The school hike.

I love autumn when the sky is blue and high. My best stroll would be along a river bank, where the autumn flowers display their miscellaneous colors while swaying to and fro in the wind. Dragon flies would display their glistening of the wings in the crystal bright autumn sunbeam. I would like to walk very slowly, without goal, without aim, and breathe in the air as if it was a nectar for the soul, every minute, every second.

I particularly remember a school hike in the junior high, when we went all the way to the river from school. I was fourteen. Once on the river bank, we pupils strolled along the path, playing with cosmos flowers and autumn butterflies.

We all wore the tedious orange color school trainer, but even that fact did not hinder us from enjoying the walk. The issue was mainly about spatial distribution. Who walked where, with whom. The parallels of our existence filled us with inexplicable joys and pangs, rather like a short story by Katherine Mansfield, or a pointillism painting by Georges-Pierre Seurat.

I was foolish, and considered the hike as something that belongs to yearly regularities. I was unconsciously thinking that there would be many repeats of a hike like the one on that day. I was to learn later, only too late, that the onceness in life was to pass and gone forever.

I am bewildered even today how on earth the school hike took place on that particular day, like a miracle, without any photographic record to support my recollection. Only this vivid picture in my mind pointing to the now uncertain past stays alive.