Ecstasy at High Rocks in the Autumn of the Year (A Memory of Youth)

Ecstasy at High Rocks in the Autumn of the Year (A Memory of Youth)

I was in those woods, those golden autumn woods again today, my anniversary in those golden woods, looking from high atop the rocks across the fiery treetops into the gorge below and then running through those woods down the narrow blazed trail among the trees to the bottom of that gorge, while also running in my mind the memory of the day I shared here with a girl I loved a quarter of a century ago, a day that is still among the best I ever lived – so immense with love (the love I've missed a lot of since: the love of presence with the one beloved). The feeling that was known then was as good as feeling ever gets, so that I should have known then never to let go of it, or of her my beloved.

What a delicate young beauty she was in her nineteenth year, and what a clumsy foolish youth I was in my nineteenth year. And so in the course of sharing beauty and the day, and being shown life as good as ever it gets, I somehow neglected to hold on.

Maybe I was distracted by the golden woods around, blinded by the dancing leaves of gold, in awe of all around instead of all I sensed within, and between, her and me , an unskilled player relying more upon his props than on his lines.

It was a beautiful day, and something beautiful occurred to show me beauty and make me long ever after to see it again as clearly and to feel it again as all encompassing, and to have another chance to take hold of it and never let it go.

That memory now is a weak reminder of the power of that day, and being in that place now is not the same as being there then; and the power of longing for what was let go and the pain of missing what can never come again is ugly and antithetical to the glorious power of feeling that surged in the spirit and sinew of the man and woman we were on that day when we were young and so much in love.