Shouldn't…but Do

The northern edge of my semi-rural subdivision is bounded by trees. Mature and dense they form a greenbelt between this and the next, more upscale, neighborhood.

Their canopy supports a diverse realm of woodland to meadow birds, the leaves blaze with autumn color, the dry, naked branches tap and call in the winter wind. The sound of spring peepers around their feet is a first sign of spring. They block any other view of the northern horizon.

Horizons make for boundedness, we set ourselves by them – the area we cover – we gratefully allow them to limit expectations. Entire lives lived in a set of real, or imagined, boundaries.

But horizons are deceptively shifty. Even as I drive the highway, the horizon ever changes, even as I look up to a peerless blue sky, unbounded space frees an earthbound mind.

At once horizons are a limit, and at once, they are not. They become borders, places where something melted, suddenly or slowly, into another realm. Retaining vitality in memory, horizons can never be revisited, never the same the second time around.

Horizons, like the greenbelt in my neighborhood, are thin places. They go both ways, forward limits of imagination, receding limits of experience. Thin places to travel beyond, always seeking the next horizon.