Mountain Journal — One Step at a Time

Mountain Journal — One Step at a Time

Yesterday morning, snow flurries drifted through the air.

It was not much, only a light scattering, but the way the flakes dissolved into the wind suggested that winter had not yet loosened its hold. T

he temperature hovered around twenty-eight degrees Fahrenheit—just below freezing in Celsius—and with the wind added, the cold felt sharper than the number implied.

Where I had been living, spring flowers would already be in full bloom, the landscape turned into a riot of color.

Here, in this mountain hollow, spring moves slowly.

It seems I will have to grow accustomed to waiting, and to the quiet patience that comes with it.

After brunch, I walked to the local post office.

I wanted to check the mail, but I also hoped that, if I happened to meet someone, I might hear something about life here. When I opened the door, a gentle warmth wrapped around me.

A stillness had settled inside the room.

As I opened my mailbox, the clerk—perhaps alerted by the sound of the key—appeared.

It was the same person I had met on my first day, someone who looked to be about my age.

I asked a series of questions about things I would need for living here.

The conversation felt almost unimaginable in the city: a house where eggs are sold from a refrigerator set out front; how and where to dispose of trash; where to buy heating fuel.

When the clerk pulled out a worn telephone directory to find numbers for me,

I suddenly felt apologetic and waved my hands, telling them not to trouble themselves.

Stepping back outside with a single piece of mail in my hand, I thought: there are many things this place does not have. Yet, in their absence, something else seems to exist.

Back home, I picked up the roll cake I had bought the day before and walked to the house on the hill at the entrance to the neighborhood. When I had first moved in, I had needed help connecting to the internet, and they had kindly assisted me. I knocked, and Alex—Alexandra, to be precise—answered the door. I handed her the borrowed pen along with the cake.

“This is your pen,” I said. “And this… is a slightly delayed interest payment.”

A smile spread across her face. Alex asked for my phone number and said she would share any information I might need.

Following her advice, I gathered my documents and drove to the Middletown Town Hall.

Without many questions, the clerk handed me a sticker for my car.

With that, I was told, I now had the right to dispose of trash at the town facility.

While I was out, I went ahead and visited the site.

On my way back, I met June, an elderly woman who lives above the post office.

She had been born and raised here, lived away for thirty years, and then returned,

where she has stayed for the past five or six.

Time ran visibly through the deep lines on her face.

She waved at every passing car, greeting each one as though it carried someone she knew.

I found myself wondering: What is time, after all? And what is a life?

After five or ten years in this place, who will I become?

Will I be someone who flips through an old telephone directory for another person,

or someone who stands by the roadside, waving to passing cars?

 

A week has passed since April began.

This morning, it snowed again.

I woke before dawn and looked out the window.

 

The world had turned into a country of snow.