Pin Wheels On My Dirt Pile

I took another nice long walk yesterday with my dogs around our lake. There is something about large bodies of water that bring out the philosophical in people.



I suppose that's why writers and poets tend to rent summer cottages by the lake or beach houses by the sea.




Ours is just a man-made dammed-up bit of faux nature with stocked- fish and a nice trail that circumnavigates the entire perimeter, but it is still a pretty little thing when the light is right.



My dogs rediscover some of their other attributes by being unleashed along its banks.



They walk until the bottom is gone and then they swim in a small arc and return to solid footing.



The smell of duck poop sends them right over the edge, though, and I have to monitor what they put in their mouths. Not all duck poop is good duck poop, truly.



I encounter some of Oregon's finest along these walks, always men, bearded, alone, with a paper bag wadded up next to them and a couple of empty high alcohol, low-price cans of gut-rot beer laying about.



These men always have a pole in the water and when I ask them what they've caught, they usually say "nuthin'" and tap their toes, like Dorothy, wishing for a better answer to come to them as if wishing for it was all they were capable of.



They remind me of myself, sometimes, coming to these bodies of water in search of thoughts to reel-in for my mental string, always standing or sitting on the quietly lapping edges and peering into the dark middle, wanting to catch sight of something huge.

I never do.

Not really.

The depth of life always either eluded me, or doesn't really exist. I see humps of her on occasion, from the sideways seeing one sometimes does when trying to navigate a thick tangle of obstacles.


But seeing her from the side of your vision, always leaves you wondering if you saw her at all?

When I walk along the edge of this lake- though I fish for deeper things- I am usually left with only sweat (and the itch one gets when buggy stuff sticks to you). My heart rate climbs a little, and I can hear it as it thumps along, pushing blood to my long extremities.


Like the drunk fisherman, I catch "nuthin'", but I am still here nonetheless. I see evidence of people having been here before me, as well, in their marks and scratches.


I see where some have built things of a semi-permanent nature, and I appreciate the time it took them, and sometimes, the skill.


For the most part, that's the only type of fish I take home with me from these visits to the lake.

On my way back to my house, there is a cemetery. The types of men I encounter fishing at this lake are often buried here. High-alcohol beer cans litter the cemetery like the men who lie here.

Sometimes there are polished marble stones. Often times, just a mound of dirt and some kind of marker I can't see from the roadway.

I wonder how many of these men and women, fished from the lake as I do?

A new mound of dirt sits near the outer perimeters of this cemetery. It is not far from me and I can take a picture of it. A mound of dirt covered in pin-wheels. You can't see it in the picture, but as the breeze blows, the pin-wheels spin and toss out striking glints of color.

As I walk by this man's grave, I think to myself- "That man caught something big, once..."

The smell of duck poop isn't bad, when a dog is kissing you.