010 by indjohnson

At first there is this. A sense of autumn. The breeze heady with the smell of short lawns and tall weeds. The air abuzz with the songs of late-summer life.

August opens the door to my favorite time of the year. Ditches thrive. The country roads I ride serve as amphitheaters for the orchestration of the unseen, all the while dressed in the gowns of the day, both vibrant and subtle — coneflowers and Queen Anne’s lace and jewelweed. Before long, goldenrod will throw pieces of the sun across the landscape.

Robins and cardinals add voice to the cacophony of crickets and cicadas. And, if you know where to look, a mockingbird will stitch it all together.

Red-winged blackbirds have convened in mass at some out-of-sight wetlands, but there remains an occasional stray clinging to a power line or resting on a fence post, chastising anyone who happens by, offering a Tk, Tk, Tk, like some Sunday School teacher displeased with a child’s behavior.

Liz and I leave the countryside to ride rolling residential streets in New Castle, a drunkard’s path through town, avenues divulging a variety of architecture. Turning onto Main Street and moving past Baker Park, we’re on our way back toward rural roads. It’s there it happens.

Everything changes.

With light traffic from both directions, we ride two abreast, making sure no one from behind is tempted to squeeze past when there’s an oncoming vehicle. A four-door sedan hangs back, finds clearance and safely passes. The pickup truck that follows, however, seems hell-bent on getting by as well, despite a four-way stop just yards away. The driver surges forward, less than a foot to my left, then unexpectedly cuts back in before completing the pass. I brake hard, the vehicle’s rear bumper only inches from my wheel.

I yell. Twice. Three times. Going around the truck on the left when it stops at the sign, trying to gain the driver’s attention, I’m still shouting, until I’m next to the cab. She refuses to look at me. Windows rolled up, she’s inside her 5,000-pound cage, safe and sound. Then she pulls away as if the lives just put at risk have no value.

I’m convinced it was intentional, that she forced her way around us due to some misguided notion we had no right to be there. Her bit of road rage, subtle by all outward appearances, is fueled by an all-too-common disdain for cyclists. She would just as soon see us dead than see us on the road.

It’s the sad sort of thing we deal with on any given day in any given location. Even on country roads.

But at least there, far from the city, is some solace. I sense it as I put the incident and New Castle behind me, riding by pastures just now starting to glow with the bold purple of ironweed, as if some autumnal dimmer switch is being slowly moved to full light.

I regain my sanity another four miles out, where a stream jogs close to the road before running away into a stand of mature trees. From the branch of a walnut, 25 feet off the ground, a belted kingfisher perches, rattling off a string of expletives, letting us know we are not welcome in this place. The voice brings me to a halt. I straddle the bike and let my senses take over — seeing again, hearing again — aided by a militant-looking bird dressed in a blue ruffled cap and white scarf.

When I turn away and begin to roll, another bit of white catches my eye. At the edge of the road, contrasted against the ditch’s deep summer greens, is a scattering of bleached bones from a raccoon.

I lock my eyes on them, turning my head as I pass, keeping them in sight until I can look back no more.

27.14 miles — Henry County

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A single voice

July 28, 2010 by indjohnson

In the photos from the meet, I look old. I see my father in my face.

He never ran, although he came to my races, not the first few, but, after a while, every one. He would sooner give up an eye than miss seeing me run.

That was years ago. Decades actually. He’s older now, gray hair, ever-so-slightly stooped. Moving slower than before.

So am I, running an oval, taking on a distance that’s as much a part of my youth as baling hay and hunting arrowheads, even if I’m running 1600 meters now instead of the mile. The measurements doesn’t matter. Each time I come down the front stretch, every time I pass before the grandstand, there’s an inner ear expecting to hear his voice.

“Go, Donald!”

Two words.

Only two words.

Always two words.

I miss his being here. I miss his voice over all others. I miss him not seeing me run, even when my running means nothing and my best time today is a minute and a half slower than the PR I set more than 30 years ago — a day when, with certainty, he was in the stands. A time when, without question, I heard him cry out.

I look at the photos, seeing my father’s face. And, it’s not such a bad thing.

1600 meters — Greenfield-Central All-Comers Track Meet

POSTSCRIPT: I hope he gets a chance to see his granddaughter run cross-country this fall — to smell the autumn-mown grass underfoot, feel the chill in the air, hear the crack of the starter’s pistol and recall races past. And, I hope he raises his voice to cheer for my girl.

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Colors

July 19, 2010 by indjohnson

Somewhere were berries.
Dark-of-night-black.

Somewhere was a skink.
Electric-blue.

Mostly there were trees.
Towering up or reaching in.
Maple and tulip.
Oak. Buckeye. Ash.
Heat and sun bringing them to life.
Pulsating-green.

Run: 10 miles, trails — Westwood Park

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At the end

July 14, 2010 by indjohnson

Dusk now. Cicadas sound off in the trees on the hill outside the north window above my desk. A rising sound, like the engine of a push mower starting, running, dying. There’s repetition here. The song that continues. The calling to the world.

Somewhere behind me, out the east window, a robin stutters. The same five syllables spoken into the fading light.

Next rises a ruckus from the ground, insects that sing with their legs.

And beyond the picture window to the west flashes the signal light of a firefly at the edge of the cornfield.

This isn’t what I planned to write. But, in the end, it’s essential.

I stop. Grabbing a couple of cookies from the house and a second drink. Listening to Billy Joel’s Scenes from an Italian Restaurant. Trying to understand bits and pieces of a day almost past. When I return to these words, there is nothing but blackness outside my windows. And, I am glad.

I’ve grown fond of the night, when I can calmly stare at what can’t be seen, as if the whole world has disappeared, except for insects cloaked on their side of the earth, while some far edge stares at the sun. Yet, the constant drone of traffic on the interstate and an occasional vehicle down the Pike remind me mankind still exists.

Xero now sleeps in the window above my desk, the slight nodding of his head and twitching of his legs an indication he hears not the tree frog a stone’s throw away, but some subconscious symphony. He has the look of complete contentment. I believe he’s glad I’m here, that he can rest peacefully because of my presence.

I’ve not been here a lot lately. All too often the time spent in this place seems lost, as if I’ve been dropped in the cornfield across the road, spun in a circle and told to find my way home, green stalks before me and blue sky above no indication of which direction to walk.

This evening the way was clear. But that was another place.

I stood at a line painted in an arc. I waited for the sound of a gun. I ran. Four times I returned to the place where I began. Then I stopped. It was all good.

This current place, the here and now, isn’t so simple. But I am comforted by what surrounds me. Insects sing. Black bleeds off the pages of the night.

There is another story of the day. Of a fire burning. Dangerous embers I watched from a distance, glowing long into the evening that surrounds me. Amber still, at the end of the day.

I see the fire. See the day gone. See the lines I stayed between, running hard and stopping where I started.

1600-meter run, Greenfield-Central All-Comers Track Meet

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The girl beside me

July 9, 2010 by indjohnson

She doesn’t know it, but it’s there.

She doesn’t see it, but I do. When I look to my left, at the girl running beside me, I see her Uncle Larry. A 4:16 miler in high school, he was the kid with the natural talent who hated to lose. But, it wasn’t always that way. There was a day when Larry was one of us — just another country kid who made it from the start to the finish in an unremarkable time. But he gradually improved. He wasn’t the leader of the team. He ran well, did his best, then got on the bus like everyone else.

Until one day…

The transition, as I recall, came most vividly at the state cross country finals my senior year. When the gun fired that morning, it was if we had a new runner on our team. I’ve always said Larry suddenly believed in himself, believed he could be a great distance runner. For the first time all year, he was our lead man. At a home meet the following track season, he finally beat his arch nemesis in the half mile. The school yearbook captures the moment, Larry grabbing at the string across the finish line, Dave Painter several strides behind him.

When I look at that photo, I see the runner Larry became, and I remember the runner he once was.

And, when I look to my left, I see the girl who has the potential her uncle displayed.

Today she and I go 4 miles, one of my favorite routes from my old running days, an out-and-back to a bridge over the Big Blue River. It’s a concrete structure now, but I remember the steel box bridge from years ago, a historic span the county condemned and subsequently razed. I tell her about that old bridge and about the first house I lived in, just up Mill Road, when I moved to the county in 1986. She hears my words, but I know she’s already thinking about the two miles to home. She’s processing the distance in her mind. A lesser runner would simply look at the water and not care about what’s to come.

I wish for her the best, and I will do everything in my power to provide it. Staying by her side as long as I can, and cheering from a distance when I must.

I believe in her in ways I was never able to believe in myself. And yet, at the same time, I’m still running, too. In the end, there might be hope for both of us.

Running: 4 miles

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On Jane Owen

July 4, 2010 by indjohnson

I was saddened to learn today of the death of Jane Blaffer Owen.

My connection to Mrs. Owen came through New Harmony, the historic gem she rescued from obscurity. I spent three years of my life in Posey County, including one year in that most special of small towns, before leaving the area 24 years ago. But I will forever carry a bit of New Harmony deep in my pocket, where I can reach in and wrap fingers around memories of that place.

Fate introduced me to New Harmony. A friend nurtured my affection for the town. But taking up residence there branded the place into my consciousness.

It began like this. The summer I graduated from college, I landed a job at the Mount Vernon Democrat, then a small daily newspaper. In the short time I worked in the county, initially as a reporter and eventually as the paper’s news editor, I lived first in a modern apartment complex overlooking a cornfield on the north edge of Mount Vernon, then in a small, single-story apartment unit a block from the Ohio River, and finally, and best of all, in a tiny house on Steam Mill Street in New Harmony.

The site of two utopian communities, New Harmony’s attempts at communal living were short-lived and might have been nothing more than history-book fodder had the town faded into insignificance. Mrs. Owen wouldn’t allow that to happen.

She moved to New Harmony in the 1940s after marrying Kenneth Dale Owen, a descendant of Robert Owen, the Welsh-born industrialist and social philosopher who purchased the town in 1825, after the Rappites packed their bags and journeyed back to Pennsylvania. Robert Owen’s attempt to remake New Harmony failed the next year. Mrs. Owen’s go-round with the history of the place fared much better, not only succeeding, but doing so beyond anyone’s wildest imagination, except maybe hers.

The details of the place are easily found online. Historical accounts, however, are unlikely to talk about the flowers that grew in New Harmony. And yet, to me, those gardens were Mrs. Owen, who, in turn, was New Harmony.

When I think of New Harmony, I am walking down a residential street on a summer day. On the other side of a picket fence is a woman wearing a wide-brim hat and cotton gardening gloves. She looks up from her flowers to say good morning.

“Good morning, Mrs. Owen,” I reply.

It was the tiniest of connections. In my role as a reporter, I never had occasion to interview the woman. But as a resident of the town, I frequently saw her tending to flowers on any number of properties she owned or cared for. I knew the person on the other side of the fence was a multi-millionaire, but she worked like one of us, rolling up her shirt sleeves when needed, willing to get dirty when necessary. More importantly, she treated the people of New Harmony as the neighbors they truly were.

My ride today takes me through four towns and villages — some bigger than New Harmony, some smaller. None of those places has the historical footnotes to compare with the ones left by George Rapp and Robert Owen. And yet, New Harmony would likely be nothing more than a tired town with a single traffic light had it not been for Mrs. Owen. One woman made a difference.

The world, or at least one corner of it, is a better place because of her.

30.14 miles — Henry and Rush counties


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