By MICK HOLIEN
I resisted writing about it since I’m not much for negativity or complaining especially about things I can do nothing about.
If you ask me how I’m doing, you’re usually going t5o get an optimistic, positive response.
But damn this smoke.
I surmise many as we age periods of environmental changes, including the weather, fuels stages of depression.
Honestly initially I just refused to let it influence me.
But I have to admit as I gander down into what I can see of the gully north of my house, I have to admit Tuesday morning it got me.
Having been a homebody all weekend maybe it was that enveloping feeling as I journeyed outside; or maybe that smell that seems to permeate the skin; or how about the enveloped sun that will on a 80 degree day tempt one to the lake something we all know better.
Even the animals seem confused by it all.
The coyotes have been squealing several hours before dusk, the deer seem disoriented and bird flight and song is even affected.
Several years ago when I was spending summers in a trailer in an RV park in Elmo we made the mistake of venturing out of the bay in the boat.
I know not my finest hour but at water level it didn’t seem that bad.
Somewhere between the island of Cromwell, Wild Horse and Melita I became so disoriented at the helm I completely lost direction and any land mass.
Good use for my Boy Scout compass which wasn’t aboard either.
Slowly we managed to find a landmark – the northern edge of Melita as I remember and limp back to the marina at the end of Elmo Bay.
I had a different kind of disorientation after the Aber Day Concert.
I was driving my truck up a hill in the parking lot and completely lost perspective believing I was driving forward when in fact I was fading backyards much to the chagrin of my passenger and the car behind me.
It is something like the vehicle next to you moving forward and you thinking you are backing up. Indeed it was an odd illusion.
No I hadn’t been drinking
Just sayin’.
