Old man in the fog

Sometimes I see him.

He's not always out and about.

Mostly I come across his bent back walking slowly
on spring/fall/winter mornings.

As a writer, I gather my thoughts before I meander with words on a computer screen. Often, it's after my husband leaves for work before dawn; after we've had conversations about myriad things and Biblical principles.

So, I take solitary drives down country paths in wispy fog,
praying,
pondering...
not far from the comfortable, spacious house where we live.

When I do see the old man, he's hobbling along an un-busy
one-lane paved road
between Scarsdale and Berringa.
He looks to be in his 90s;
his face is rivulets of rubbery-looking wrinkles,
his hair is stringy and fine and sparse; his scalp is freckled with sunspots.

But I have learned here in Australia that
faces age under a lifetime exposed to
dry air and harsher sun; those who have worked land,
mining for gold in nuggets or produce during time spent outside.

Several generations have seen hard times and moved on.
Some families have stayed put and stuck it out, certain that better luck or better weather is on the way.
Success depends on whom you ask.
It's hard to tell how old someone is.

The environment takes its toll in more ways than in faces.

Stooping,
this "foggy" man walks with a crooked cane
made from a hardwood gum tree branch,
the thin length of wood skinned of bark and worn smooth with age.

Like "blokes" of old who are set in their proper ways of dress codes
he wears an old fashioned suit-jacket
when he goes on his walks.
His jacket is worn-out, wrinkled and frayed,
the beige color matching worn-out grey, baggy slacks.

He steps slowly
to the side of the lane when he hears my car approach from the back of him
and he seems to painstakingly pause to wait for me to pass.

I saw him once
head-on
surrounded by thin fog
carrying an armful's worth of kindling collected from the roadside
tucked into one bent elbow
on a cold, frosty morning.
His other arm used his gum tree cane for balance.

Just before I saw him and passed, I noticed a 150-year-old gold miner's house off the road
near where he was headed:
a shanty of corrugated tin and plywood
with front verandah posts bending under the weight of a roof.
Tin water tanks listed to the side of the building toward a shallow ravine where a creek may have run to take water into the house years ago.
A thin string of dark smoke rose from an ancient, precariously leaning brick chimney.

Is this where he lives? Was his father a gold-miner in this gold-rich area of Smythesdale/Scarsdale/Pigoreet/Berringa/Ross Creek/Ballarat in the mid to late 1800s? Is this his inheritance?

When I drive by him in my little silver sedan sports car I slow down out of respect.
He never waves
or lifts his walking stick,
or even acknowledges that I have passed by...like most Australians will do: a wave, a nod...some recognition.

But always as I pass,
leaving him in my rear-view mirror, this is what surprises me:

He turns slowly to look,
stops and stares
until I can't see him
past the
bend in the road.

I wonder if he remembers far away days
with horses and buggies passing through
carrying women in finery and men in top hats
en-route to the bustling Smythesdale Court House Hotel for dinner,
or women in homespun dresses on errands to the Scarsdale butchery, or
children on horses for a day at the one-room schoolhouse.

I wonder if he has or had a wife and children.

I wonder if anyone but me thinks of him?

I wonder what memories and treasures he has stored inside his heart that will die within him?

And I wonder if he wishes I would quit driving on his road.