In my time, I have visited places that I’d love to return to. When I was younger and sometimes desperate, there were places that I wished I could have laid over in longer. But I was prone to rash decisions and often bemoaned the deficiencies of the places I wound up roosting. I never stayed long.
A few years ago, I ended up in one of those places. The architecture was the same, and the traffic pattern around the town’s central monument was just as insane. One of the restaurants I ate in was still there. But overall, the experience was creepy. First, gentrification had taken the town from the working class to the leisure class, and the types of businesses lining the streets were very different. Secondly, I am over fifty years older; no one I remember would be there, and I certainly would not recognize them if they were. Nor would they recognize me without my pack, guitar, and greasy-calf-skin engineer boots.
I stopped for coffee and remembered that in David Wallace’s book Big Fish, the protagonist visited the town of Spectre twice – the first time too early and the second too late. My intention had always been to “swing back,” but here I was, like the character in the book, returning too late.
I have no immunity to the feelings of the absurd in my life. I laughed out loud at myself and attracted a few odd looks in the coffee shop. I’ve thought about this more than a bit since then. except by accident I have no desire to ever return to those places I laid over. What’s done there is done.
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I went back to my old university city, a place I’d loved. But it felt empty. I reasoned that though the landmarks were still there, it was the people that had made it special.
Absolutely!
I feel that way about a lot of places. Montana is one. It’s still there but it isn’t.