Thomaston

The end pulls me, drags me, has a fix on my location, is the smiling magnet that tugs on the lump of iron in my chest more and more with each day, as I grow closer. Too much longer and it will simply pick me up and reel me in through the air, and my walking will be done. I keep a photo of the border under my jacket-pillow and the image crawls up my ear and into my dreams as I sleep in the cold rain. I have a cigar in my pack, still dry and un-bent after all these miles, and it seems anxious, too, for what it knows is coming, and I need only whisper to it that we are through and it will surely self-combust in celebration.

I have left the Wheeler home behind but I have not yet shaken loose of Jay. Twice he has met me along the road as he drives north for his work and has taken me out to lunch.

Yesterday I was picked up by another contact, James, who brought me to his house in Thomaston. He and his daughter, Kalie, showed me around their property here, which reminds me more and more of home in Coaldale, with the garden and apple orchard, wood stove, dogs, and river. This morning I met Cindy, as well, wife and mother. She and James are both artists, as are many of my parents' friends at home and this, too, reminds me of Colorado. My stomache is still steaming from breakfast, now, and though the sky is still overcast after last night's rain and I don't exactly feel like leaving another warm house behind the magnet pulls strongly, and I must.

Fall is here. At my face the wind is cold, stroking the underside of the leaves in these forests and tickling them into changing the color of their skin. They wrile up in laughter, clutching their golden red bellies and squinting closed their eyes. Acorns drop in gusting waves, and I watch my head as I pass under thick trees or I am pelted. At night I have begun wearing my longsleeve underarmor, finally burrowing into the warmth of my sleeping bag after so many hot and humid nights.