Delroy Dumbutt Persists

I walk and walk. The sun steadily sets in my face, turning the yellow-brown smog of urban life into a rich fluorescent orange, setting the sky ablaze, leaving the world awash with floating green dots. I'm not sure what tracks I'm searching for. The bare crumbling concrete doesn't have any of the character or personality that I'm use to seeing when I look at the ground, it doesn't yield up its secrets to me like the earth and stone that I'm accustomed to.

I have followed all kinds of tracks in all kinds of terrain, in all kinds of weather, for all kinds of reasons. I once tracked a group of friends with a full days lead across a 20 mile stretch of river canyon, bare granite, glacier melt, stunted trees and scrub, and barren boulder fields, just to prove I could do it. Never once did I feel lost, unsure of my direction, unsure of my surroundings or destination, turned around, confused. Not once did I loose sight of the trail I was following. I've tracked wounded animals in dense forest in the fall, lost hikers in the spring and summer months, poachers, trespassers, thieves and lost children. I've followed cougars to see how close I could get to them, bears to see how close they were getting to me, wild dogs to mess with their heads. But the concrete, the stunted grass, the garbage and cars and lights and advertisements all look the same, generic, bereft of the individuality that is necessary for a reliable landmark.

The sun now set, and I am certain that I missed a turn, an alleyway, that I am not where I had hoped to be. I still have no sight of the strange girl with the multi-colored hair and the camera, and after the first five minutes my walk becomes less and less about talking to an interesting stranger, and more and more about traveling through an interesting place. I'm overwhelmed with the feeling that I'm wasting a great deal of time and energy on this frivolous exercise. I know I should head back, there are errands that I need to run, people that I promised to look up, yet somehow the commercial buildings and industrial warehouses that now surround me are more comfortable, more reassuring than the bright lights of the more public parts of the city. The people here are more solitary, not as loud or pushy as the folks in the more well-traveled areas. The ones who speak, and are speaking to actual human beings, are doing so in hushed tones, and it occurs to me that this place is very quiet. I can hear the distant hum of traffic, the wind, the sound of ships in the delta, and my footsteps, constantly drumming off the minutes in an all too familiar cadence. But something is not quite right with them. The drumbeat that I have been listening too for most of my life is somehow changed down here, it echoes in a way that isn't quite natural. I think about this as I walk, one block, two, moving forward because thats the only direction I feel like going, and it suddenly occurs to me that I'm not listening to one pair of feet, I'm listening to two. The second pair about 2-1/2 blocks behind me, and trying (almost but not quite successfully) to match my own foot falls. A faked trip over a piece of loose concrete, and a quick glance behind me as I "regain my balance" confirms this. There is someone behind me. When I stop, he stops, when I walk, he walks, quietly. Suddenly I feel more at home, more at ease than I have all day. Finally I have a pattern I can recognize, and the world takes on a crispness and clarity that compliments the evening air.