Reflection Riding
an excerpt

Last night’s dream came back to me in what I can only describe as an out of body experience. One moment I checking fence lines along the road, the next it was as if woodsmoke had drifted across the field smudging the colors and their edges making me feel oddly unsteady. I put down my clipboard on the long dry grass and stood up straight and let the corners of my eyes relax. My vision wavered for a moment as if I was seeing the world through water. Then it cleared and I simply knew the year was 1830. I couldn’t or didn’t move to look for signs that I was wrong. As long as I was still, somehow I knew I could be sure. My hiking boots were a man’s work boots, my jeans now heavy homespun, the smells of roasting meat and my less washed self were sharp yet familiar. The world was silent save the rustle of wind in the grass, and to my comfort and amazement I detected the trickle of water in the distance, Lookout Creek before TVA controlled the flow. The cabin was there too, then, just where it is now, over my shoulder, a squared presence in my peripheral vision, that I could feel more than see. Had I turned to look, which I dared not do, as I wished to hold this moment as long as it would last, forever if I could, but had I turned, I’d see that the floor had been swept scrupulously clean of loose dirt, the walls were hung with my tools, a strop for sharpening knives, a scythe for harvesting grain, a plough blade, a hammer, and a pan for frying meat. There had to be onions and peppers drying in the rafters, and a barrel of cornmeal that we sometimes used as a table. And I knew too, that it was only half full. Over in the corner was…is…a rope bed with a straw tick mattress and tartan blanket, the corner pulled back, airing for the day. Above the bed hung my gun, my musket, old-fashioned even then, but I was proud to own it. I kept it meticulously clean, oiled and deadly as I knew very well how to use it. In the dark opposite corner was her pallet, rolled up and stowed neatly for the daytime. Now that dark would be coming on I thought I should check the level of oil in our only lamp. Just to the side of the entrance hung was something she’d woven with reeds and feathers Indian fashion and nailed to the door frame, that I knew had meaning to her. All mine. All my life. Her life. Everything she and I had worked for. The feeling of the man in last night's dream was suddenly my feeling. A man's strength of body and the longing of that body, as well as of his heart and soul. It was time for her to come home, he and I thought.
I’d had Beech on my mind all day, and the feeling was the same as I remembered yesterday’s touch. It was an odd that I was experiencing things from the wrong point of view sexually, I tried to change it around so that it fit, a woman’s longing for a man, but it simply wasn’t or hadn't been, it was most definitely the other way around. How strange, but true that a man would feel like this, so like a woman. Being human is human, I realized. That really didn't matter. A soul is a soul. And as I let these incongruous thoughts surface, I began to drift back to the modern day side of time's stream.
A hawk screamed overhead and I flinched every so slightly, the corners of my eyes tightened and caught a glimpse of movement across the grass, someone coming toward me. For me. The bluish shine on the black hair brought a flood of overwhelming relief bordering on the cusp of elation. The spell of 1830 was not dissolving, but blending, swirling, like staring into a vortex and coming out the other side. Still I didn’t move my body; I would embrace the ephemeral tendrils of that postsentiment as they faded.
“Don’t move,” he said, so softly I wasn't sure he had spoken aloud, as he raised the camera to his eye. A whirring click, and he knelt, another click. The black tube of lens extended, and another click. He stepped closer. Had we both stretched forward our arms, we might have touched fingertips, which of course we did not. A final click.