Sunset, Monday, 2 November 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

Clear tonight. Tomorrow we get up around 3:45 a.m. to spend a very long day as county election officers – Virginia is electing a governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general, in addition to House of Delegates and other races. Tomorrow’s sunset painting – as seen from the polling station – probably won’t be posted here until Wednesday.

Part of the walk with Flint today was spent tracking – this is what happens during deer hunting season – not tracking deer – tracking hunters. You try to tell whether the tire tracks on the jeep trail were made this morning, does it look like they’ve come out as well as gone in, was it a truck, a tractor, an SUV, an ATV ... and so on. When it last rained is probably the most important underlying condition – in our case, just yesterday morning. Today where the tread marks emerged from the puddles the wet mud impressions looked sharply defined and shiny like freshly glazed clay. We met two hunters, brothers, muzzleloaders, in the big field we call the Gobi Desert – an open oval green field dominated by a single great big chinquapin oak.

From there to the river the only marks made this morning were ours. On the lower part of the trail the ground was covered in red oak leaves, rusty brown, like wood – as if a jigsaw puzzle had been taken apart and the pieces scattered everywhere.

We did leave our imprint on the road, just as the hunters did. But although we’re always making a mark on the world, this kind of activity, this art and this writing, is in many respects a place where the world makes its mark on us. The road reverses roles with me and leaves its imprint here.