Run down
In my favorite stretch of my favorite backyard woods-trail, the path dips flat for a distance then takes a sharp ascent to a rough cliff-top. From there you see over the harbor the distant skyline of Boston.
This view affects me differently depending on the frame of clouds and sea that hold the city. Today the water is troubled, stung by the wind like me; which races unchecked across the harbor, whipping up the cliff. My city lies quieted by COVID, ominous in the distance.
But what I like most like about this upturn in the path isn't what the view and the climb do to my breath. It’s the form of the path where the rain runs down from the cliff back to the flat.
Whenever it rains or snow melts, runoff from the rocky clifftop carries dirt down the path and deposits it at the bottom, creating a kind of raised catwalk across the low part. I imagine the action over generations, time-lapsed as a long finger of lava inching into the valley by a volcano.
Another few thousand years, and the whole cliff will be in the low part, I think to myself.
And possibly in that timeframe other things I hold dear about life on the planet will have washed away too, moving in parallel to the grains of dirt and water running down from this clifftop.
Still, this will be my favorite place on the path.
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