The Muse is Loose

I saw him yesterday in his small covered wagon, a lone older man traveling highway 35. The wagon was pulled by a single horse. The man was dressed in darker colors with a big farmer-type hat. The wagon had a required orange triangle on the back.He could have been Amish, but it was not a buggy like they use. It appeared so ethereal, a one horse-power wagon, moving slowly along, passed by 250-300 horsepower vehicles of fiberglass and steel. Some of them would be ten miles down the highway in less than ten minutes. It would take him two and a half hours.
You wonder what motivates a man to travel one-horse on a horseless highway. To risk his life and wagon among eighteen-wheelers and wheeler-dealers. Can one really travel a twenty-first century roadway at a nineteenth century pace? I guess so. He was doing it. Is he refusing to admit that time has passed him by in the transportation world? Is he fulfilling a dream of many years, crossing the country in a covered wagon, like his great-grandparents once did? No matter; times have changed significantly. No free-flowing streams to water his horse or thirst. No Lipan or Apaches looking on at another "invader". No open fields or meadows to allow Ole' Dolly to get nourishment. No nights where the only sound is a coyote or wolf. No blacksmith shop to repair a broken wheel. It just isn't the same. Try as he might the days of yore cannot be recreated. We can't go back again.
I go back often in my mind's eye. Memory allows that luxury. It is an often colorful journey, enhanced by all I have added or forgotten of early adventures. Most old tales need some embellishment. When they are told...and told again, we can make the trek to the kitchen for pills and the bathroom for whatever and head for the bed that supposedly sleeps like one is on the soft clouds floating in the night's moonlight. You can't go back again. I wonder if he slept in Holiday Inn Jr. at his Days End?