I get a lot of pleasure just sitting and reading in our little garden, and watching the fish lazily swimming about in their pool. At times I let the open book droop, close my eyes and try to soak up the peace. Most times delightful memories arise, mostly vague and muted like a lovely Monet painting.

I remember how, as a child, I loved lying on the thick, luxurious grass in our front yard, and I remember flopping down ecstatically in the same spot on cool autumn days amid a thick carpet of fragrant, pastel leaves, just luxuriating in the joy of that glorious moment of time.

I remember walking home from school on autumn days when strong gusts of wind would send myriads of dry maple leaves chasing one another up the narrow street. To my child’s ears, their dry rustlings as they raced along sounded like they were laughing excitedly, and I would chase after them with the wind at my back urging me along. Oh, how wonderful to be totally uninhibited, not giving a thought about what people might think about these childish antics. After all, I was a child!

A while back, our outdoorsy friend, Donna, who lives near our cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains, invited my wife and me on an afternoon kayaking trip. A lovely section of the New River flows along near our mountain home and we joined her there. Donna loaned us her two-person (tandem) kayak and she took her smaller single. We had a blast! The rocky stream has some fast, interesting rapids and bolder-strewn areas that are fun to navigate, but not very dangerous at normal water levels.

We ended our fun trip in a deep pool at the bottom of a long stretch of fast shoals where the water swirled around and over a series of ledges and beached the kayaks. I sat on a large rock, gazing at the fast water pouring and churning swiftly through the area we’d just navigated. It was a glorious evening and I felt exuberant! Then an inexplicable urge arose to swim back down through those rapids and into the deep pool.

Saying nothing, I began to pick my way up the shore. My wife finally stirred from her reverie and hollered, “Hey, where ya goin’?”

“Oh, just up stream a bit,” I yelled back. “I’m gonna float back down through that fast section.”

She shook her head and threw up her arms in exasperation. Donna just laughed her big laugh and hollered, “Have fun!”

I waded out near the middle of the stream, then the water got too deep and swift, and I floated into the rapids, knees drawn up and feet-first to fend off rocks. It was absolutely exhilarating! Much like the remembered, “chasing the wind!” When I zipped through into the pool, Donna was laughing uproariously and shouted, “Darned if you ain’t a big kid!”

I got a small bruise on my posterior that somehow collided with a rock, but I felt forty years younger … maybe fifty!

A while back I was reading the words of King Solomon as found in the book of Ecclesiastes. Here’s a little of what he says: “Meaningless! Meaningless! Says the teacher (King Solomon). Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless. I devoted myself to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under heaven. What a heavy burden God has laid on men! I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them meaningless, a chasing after the wind.”

King Solomon was granted great wisdom by God, but he didn’t always exercise great wisdom. He became overindulgent and eventually had 700 wives and 300 concubines. Good grief! Can you imagine try to keep ‘em all happy? I guess he became world-weary and cynical. Perhaps that’s why everything seemed meaningless.

He shoulda indulged in the childish fun of chasing after the wind instead of chasing after women!

n T&D Staff Writer Gene Zaleski can be reached by e-mail at gzaleski@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-533-5551. Discuss this and other stories online at TheTandD.com.

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