See Rock City

After two days of wind and unsettled weather, a beautiful Saturday morning materialized in Highlands.  When I went out onto the deck this morning, I could already see rose-colored clouds building on the ridge to the east through the shimmering green leaves of trees.  I thought I could hear Horatio saying,

But look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,

Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill.

Temperatures were climbing into the mid-fifties by the time I reached Town; birds were singing, a few people were out walking, and I thought as I often have on mornings like this that were it not for my knees and my legs, I might run all day.  I completed eight miles, and Martha had a good run, too, in these perfect conditions.

"When was the last time I ran eight miles?" I asked myself.  I started turning pages in my running log and found an entry for 8.00 a few weeks back; but wait, that was eight miles for the week.  I had to go back to February 22, the day before my birthday; we had been in Atlantic Beach, and the next day, Sunday morning, we had driven to Duck for a celebratory birthday weekend.  It seemed like a year ago - so much has changed in our lives in just a little over two months!  We actually ate in a restaurant, I recall, and it was crowded; the phrase "social distancing" had not yet been used, and had we gazed into a crystal ball that evening we would have been astonished.  And probably stocked up on hand-sanitizer and toilet paper.

At Bryson's grocery on Thursday, I pulled out my little bottle of Purell at the checkout counter; I had entered my pin number for my debit card, and I have become so cautious that I immediately cleaned my hands where my fingers had touched a possible coronavirus-coated number pad.  "I could probably sell that for fifty bucks on the street!" I joked to the two women ringing up and bagging my groceries.  Then I told them about a video Martha had seen on Facebook a month or so ago depicting a man in a car approached by a seedy-looking character at an inner city intersection.  He peeled off several bills and said, "Have you got the stuff?"   They both looked around furtively before the seedy character pulled from beneath his denim jacket two rolls of toilet paper and a bottle of Purell.

"Isn't it true!" one of the women said.  "I thought we'd have flying cars by now, but here we are scrounging for toilet paper!"

I would have thought the same thing, I thought.  After all, in my lifetime we have walked on the moon, eradicated smallpox, and built skyscrapers tall enough for terrorists to want to fly into them.  And here I am typing at a computer undreamt-of when I graduated from college, posting to a blog, searching for images of flying cars on the internet.  Something has gone terribly wrong, hasn't it?

One thing went right this week, though.  We finally completed the fence project begun only two weeks ago, painted the same deep blue as the birdbath in front of the garden shed and each post mounted with a birdhouse.  Maybe birds will actually decide to use them here rather than balanced on the railing of our deck.

It is satisfying to complete a project that burned up some stress in hard work while at the same time beautifying our property.  I especially like the "See Rock City" one in the middle - that was Martha's idea - with its pop of bright red and its memory of a wonderful day four years ago at that iconic place on Lookout Mountain!