I’m not sure where any of you land on past lives, but I am way too into parts of the past to not have been here before. And it all peaks at different times of the year.
Like right now.
Right now, I feel really in touch with what’s going on around me. From the scenery to the weather to the music – the whole fucking vibe. It’s as if once the sun sets and the moon rises above the tips of the pines, that I am finally home – spiritually. I yearn for it. I wait for it. I feel complete when it is upon us.
Every. Damn. Day.
I literally just planned part of my afternoon with my kids around one of those sunsets. I hope to catch a popcorn sky that fades to the point where you can only see it retreating off the surface of the snow into your memory banks…
I hope I’m shoveling snow when that happens with the scent of wood smoke tickling my nose and lingering longer in my beard.
Enchanting, right? Sure as you’re born it is…
I think part of all of this is the fact that I live on property that my family once owned. They were the original settlers of this area and made a living trading on the banks of the Connecticut River. Once a community was formed and roles needed to be established in the burgeoning society, some of those members branched out to make names for themselves.
A great uncle of mine was a “friend to negroes” and was jailed for “giving guns to savages”. Sounds like my kind of guy. He became a top-tier political figure out here before he checked out. Helped shape all of Middlesex County. He’s buried in a prominent cemetery in the middle of the city I live on the edge of. You need to request permission to get the key to visit the place.
He and his wife lived where I live now, and there’s a wild group of hiking trails named after her down the street. I didn’t know this until two years after I moved out here, but I was drawn to that area of land. That same area where my family’s trading post used to be.
It’s kind of crazy and wild. Maybe I was there?
There are so many trails out here in Maromas. Why would I be so laser-focused on those simple few that lead me down to the river like all the others do?
Regarding the music, it’s that heavy banjo and fiddle stuff that requires you to wear a belt knife and get a little dramatic when the stars and pretty women reflect off your eyes. It makes you want to say sweet things people remember and hunt for pinecones and berries in the snow. Makes you want to hold long conversations about nothing while you look for shapes in the smoke your breath makes…
It’s all quite profound.
We all connect to something, right?
Check this out: In another bit of unexplained celestial energy, I’ve always had a connection to Vermont. I thought it was the mountains and streams. Turns out that another part of my family settled that state. The whole thing. Sons of the revolution! Daughters too. The 1800s were a series of watershed moments for my dad’s side of the family.
A while back, I sat in an old taproom in Wilmington that was in a building another member of my family built one hundred or more years ago. I didn’t know it at the time, although I didn’t want to leave. And it wasn’t the beer or the company. I wandered around in old parts of that place that were closed off to the public, like I had wandered around there before – with the bartender’s dog keeping to my heels like he caught the scent of adventure and wanted a little bit of it too…
Anyway.
I’m not sure where any of you land on past lives, but I am way too into parts of the past to not have been here before. And it all peaks at different times of the year.
Like right now…
Tribe Of Flannel 