+43° 35' 33", -71° 44' 23"

26.2. 4:44:39. All sets are full. (Barely alive.)

+43° 49' 9", -71° 21' 0"

A mist is new data: the opalescent gossip of soil, perhaps, or a vast and restless appeal for devotion. This world is tamed; adrenaline is residuary. We navigate by acorns and magelight, if we choose navigation at all.

+42° 18' 0", -71° 23' 36"

The hair is absolute black, neck high, and as reflective as air. It invents heat and current. She is attached; it is her charge, also. This tenor cannot be captured — Rudolf Otto would retreat to Latin or Greek. A daughter of Geb and Nut pays cash for a take away burrito, stops for napkins and ginger ale, and rides back to work shotgun in a Corolla.

+45° 16' 7", -71° 12' 18"

Bonne journée! Bonne journée! Bonne journée! Any squabble here is an illusion, but this one is gleeful and proper. I pronounce that skepticism masquerades as wisdom when it leads to stagnation or tedium; in other words, for today at least, I’m in neutral, rolling backwards uphill in Quebec.

+42° 57' 4", -71° 26' 9"

Don’t go back to Famous Dave’s. There is no one to hold on to there. The clattering of gathered mistakes is lovely and simple, inviting angels and elegies. I have no proof and this is no argument, but that waiting room was radiant and saturated. Rilke knows: for all the incessant whispering, endurance is all. Find tomorrow between the river and the rock, and imagine lonesomeness wasting in sunlight.

+42° 26' 8", -71° 27' 29"

It is a new moon and you are three. Breathe with your stomach, and compile your Rings of Headrick: it will feel like remembering. May support and love, in alternating order, find you each morning before light breaks. May your motorcycle be less beautiful than you.

+42° 24' 1", -71° 6' 45"

Coffee (dark roast, thin brew, black) and fresh guacamole; low seventies and partly cloudy; cinnamon and chocolate milk; insulin and corn chips; limes and garlic and salt; CD3s and astronaut gum at gas station registers for $0.24.

+43° 7' 14", -71° 28' 55"

The disappointment is ankle high, always. The auditorium is empty and ringing. The baying is pure and determined, without a trace of malice. Two pumps, four chambers, clearing.

Dedicated to Ellie Greenwich.

+43° 35' 35", -71° 44' 35"

If evil is a wave fattened by countless puckish cowardices, then good must surely be nourished by those who hold hands in a tiny town.

+43° 39' 00", -71° 47' 41"

The wooded trail is muddy but passable. It is raining. It is an hour before nightfall, and I am running because I have to. Large rocks surrender their traction to lichens. I scamper over a ridge, crack the white noise of weather on terrain, and startle a small herd of deer. One is separated from the rest. The conifer leaves are deep and soft; the galloping is heavy and real.

+43° 38' 2", -71° 46' 5"

Morning begins where meaning is necessary. You bury four unopened cans of beer in the sand. These are not time capsules or philanthropy. This is not agriculture.

+42° 25' 52", -71° 25' 13"

If there is such a thing as terrible, such a fear as “worst” -- imagined, cultivated, or otherwise -- it must be this: to be loved by, and to love, a free, safe, healthy, complete, and happy family, but to be compelled to move away from them again and again.

+44° 8' 33", -71° 40' 56"

Coming from the south, the rocks are first, then the lakes and the juniper. As the day is kindled, wind tears at the open windows of your wagon, and you cross the 45th parallel. And again. And evening brings the smell of distant campfire wood. This is enough. Fast food will diminish nothing.

+42° 52' 18", -71° 17' 40"

You can get to Derry through Lowell and Concord. There is the North Bridge and Sleepy Hollow. There are the smokestacks and the wanderlust. There is the mending wall and the yellow wood. Hard taskmasters all, if you must know. Beloved as well.

+42° 26' 6", -71° 23' 39"

I am running and I have forgotten language. This is a well-worn railbed, and these woods are common. But the surface of the nearby slough is glassy black. It is poured stone. I am fortunate, I think. I am present.

+44° 2' 38", -71° 47' 31"

There are black flies. There is mist and silence and time. Valencia stole root beer and L’Hemisfèric from the banks of the Pemigewasset; who will take this away from me?

+45° 14' 22", -71° 11' 45"

This is a moose. This is authority. This is Neil Young at Thunder Bay. This is boundless and beginning. La vida no vale nada.

+42° 26' 8", -71° 27' 29"

If I told you that the oceans are the sweat of giants, would you believe me? If I claimed that we live on the slowly widening pupil of an infant god, would you dismiss it out of hand? A well-proportioned rug sees confidence, grace, and honesty in the awkward and exploratory. You are six. Share your cake and forget your wish. Time will still love you when you’re 39, if you are wondering.

+42° 34' 12", -71° 25' 26"

Hesitation is beautiful, or I have learned nothing. A late afternoon squall has fleeced the Interstate. The sky is both scrim and sun, and the pavement has vanished. In its place is steamy color, panoramic and serpentine. We are riding and rubbernecking. Is this common?

+43° 38' 52", -71° 54' 53"

These are skeptic’s peaks: sheepbacked, shorn, and accurate. Unassuming vernal pools speckle the lee slope while rusty evergreen and silvery birch seed the stoss. Only blue skies and chartreuse breezes recall the fire of 1855.

+42° 27' 55", -71° 6' 43"

It is a simple task to become disoriented on familiar ground: look and remember, but recant time. Advancement is reduced to a syrupy difference. Stasis and retreat request consideration. Materiality is seditious. 

Hold, breathe, and recognize. There are cars nearby. There is value in this, too. 

+43° 58' 49", -71° 17' 54"

With the sun west-southwest, the imagined horns of “Ring-a-Ding Ding” are convenient agitators. This lost trail is left to shallow running water and soggy gravel crossings: tiny bothers, now. The toes of Gene Kelley are inessential, but remembered.

+43° 57' 24", -71° 16' 24"

Emerging into rockface, there are high winds and peaks everywhere. But the clear landscape is quickly displaced by trail blazes and the concentration required for one heel, one knee, one core, repeated. My ankles are dusty and the air is dry. I am salt-stained. It will be brilliant like this for hours.

+44° 10' 16", -71° 43' 59"

A brook would be dishonest; a cascade implies absent drama. Are you good with names? The sky is grey, distilled. Everything else is cool and saturated. Both stones and birds lack malice. This crouched affair begs for sunlight and passengers; it is an empty vessel, offered.