Hermitical Inclinations

Quiet day reading, needing time to recover from the fire, rest my worried brain. "Best Short Stories, 2005" which I find I had missed, some good ones. Collect a few morels, dine twice with duxelles on fried corn-meal mush. Eat a cold can of beans right from the can. I eat the duxelles and polenta right from the pan. No mediation. Toke, and drift through the afternoon, thinking about hermits I've known, probably more than my share, given the nature of hermits. But there is also the phenomena of urban hermits, and we should include them in the count, but of the class of pure hermits, I've known three, one on Cape Cod, one in Colorado, and one in the upper peninsula of Michigan. The one in Michigan I discovered when I was hunting morels, an odd confrontation, or rather, another odd confrontation, I have a history of these, I liken them to what I think a migraine headache must be like. I walking working my way through a sea of huge pine stumps (twelve feet across) with my head down, looking closely at the ground, and I was suddenly looking at what had formerly been a pair of shoes, and was now serving that function only grudgingly. I've always worn sword-fishing hats, with long brims, to serve as blinders, when I'm hunting mushrooms, helps focus the field of view. Also I look like a dork and have a crick in my neck, as I slowly lift my head what I see, first, are some impossibly strained pants and the a flannel shirt missing most of its buttons and a jean jacket without sleeves. I was holding a knife, a really nice Gerber, that I use to cut the mushrooms right where they enter the ground, I'm good at this, I seldom have to wipe off any dirt, but I didn't want to appear as a threat, so I slowly, plain-sight, folded the knife and put it in my pocket. He was a withered old coot, much like me now, I wondered what had drawn him thus. He needed to talk. For whatever reason, the various influences, I'm a good listener. I tend to hear what's being said. I think I do. Maybe I don't understand anything, a missing gene or something, a disorder we don't see that often. He invited me to his cave. I'm a pragmatist, generally, so I make sense of where I find myself. Have you ever known a hermit? Of course I went to his cave, how many chances like this you going to have? He lived like a saint. Invited me to his cave and brewed an undrinkable tea from local weeds. I thought he was crazy, I thought all the hermits I've known, where they trying to go, what that meant. I had lured myself way deep in a conversation I didn't want to have, where we talked about things, you and me, frankly, what I want is to write at there next level, where there isn't doubt. The impossible is merely more difficult. Come on, we do this all the time.