I was walking through a small town near the farm, thinking about photos and trying to clear my head of all the things rushing around inside. On my blog, there are no secrets and there are savvy people all over the place who read my moods better than I do. I seemed down, discouraged, drained, I was told. They were right, too, that’s the hard part. After the first dozen messages like that, I headed out to take a walk  in Belcher with Red.  I parked the car and we walked along a beautiful country road up in the hills, passing one farm after another.

I came across a man in his 60’s – it turned out he was 62, younger than me. He was sitting on an old rocker on a porch in front of an old decaying farmhouse. He wore old boots, fading jeans, a plaid flannel shirt to ward off the chill.

He said his name was  Keith. He one of those men delighted to see a stranger, eager to talk. I thought he might be closer to 80, his face was so worn, his eyes yellow, his head stooped over. He was friendly, eager to talk.

We talked a bit. He couldn’t be photographed, he said, because there might be a warrant or two out on him for traffic violations he had never paid. Okay, I said. Keith offered me a cigarette and I declined. He said he was happy. He said he had found a room in a men’s retirement home in Whitehall, a poor old canal town on the Southern edge of the Adirondacks.  He was going there next week. He couldn’t wait to go, he said, to sit on the porch, talk to the other men, smoke. “I’m tired,” he said, “eager to get there.” He had his own room, he said, with a patio.

I was startled to learn Keith was younger than me, and touched that he was heading off to disappear on that porch in Whitehall. It was hard to understand how two men roughly the same age could be  so far apart in their lives. Fate is like that, I think. I felt a connection with this man.

Your life must have been hard for you to do that, go to Whitehall, I said to Keith. Very hard, he said, very hard. His wife had died and his two boys hadn’t talked to him in years. He was a drunk for most of his life, he said, he tossed those years in the trash. Now, I thought, he was doing the same thing to himself.

I won’t lie about it, for a few minutes I envied Keith, shedding all cares and responsibilities, giving up on hope and ambition, heading off to spend his last years in Whitehall, smoking his Camels. Something appealing about running away from life.

Today I did feel down. It was true. I’m trying to edit a book. We  have so much to do, so many things are going on and this business of having two homes sometimes feels as if it will swallow me whole and spit me out. Keith said he had no money any more, and Medicaid  and some money from his brother was paying for his room. I told him I didn’t have any more money either, but I had too many things to do, too many things I love to go to Whitehall.

Keith did scribble his new address on a piece of old yellow paper and he told me to visit. There was a connection for sure, although I can’t quite imagine what it might be. I told Keith I would visit him if I could take his photo. He’ll think on it, he said.

It made me sad to think of Keith heading off to Whitehall like that, no friends or family to speak of. But then, I remembered that Keith didn’t seem sad about it. He couldn’t wait.

I could not help but think of all the beautiful things there are in my life, how many reasons I have not to do what Keith had done. So I came home, to my bills, my chores, my responsibilities. My wife and my dogs. My blog. I love the blues, so long as they don’t last too long. They are cleansing, like dipping my soul in a bubbling stream.