Tales of a Memory Hunt

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It is a somewhat strange image. I am on a path, holding my favorite hiking staff, the one I bought at a medieval fair in Wisconsin a few years ago. It is wood, dark walnut stain, spiral top with a leather grip, my name carved below the grip - it stands a bit taller than I. The air is neither warm nor cool - neutral enough to be nonexistent, so I am dressed in jeans and a comfortable long-sleeved shirt, running shoes and my trusty compression socks. There is a water bottle on my belt and I carry a light pack filled, I assume, with things I like to eat. I am in a forest glade, and while sunlight dapples on the area immediately at my feet, the myriad paths that lead away from the clearing are quickly lost in mist. It is not quite fog. The tops of the surrounding trees remain sunlit for the most part, but descend into the mist as I try to peer down each path. 

I know why I am here.  A note was slipped under the door of my consciousness, just as I was trying to slide into my afternoon nap.  It was neither long nor complex - ironically I don’t recall the specifics at the moment. A name, a face, a room, a vista, a flavor, a tune, one of those - or something closely related. So here I am on this path inside my head. You can take comfort from the fact that it is nothing like those pictures of the brain you encounter in books, or magazine articles, or on the Internet. Nothing grey and squishy, and if there are crevasses and convolutions they must be far above me, beyond the tree tops and what I assume is a sun up there. 

Having procrastinated as long as possible, I move on down the path.  This is not as simple as it may sound. The path has a disconcerting habit of bifurcating, and trifurcating, and whatever furcating comes next: No, not here. Maybe over there. It might have looked like this, smelled like that, felt somewhat similar to that other thing. This was the dominant color. No, maybe a shade more blue. A touch of turquoise. Maybe a bit of crimson. Now add just a bit of the smell of a Spring morning, a touch of Fall when you could still burn leaves, and maybe a hint of that first snowfall that started a bit after midnight when you were coming home late - or were supposed to have been in bed hours ago. Hold that. That seems about right. 

But, oh, wait. Through the trees. Over there. Is that a different path? A better one? Is there less mist over there? Doesn’t that seem a bit more like what I am trying to recall? Yes. No. Maybe. So I take my staff and poke around the edge of the path. It seems solid so, using little baby steps, I make my way through the trees and am soon standing on the other path. Now, right or left? Straight ahead or backwards? Sure, but which is ahead and which is backwards?  Maybe, if I return to the nap I can figure it out. OK.  Sleeping now, I think.

Yet, hold on.  What’s that? Over there, at the edge of consciousness. A note! Here, let me see. What does it say? I can’t quite make it out. Maybe if .  .  .   

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