Looks familiar? It certainly did to me.

I took an hour’s walk today again. I can do that much now, with seemingly no ill effect, at least the same day. We shall see tomorrow. Anyway, I came to a familiar place, where a road splits from the main road right where the river widens to merge with the sea. The road that follows the river, and the river itself, are the ones that pass by “Riverview”, the place where I lived until two weeks ago and had expected to live for many more years.

I followed the road a short stretch. It was so hauntingly familiar. Actually I have only walked that particular stretch once, and it had not really been a good idea even then: It is like 3 hours walk from Møll, I think.  Still, it is the same river, almost indistinguishable, passing farms and low hills, and the same road taking shortcuts but coming back to the river time and again like someone in love and unable to hide it.

Right there, right then, I could feel the familiarigravity shift… if I had continued to walk, it would have felt easier than turning around, easier than turning back to the big town and its streets and shops. I could have just walked on, there are no crossing roads, no way to get lost. I could have just walked straight ahead, all the way home.

Except home isn’t there anymore.

There is just a small, empty house, its windows dark. But I cannot see it like that. That is not how I remember it. Living there even for less than a year and a half made this “gravity well” of familiarity, that was even now calling out for me. Come home! Your life is waiting for you. The kitchen where you know where everything is, the apple tree outside the window, the river, always the river. The water slowly floating past, through the green fields.  Quiet, cool, yet strangely almost alive.

If my feet feel fine, maybe I will take that walk on Saturday. Probably not, but perhaps. If it is not too hot and not raining too much either. Sure it may be three hours, perhaps three and a half. I’d definitely realize that it was a dumb idea by the time I was halfway. But I may still do it, just because I can. Oh, and to check the mail box. Turns out changing the address took longer time than I had expected, so theoretically there might be some mail in it. Statistically unlikely, it usually went weeks between each time I got anything. Well, perhaps a free issue of the local newspaper, I never found a system in when they handed those out. But, you never know. I am sure the mail box is not taken down yet.

I would not need to walk home. The bus passes by a couple times on Saturdays as well, if I just go early enough. Yeah.

But probably I won’t. Now that I am home, it does not look like a very bright idea anymore. But if I go there again… I am not so sure. For a short stretch, perhaps a hundred steps from the large road crossing, the gravities meet and cancel out, reality and memory. Beyond that… it is downhill all the way, even when it is not.

It seems I am able to walk for an hour again now.  Before the foot incident, it was unproblematic to take an hour’s walk and later half an hour the same day, or the other way around. I am not sure exactly how far I could have walked, I did not push it. There is no reason why a few weeks of resting my foot should change that forever. If I go a bit further, a bit faster, I may be able to walk that road each day again, albeit a different part of it. But still walk the road along the river, through the farmland, in the light and the breeze. We shall see. Perhaps that, or perhaps something else. “When men talk about the future, Heaven laughs.” (Or sometimes cries, I guess. Let’s hope not, this time.)