November Rain

I wrote this a couple years ago, while I was visiting friends on the west coast of Canada. Circa 2007

I stepped out the door from my best friends’ trailer, fumbled down the

steps and walked about half a mile into the endless rows of win

e grape vines among the 1000acre layout they lay amongst.
The sun is drowning behind a shadowy storm front. Lightning strikes in the distance but is heard only a solid minute later, were I stand. Above me, the sky is clear and the stars faintly starting to make their appearance as her majesty sets in the hollowing thunder.

I decide to sit and wait. To see what will, what can happen?
The silence is eerie. The wine season and her harvest are well over with, and all that is left is bare vines and rows of never stopping hibernation. I feel a sense of kinship growing. I feel somewhat at home, somehow responsible for this. The plants have given all they had to me, to us, to everyone, and yet now, as much attention as t

hey have had over the last 8 months, they are now left stranded, weeping for sunlight that barely shows

itself in the winter months to come. The thunder strikes closer now. Every so real! The storm seems to head in my direct-

ion,as surely as there is oxygen in my lungs, it begins to drizzle. The cold air feeding into me, to the bone, with the humid dawn she draws.

And yet the tour continues. My journey must go on. I stand, wet on the bottom from the dead humid grass, and walk back towards my secure home for the night.I see my friends watch television, and tell myself that a much superior spectacle is happening outside, a much better experience, a better way of seeing real life. But I cannot tell them this; they are not ready for it. Not ready for the truth.

So I settle into the couch, for it is my bed for the night until the sun warms this place up again in the light of morning. At which time, with everything packed and ready, I will head into the next and last portion of my travels. I will head west, the way of the cowboy and the lonely wanderer, into the unknown. What could become only one person knows, and he or she is not letting me in on any of that!