We spent the weekend in North Carolina (steamy, wilting, nostalgic, slow-moving, good-natured, grandparented North Carolina), and Sunday morning found me walking Cleo across the deserted UNC campus at 7:15 in the morning. Along brick paths; past the iconic Old Well and the various dorms and office buildings where parents once worked and high school friends labored over their problem sets and imagined the trajectories of crushes. A couple walked their two small kids. An image of Norah Jones peered out from the colonnade of the performing arts center. And then we were at the arboretum.
Few sounds, but they were enough to form a small and modest symphony. A distant campus air conditioning unit offered a steady treble drone. One bird chirruped in triads; a pair of birds in a more distant tree echoed each other in two-part calls. Back and forth, back and forth. Then the advancing footsteps of a jogger - a local motif, suggesting a stanza - came and went. A car in the distance offered another variation on the theme of motion. And the regular clack of our stroller wheels and axle as we moved over breaks in the walk.
Cross two state borders; move through the land of your past. Always there is a symphony being performed.
Few sounds, but they were enough to form a small and modest symphony. A distant campus air conditioning unit offered a steady treble drone. One bird chirruped in triads; a pair of birds in a more distant tree echoed each other in two-part calls. Back and forth, back and forth. Then the advancing footsteps of a jogger - a local motif, suggesting a stanza - came and went. A car in the distance offered another variation on the theme of motion. And the regular clack of our stroller wheels and axle as we moved over breaks in the walk.
Cross two state borders; move through the land of your past. Always there is a symphony being performed.
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