The Changeling

Today’s the day I change. It’s a little thing, really—a shift in perspective. An acceptance—if I can accept something so fundamentally different.

The wind howls across the hilltop, rippling my coat around my body and pressing me deliberately forward. Its chill draws forth a shiver—unwelcome, unbidden, and a mirror to time’s blitzkrieg. I grab the rail and stare over the cliff before drawing back a pace.

Back to safety.

Before me, the river bends around the opposing mountain, churning, angry, and swollen. From this height, it is silent in its passing. I’ve fished it, though, waded its banks from both shores, and wrung a few meals from it for the effort. That’s one of those yesteryear moments; standing in the river, time stretched before me like train tracks disappearing into the distance. I stuff the past in a closet without a thought to its tidy arrangement therein.

I’ve been good at living in the moment. Less so at cherishing them. It is something I need to work on going forward.

A road snakes along, snuggled between the two, hugging the river or the mountain, I don’t know. An occasional horn trumpets angrily at some perceived injustice. The cars look small between the immovable and unstoppable, parrying traffic in a race for the border. I’ve done that, too. A rat race for sure, though the road behind my vantage point, covered in dappled shade and guarded by a rocky cliff face, is more my style. It seems humanity and I dance better with a stack of holy books between us. Take your pick on who’s holy and who’s not; I’ve fished both those shores, too.

A ring of fire-colored leaves rides the mountain like a hat squashed down too far on its head. The forest is spotty in places, showing its age and the wear and tear of the changing season on the once-vibrant slope. I haven’t spent any time on that other slope, per se. The one upon which I stand and stare I’ve explored. But the one before me? No. No, it’s a path not taken. I have spent time behind that hillock, though, buried in life. Mired by ambition. Toiling in obscurity.

All of those?

None of those?

I suppose it is an issue of perspective, too.

These things, these sights and sounds and thoughts collide before me, within me.

I’m not ready.

I’ve spent nearly thirty years striving for this moment, and now that it’s here, I’m hesitant.

Time comes for us all, though. When it catches us, we act surprised, like this is so foreign. Others have walked this path, the metaphorical and the physical. Others have looked out on these fall scenes and seen the beauty and promise of change. I have, too, in years, maybe decades, past.

Today is different. Today, a scattering of rain-pregnant clouds promise dreariness and uncertainty. Today, the once distant future has rented the room next door and now waits for me to make up my mind. Today, the hopes and wishes and plans for tomorrow are due; a lesson plan on how to navigate a career.

A life.

I’m not sure.

Everything in my core says I should pay the tab and leave the restaurant. Conflicting approaches and agendas diminish my ability to affect the change I’d like. That’s on me, too. I’m a “Boomer” to the raucous calls for institutional modernism. Curiously, it is not a change for the positive; more an entropic collapse like that which I see before me, fading light, fading color, fading freshness and youth, all in a hurry to be somewhere else and miss the majesty surrounding them.

“It’s pretty, isn’t it,” a young father asks his son. The boy, heartily enjoying a hot dog from down the road, nods in response, eyes big as saucers at all the color and pageantry. Or maybe the euphoria of the hot dog.

I smile to myself, remembering being both the father and the boy.

It’s late, and my compatriots in foliage surveilling decide to move on, hustling back to their car and winding away down that road I like curled tight to the rock like a pet anxious for your lap. Their taillights fade, a gaudy red to the shade-bound colors of fall on this side of the river.

It’s almost time.

The sky is changing in the west. The clouds spent their energy racing east and left a gap in the sky westward where the sun blazes in the day’s finality. It starts there, anyway, soft brushes of orange on the bellies of the clouds. Nothing major. Nothing so garish and bright. Just a dab of color on the western-most clouds.

It grows, though, spreading like a fire across tinder. Soft at first, reds bleeding to orange in an explosion of heavenly fire. If it is the sky’s answer to the floral pastels below, it is awesomely done. The thin strokes grow broad and bold. In minutes the whole of the underside of the cloud blanket is rippling fire.

As time ebbs forward, it drags the sun with it, stealing back the fire and sloughing it all with darkness. Only a blast of dark blue echoes back before the light fades, and the chill wind is back to harass me further. It is colder, more insistent, and I, less resistant to its musings.

Yes, it’s time to go. True, there can be glory in resurrection, but no Holy morning awaits me: just an archaic hill on which to die and a matching philosophy for which to do so.

Below, the daylight is gone, it’s only headlights and taillights, now. It is a guessing game, mostly, as to make and model, though the big rigs stand out and their brakes scream across the chasm before echoing between the mountains.

It is time to retire. For the night. For the career. There will be other sun-filled days, and opportunities will emerge. Or I will ferret them out and enjoy a walk along a different path, dappled or not. My time on this one has come to an end. I stare again across the river at the muted hillside’s blackness.

One more sigh.

It was good. I was good. In my day, I made magic happen. 

But all things end.

The veil of night closes and snuffs the last of meandering dusk into total darkness.

Yes, it is finished.