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4 | (continued) I know what you’re thinking, but I’ve slept with many women whom I scarcely knew, and never fully enjoyed it. What I wanted was love, not Body Contact. And I sincerely do not believe that I have ever met a woman who in her heart of hearts was not perfectly terrified of falling in love with— even getting to know—a man with a mind of his own. And that I cannot change. Of course when I was young, all of this bothered me, because I imagined that the constant presence of a sweet, bright woman would make me so much happier than I was. It has taken me decades to see the fallacy in this. A friend of mine in New York once put it perfectly. He told me that a previous girlfriend of his used to spend “two or three nights a week” with him in his apartment. “That must have been very nice,” I said. “A lot better than seven,” he replied. I know myself well enough now to realize that there is not a female on the planet with whom I would want to spend all or most of my time, especially when I’m trying to sleep, (or think, or write, or shoot pictures, or read). And I simply do not enjoy another body in bed with me when I’m dozing off. I once took in a stray kitten that drove me crazy by climbing into bed with me every night. It made me feel like a monster, but I had to lock the poor thing in my closet when I went to bed, or I would never have gotten any sleep at all. I was as much afraid of rolling over on top of it and smothering it, as that it would keep waking me up all night. The upshot of all this is that I never felt lonely in the tent after dark. Which made the nights, for me, in what was really a very lovely, if dark, place, closer to enchantment than I ever expected to get within walking distance of Scarborough, Ontario, I can tell you.
In one of his most popular songs, John Denver tells a woman that she fills up his senses, like a night in a forest. He seems to know whereof he sings—it does have that quality about it. There is easily as much animal activity at night as in the day, but of a wholly different kind, which you must puzzle out by sound alone, and my hearing is none the best. Yet many a night, as I read or dozed, the strangest things seemed to be going on just outside, things I tried to follow, but never watch. I regret that very much, but I was hampered by lack of experience, money, help, equipment, energy, and alas, genuine motivation. I can at least give you some examples of these lost opportunities. The first time Damien visited me, before bringing the tarps, he was generally curious about my whole modus operandi at that peculiar address, so I took him by the scenic route, along the railroad track, first between the roadside properties, then on its slow curve out among the pale green fields of soya beans. As we left the highway and houses behind, I mentioned something that I’d noticed many times ever since I’d first arrived: that the farther along the track one walked, the further back in time one seemed to pass. It was a peculiar sensation, largely irrational, but irresistible, and appeared to be completely independent of the weather, the season, or the time of day. As we rounded the curve, headed westward, toward the woods, a wonderfully emphatic confirmation of this feeling appeared before us: from the woodlot in which my camp stood, three mature deer emerged, walking at a normal pace—the only group of them I ever saw in all the months I was there. I was amazed, but said only, “See what I mean?” One or two of them looked back at us, more than a hundred yards away, but they registered no fear (I suspect their eyesight is worse than mine). Damien was clearly astonished, and asked me, as the deer sauntered across the tracks and into a small wood on the other side, if they wouldn’t have made for a good photograph. Trying to sound perfectly matter-of-fact, as if this sort of thing happened every day, I said, “No. Not without a very long lens.” By the time we reached the tent, I could see that he was very envious of what I was doing, but was determined not to show it. He proceeded to caution me, in a very serious tone, about the dangers of attempting to stick it out through the winter in such a shelter. He was, however, quite honestly impressed by the beauty of the setting. It was still high summer, and the latter feeling would have been hard to conceal. |
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