Along the mountain roads of West Virginia, Augur follows a flatbed semi empty of its load, red taillights glowing like the eyes of strange creatures luring him into the fog. Dark trees hang over the road, dripping in the mist and it is easy for him to believe that he is once again traveling through the rain forest of Monteverde as he did so long ago.
The First Reading
September 27, 1988
Monteverde, Costa Rica
I watched as he rode off in that gray dawn
moving carefully down the trail
until the white mist of the rain
swallowed him up and he was
no more.
It was with sadness that I watched him go
and the tears bounced off of my cheeks
to join the tiny rivulets at my feet and
chase after him down the trail.
I remained though my heart rode with him
and wound as he did amidst the dark trees.
Diamonds clung to the leaves sparkling in
the sun on that day when he returned.
He smiled down at me and there was laughter
in his eyes.
The water ran from his hair down his face and
twinkled there in his beard as many tiny stars.
A warmth crept into me for he had returned and
I could for the moment face the next farewell.
Augur’s cell phone lost signal long ago and so he is left with the wanderings of his imagination and the James Lee Burke audiobook whispering through the speakers of his car. He is on his way to a place of love to sing songs for people both known and unknown. It is a journey he has made many times before, singing songs he has often sung.
The First Listening and Second Reading
As he drives, he is struck by a line from the book he is listening to which so encapsulates who he is.
“I don’t like the world the way it is and I miss the past. It’s a foolish way to live.”
If such is the case, then Augur guesses he is a fool and will forever be.
Oh, for more of a life of such foolishness.
The Third Reading
The existence of time travel is irrefutable.
Each day I revisit the past.
Memories will come to mind
either unbidden or in the
suddenness of a smell or sight
or simply in the everyday
existence of my life.
And yet,
what makes some memories
sticky and others less so?
Is it the emotion, choice,
or the sorrows that cause
the memories and the feelings
associated with them to feel
as real today as they
did so long ago?
I know not.
Only that some days the past
is closer than what is
before me today.
I move through now
holding the hand
of yesterday’s child
who is my blessed
shadow.
The Fourth Reading
Suddenly, Augur’s phone starts to buzz and lights up with the notifications as the signal from the cell phone tower finally breaks through the barrier of these mountains. He sighs, realizing his brief isolation is at an end. There is a cost sometimes, the price he pays as yet unknown, for what is thought of as connection.
Then he is turning into the parking lot, familiar faces before him, the guitar case bouncing on the seat behind him, the strings of the guitar inside thrumming in time to the ruts in the road.
Epilogue
The flow of memories within Augur is at times overwhelming.
So much churns within the head and out through the mouth like this stream against the rocks in his brain.
He crosses over the bridge he built as a young man past unseen construction lost under grass to a former home occupied now by precious others.
Inside the space Augur turns in circles seeing the work of his hands, overwhelmed by everything past and the beautiful present.
He leaves in a rush telling himself that he must prepare to sing, past the willow that has finally dropped its branches to the ground after so long a dying.
Up the hill Augur finds that he is running, but he knows not what from or where to.
Slowing down, he hears the music inside and all around him, the conversations of community echoing amongst the meadows and the trees.
He begins again to breathe as the melody so long a part of his soul takes him the rest of the way to the place where friends wait in anticipation of song.
The Book of Augur 