Closer Than You Think

My older daughter is wild about blueberries.  I’ve always thought of them as my favorite fruit as well.  The market in town that I tend to want to support, to the detriment of Stop N Shop, has just confirmed that while they have the chicken we need and the yoghurt and the humus and the milk, Jack’s Meats and Deli does not have blueberries.  “Go to the market right over the bridge.  They have great blueberries.  They’re fresh.”  “Right. OK.  Thanks.” 

We’ve been walking around town, and we consider whether or not to just walk over the bridge over the Walkill River.  The bridge couldn’t be more than a half a mile away.  It’s “just beyond” that.  I see a farm stand sitting there in my mind, in the field directly over the iron bridge.  This vision is one my mind has put together and it begins to take on an independent life.  I want to see it. 

This is the sort seductive mirage that metastasizes in the mind’s eye all the time traveling, with my kids.  I see a church or a museum or a better place to eat, not far, right around the next corner.  And we end up trudging much further than anyone had intended.  And it’s usually my fault, my insistence that something cool is worth the extra effort.  It’s closer than you think. 

Fortunately, in this instance, on this hot summer day, my older daughter, calloused as she is with many such trudges after the cool, calmly suggested that we should drive out.  It took a second.  I almost said “but its right there in a field across the bridge.”  I could imagine realizing the look down at the river from the bridge and the detail of a walk through a cornfield beneath the Gunks.  Once conceived, I wanted to fill in this detail.  I wanted to live the walk.

“Let’s drive baba.”  And we did, across the bridge.  You already know there was no farm stand right there at the other side.  We carried on for another mile till we saw what almost certainly had to be the market in question.  It was.  And we joked about how awful it would have been and how stupid I would have felt if I had insisted that we make the trudge. 

The blueberries were really good.  So were the peaches.  And the harvest of that walk over the bridge will need to remain in gestation until we are able to take it one once again, with full awareness of what we’re getting into.