Silence above the hollow interrupted

As I write this, my cat Luna is acting like a vulture, sitting on the top of my chair behind my head, looking over my shoulder, waiting for me to put my computer aside. It used to be that she waited semi-patiently, then curled up on my lap; however, the last few weeks, she has waited for another reason, a smarter reason.

I’ve been employing a heating pad for my aching back, and Luna has wisely figured out that if I leave my chair, she can collapse the pad and curl up in delicious warmth. I so enjoy smart females.

As most of you know, I live in the country on land made up of limestone bluffs, woods, and a hollow that runs for about a mile between the bluffs on the north and south sides of it. Yesterday, I was sitting on an old picnic table on a bluff overlooking the hollow, probably fifty feet above the hollow floor, knowing that within a couple of weeks, trees will have leafed out and the marvelous view will be gone. Other than the little voices of songbirds, it was totally silent, with an occasional tapping on a tree by some far away woodpecker. One thinks odd things when left alone in the serenities of the day, and I was thinking that perhaps the National Football League should carefully examine the skull of a woodpecker to figure out how the head can endure such punishment and still be OK. Just a thought.

I was thoroughly enjoying what writer Leo Marx termed ‘idyllic satisfaction,’ in his book “The Machine in the Garden,” when, suddenly, it was ruined by a singular sound. High overhead, a jet passed, and the pastoral moment was rudely interrupted by a modern world. A wiser man than I often had a similar experience in the 1850s, a guy we all know, Henry David Thoreau. He lived in a cabin on Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts for a couple of years, and subsequently wrote about the experience in his book, “Walden; or, Life in the Woods.” For those who have not read it, don’t believe for a moment that the guy was alone and isolated out there. He had many visitors, and he reportedly walked to nearby Concord several times a week for the latest news and gossip. I rarely accept visitors out here, however I often go to a nearby town. Even I need society. Anyway, he too experienced a kind of peace and serenity and, if you will, idyllic satisfaction, until an occasional local steam locomotive chugged past the pond, reminding him, and all of us, that today’s world is never far away.

It’s Easter Sunday as I write this, a day infused with memories and, to top it all off, it has begun to rain. It’s a day when Tom Waits (I love names that are complete sentences) should be singing sad songs in the background. “We’d packed away our sorrows, And we saved them for a rainy day.” Don’t be afraid of these things, of sad songs, silence, time alone in the woods, or rainy days: we look at old memories because they inform our todays and they act as assurances that we are, in fact, alive, very much alive in a modern world that sometimes feels intrusive. And, if I might once again quote Paul Simon, “Preserve your memories. They’re all that’s left you.” Have a brilliant May.

Kurt Ullrich lives in rural Jackson County. The Dubuque Telegraph Herald has published a 60-page magazine of Kurt’s columns. The magazine can be purchased here.