It’s the hard business of being that gets to me. That’s what I’m thinking. I’m thinking about the way you get worn down. The day in and out of work. Stumbling at the end of a day in the woods, or no woods, the ones cut down and me thrashing through the dog hair reprod saplings of hemlock and piles of slash and old stumps of a logging unit trying to flag a new trail after the old one was destroyed, alone and tired and thinking of other ways I could have lived, things I might have done, better or worse and the unsolved mystery of being, of how I like to skip ahead to the last chapter of a book to know the ending, to know all the secrets. That is when my tired stumbling flushes the grouse from the quiet. A flurry there is. Two, six, nine. Then so many I lose count. They fly out of the saplings and into the tops of the Douglas firs across the way, trees still standing tall and the sun, angled just so, takes them swiftly, vanishing back to stillness the day, leaving an empty blue and me standing there with flagging in my hands seeing that things happen suddenly or end before you really know what, or how or
why.
Life Along The River 
I liked this piece so much, Dawn. The difficult lonely, and often destructive part of life contrasted with the quick flurry of life on the wing, flying to a better place, vanishing into sun and sky without warning or explanation is compelling; as is the comparison of the habit I share of sometimes reading the end of the book because I have to know how things work out with the understanding that, in life, things occur that leave us with questions rather than answers. Add your descriptive powers to this mix and you have a post I read more than once and will think about for some time. I’ve been waiting for a new blog to appear from you, and it is worth the wait: skilled and worthy.
Thank you! I always appreciate your careful reading and insightful comments about my writing. My summer and fall have seemed overly busy and out of control but I guess in a good way. I’m glad its raining now in the northwest so it will be easier to stay inside and get on a more regular schedule of writing and blogging. I also read magazines back to front. I don’t know why. About this post – I wrote the bones of this some years ago and was worried I had imagined or written in error that it was grouse that I had flushed out in such great numbers as I have otherwise only seen grouse alone or in pairs or with youngsters. I searched for info on grouse behavior etc and didn’t find much on groups of grouse. But several days ago I went for a lovely fall hike and the huckleberries were very abundant and it reminded me of a similar place and year and well then the exact same thing happened. I flushed a group of grouse from the brush.
Just go hiking is a good motto to live by, Dawn. I always feel better after I have done so. Thanks for sharing your writing process on this piece. I like hearing how writers think.