Ryan C. O'Reilly

This morning I took a walk in the woods.

From the marina my little feet carried me up the hill and along a broken and washed out trail that must've been a road at one time. Maybe it was the road that led from Sue and Dick Chase's house; who owned the marina since before I even had a diaper to crap in. Up and up I walked, turning from the trail along a line of bluffs high above the lake. Then I sat on a bleached white outcropping and closed my eyes.

I could hear, passing on the lake below, the whirring motor of a boat. It's bow slapping the water as it bounced on a couple of waves. In my nose the tangy smell of animal piss, and the odor of something dead. Something perhaps wafting on the summer heat blooms from the lake. A dead fish or turtle. Maybe a stagnant pool of water from the spring flood with the remains of trapped fish, the water around them evaporating from the heated rock.

To me, with the world explosive and alive through smell and taste and sound, the year could've been 1985 and I was just stealing away from my family for a moment of quiet before the day began. The breakfasts that were more like cavalry charges. Endless loops in the boat as everyone took their turn to ski or tube. Trips from our dock to the marina aboard the "Titanic II" - our little paddleboat - after we'd discovered the ability to charge candy on our family gas account. Days long gone for our generation.

Then I open my eyes suddenly, inexplicably. 1985 becomes 2011. My phone buzzes in my pocket. It is an email from my beautiful wife reminding me of a meeting we have together at 1:30 this afternoon. After reading the email, going twice over the part where she says she loves me, I stick the phone in my pocket and started back to the marina for a shower and then the trip back to town.

1985 almost happened for me this morning, where it not for my ability to see. The sounds and the smells were the same and until I opened my eyes almost felt the boundless energy of a young boy with everything in front of him. I descend the steep and rocky hill without fear and without any kind of regret. Anticipating the day my wife and I will make the breakfast, drive the boat and watch our own disappear around the bend and out of sight. The sound of the splashing paddle growing faint, the green smell of the lake, the sun in my eyes. My wife takes my hand, and the sun twinkles through the trees above the western horizon.