The Circumference of Home by Kurt Hoelting

Author:Kurt Hoelting
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 2010-04-12T16:00:00+00:00

THE INTERURBAN BIKE TRAIL traces an unbending path along the railroad grade through the baseline of the valley. It seems to have found all the backyards of these industrial parks, the vacant lots that stand in between, and the rear alleyways of remnant neighborhoods that line the edges of our burgeoning industrial project. I stop to rest by a pocket of wetlands hanging off the edge of an industrial fill. Some bufflehead ducks are working the ponds, inhabiting them with no questions asked, unfazed by the harsh lines of separation that we humans have imposed on their land. As I watch them work, their lovely black and white bodies diving down to feed and then popping randomly back to the surface of the water, I notice that the clouds have broken open. The rain has stopped, for a while at least. Nothing ever stays the same for long. The harsh lines of judgment that have been forming again in my mind begin to soften. A Zen saying rises with the ducks out of the hidden places in my own deep memory: “Never forget the thousand-year view.” In the unexpected grace of this moment, the hard certainty that has hammered itself into my perceptions about this place loosens its grip. I am the prodigal son again, aware for now simply of my grief, aware of its potency, aware of its gravitational pull on my body, but aware also that it carries some part of the answer I have come here to find. “We will not work to save that which we do not love.”

How does one fashion such a love in the midst of such towering losses? What I see here is only the tip of the iceberg of what is to come, when climate change is factored into the equation. A love that can endure even this must pass inevitably through grief, no less for the land than for the people we have been given to love. This is the way of the world. This is how it has always been. I sit with my grief in the moment at hand as I would sit with any powerful stranger who has come to visit—humbled for a time, and silent.

The valley stretches out the same as before when I resume my ride. The clouds press down as hard as they have all day. But my spirit is no longer so burdened, my heart not so closed. I am no longer quite so blind to the beauty that will never cease looking for a fresh purchase on this land.

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