June (Maybe a Beginning, Maybe an End)

A DC night in NJ. One of those June evenings where the light slips so slowly into darkness that it's almost imperceptible. The temperature at 8:30 p.m. almost the same as sweltering afternoon, but everything so soft. The hottest night of the summer, so soon; but everything so lush, so green, so unlike August's burnt lawns, tired trees and sagging brown-bordered leaves.
I drive out from Princeton, windows down and AC off, up to the forested ridge line to the north. The normally traffic-clogged state highway is strangely almost empty, and almost silent, everything exhaling in the suburban woodland; a Vermont, a Skyline Drive for 40 seconds. The smell is intoxicating, all that life bursting into fullness after a cool and wet spring.
I turn east at the town border, through the usual roadside clutter, but soon there is an open gate, a gravel driveway, and the top of a round wooden shelter; too small to be called a bandstand. No sign at the entrance identifying the land's identity, but obviously a park of some kind, left half-wild.
I pass a man with a dog with its leash off and park where the road ends in a field left mostly wild, but with the grass cut around a paved path. The sky is the color of a half-eaten Creamsicle, faded orange turning pale and dark at the same time. Red lights to the west marking Princeton's tiny air strip, a red light topping a ridge-top TV tower to the east. Wherever I go, those lights still call, always more when in the distance than up close. I'd rather dream than see things as they really are, I guess.
But for once I feel a connection to the world around me. Could it be that the pain is really starting to leave my wretched, cursed body? Dare I even think it, knowing the untold disappointments and false cures of the past 15 years? I breathe in deeply, and without a conscious thought, raise my arms up over my head.
Briefly.