rejectomorph | Stepping out the door at night.

The bright moon dazzles my eyes, and I am unable to see what it is that is stirring in the shadows. Probably a raccoon. Two nights ago, I heard the first raccoon fight of the season. These normally slow and quiet animals can move very fast when they are fighting, and make enough noise with their grunts and squeals to be heard a block away. But, if this is a raccoon I hear tonight, it is alone and moving slowly away in the darkness. Its progress can barely be heard above the constant hum of the night breeze that bends the tops of the pines.

When I was very young, I would lie in my bed at night and listen to the hum of traffic on the boulevards of Los Angeles. The sound always made me think of traveling. Now, in this mountain town, the oddly similar sound of the wind in the trees only makes me think of sitting quietly indoors with a cup of tea and a book. Does the noise of traffic naturally conjure images of other places and a desire to see them? Does the wind evoke some deep desire for shelter? Or is it merely that I have grown older, and had enough of travel, that keeps the thoughts of highways at the distant edge of my mind, a mere echo of what they once were? The breeze suggests the highway, but, for whatever reason, tonight, the power of that old image is spent.