I’m not completely sure what this post has to do with happiness or intentionality, except that unexpected connections can be a source of pleasure. So this shot was taken on our hike last week, the one that was supposed to have us end up at Blue Lake but which ended considerably before that because there was so much snow still on the trail.
As I took a look backward and snapped this picture suddenly the words “a worn path” popped into my head. And I remembered the short story with that title by the Southern writer Eudora Welty, about an old black woman who goes into town to get medicine for her grandson and who meets with various obstacles along the way. Nothing very dramatic happens, although she does meet up with a hunter who points a gun at her and also falls into a ditch. Instead, we gradually find out about her situation and her character. Her grandson swallowed lye three years before, and whatever it is she’s getting for him is “soothing medicine.” We know that the story isn’t too long after the Civil War, as she says, “I never did go to school, I was too old at the Surrender.” And we know that she and her grandson are alone in the world. At the end of the story she has made it to Natchez, gotten the medicine, and is heading back home. And that’s it. (If you’d like to read the whole story, you can access it through the wonderful University of Virginia website that has digitized many works. If you’d like to get a more comic side of Welty, you can read “Why I Live at the P. O.” According to good old Wikipedia, Welty was also a photographer, and this story was inspired by a picture she took of a woman ironing in the back room of a small Southern post office.)
