It is summertime. The sun is blazing hot. It is not the current summer but one from my childhood when I am about ten years old.

This is what I see:
I am walking down the narrow dirt road that leads to the Island. It is so hot my feet kick up dust with every step. Winged grasshoppers fly before me and announce my presence. On either side of the rutted tire tracks are acres of swampland. Silver plumed reeds rise out of the soft, blackish-gray mud and rustle slightly in what little breeze there is. The smell of salt is in the air and at low tide the earth delivers an odor of decay that surpasses all others. Some days I am a bit too zealous in the marshlands and I wear this excrement home with me, much to the dismay of my mother.
Not too far along, the road crosses over a small, slow moving creek where Mickey Finnegan and I would catch minnows for bait, or, as we liked to call them, ‘mummies’.


That is all I need to see; a short little snippet of that dirt road through the swamps and a multitude of flying grasshoppers.

Why do I mention this?
It occurred to me the other day that this is the vision I will see when I die.
It is the peaceful pathway to the other world.
I don’t know where I’m going but I do know this is the road I’ll be on.