Thursday, September 25, 2014

Wilbo Fights the Mosquitoes of Fall to Write In Vander Mills Cider Garten.

Infernal Mosquitos have lessened, and yet the hungry flying needles are still hungry for my blood and I have to shoo them away as I sip my Blue Gold cider & munch at one cinnamon doughnut. Sitting outside is worth it as the light chill refreshes the skin on my back neck, visible again after Tuesday's haircut with a nape trimming. The sunset takes place before Seven in the evening now and yet an effulgence of sunlight arrives to cast a yellow glow on silver maple trunk, a brief glow.  The tree stands in a grass yard where a train made of red metal barrels is pulled around by a red Lo Boy tractor, an International Cub. Quiet tonight, Saturday children will find their way to the cozy seats set into the barrels.

I thought about making a mad dash into Grand Rapids this evening, and I got no further east on M-104 than this cider mill. Why drive forty miles to find life when there's plenty of humans around the cider mill? And I have a cell phone, where I am taking in text messages from friends, a steady stream as it is a day after my birthday. The connection creates a story of my friends in the thick of life. Imagine your own scenarios. This is confidential material. Ok, I sent one friend a YouTube link to Paul Simon's, "Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover". 

The "World is Too Much with Us", said William Wordsworth. Wandering Wilbo says Wordsworth was worthy of his words. I'm in this big electronic village with you all, dear readers.

Sundown has passed and the fall Mosquitos are even more desperate to stick a proboscis into my skin. Frost is a deadline stronger than DEET and DDT. My hands were trained to swat on bike rides along dirt roads lined by cattle farms. I dropped an endless count of stinging black flies, big red eye flies that I impaled on fishing hooks for catching pan fish. Once one of those black flies leaves a red welt upon a city slicker's neck and that city slicker kid becomes a country boy and a human fly swatter.  The mosquito that landed on my rather high forehead is now a crumpled ball of wings and legs. He, or maybe she, never saw my palm coming. I've just had to flick earlobes left and right. I am accumulating a mosquito count. Still, I have little idea how many flying brooders are flying home with red payloads of me.

Was it worth fighting mosquitoes to watch twilight arrive in the cider garten? A fellow with a beautiful German Shepherd at his side drank cider and talked in German excitedly on his iPhone 6. Swat on itchy elbow yields no mosquito carnage. An outdoor speaker plays ambient music that sounds all Mumford and Sons to me, a touch too many tuba solos for an American cider garten. A mackerel sky of scallop clouds glowed in purple and magenta hues for that blue hour light show, the sun under the west horizon still casting beams upward. Those cloudlets are now smudges of grey.

I got my words worth.


--
Will Juntunen
231-714-8130

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