Boy, the place has been crawling with Seekers-Errant lately! First Graham stops by, then Mr. P, then Jonah (all of whom were a pleasant if temporary addition to the valley). Then this evening I saw a younger guy with a scraggly beard and an old East German army jacket with the sleeves cut out standing down by the stream.
He was just standing there, knapsack fallen at his side, looking out somewhere across the valley. He stood that way for maybe five minutes and then got down on his knees to get to drink. I think he must have seen a fish, because he paused with his hands over the water and then suddenly plunged them in up to his elbows. Whatever it was, he missed.
I thought about just slipping out behind the cottage and pretending I wasn’t in. (This flock of visitors is starting to take the edge off of the eremitic life!) But in the end I decided to stay close by and, sure enough, he spotted me.
The guy turned out to be a radical egoist pragmatist pacifist evangelist and the worst kind of Seeker-Errant. A real piece of work. All talking, no listening. Wild inarticulate hand gestures that didn't add up to anything. Too well read for his own good and all the wrong books. If he has any stillness inside of himself, it certainly disappears as soon as he enters a conversation – if that’s what you could call me interrupting him every now and then with a half-question.
Three hours and a pot of coffee later, I finally managed to get him to leave by telling him that St. Godric’s would probably have more generous mealtime offerings and that if he hurried he might make it there in time for supper. (He won’t.)
I should find some way to warn them when one of these is in the valley.
Maybe smoke signals.
One more visit like that and the Grotten Brown just might not make it to Thanksgiving.
Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.
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