Rambling to an Evolution of Tone

What exactly was it the charmed me away from those frozen lakes, those quaint houses set on the frosted hills that peaked out above that forest?  I couldn't tell you then, that night, but maybe now it will come a little clearer as I probe back into the past.  It may have been a week or two before the Christmas decoration went up, so pretty near the beginning of November. There I was, as usual, sitting on top of the garage roof, gazing off at that flat, snow covered emptiness, the place where the houses just stopped and the flatness took over.  one or two specks dotted the ice, cleared away some slick, snowless ground to skate on, or fish on.  Still, it was all so far away, just small colored dots moving around on a white backdrop.  The green pines, the white snow, the blue sky, it was all so peaceful.  Nothing was really happening at all.  Once, just being able to go out, to adventure in that cold wilderness, to explore nature, inevitably feeling as if one had become part of it, once that had been enough.  Now everything had a familiar coat, a seeming of perfect knowledge, no matter how ridiculous that really was.  I may not have known each tree in the forest, but I knew the great big one near the stream, the twisted old men rooted up by the old mining claim, the lone willow on the high hill, lashing about with its branches in the winter wind.  That was part of it, I guess.  Winter.  It was the season of the area.  Summer was but a brief interlude, and fall was really just winter with a tad less snow.  Spring was a mush season that you had to wear boots in or get your feet soaked.  Yes, winter was the season that really made the town work.  The decorations would go up, the old ice cream shop would close up, the view onto the lake would be marvelous.  I never really figured out how that old ice cream place stayed in business, though I guess that's another mystery to look back on.  My gaze was wandering those days closer towards the west shore of the river, the spot where the highway passed by, continuing on out into the distance to places where I wished I was, where I am now even.  I didn't have anything really tying me down after highschool.  The family has never really been close, just that insular, nuclear family that popularized itself back when our parents were growing up.  It was just me there, waiting to either ind some job out in the world or get too fed up with that beautiful view to stay there anymore.  I would have stayed for you, but you were gone too, though I know you meant to come back.  And so you did, in a few years, tanned from the sun, scarred from the war, the you that I had known as a child, but kind of melted like a snowman in the early spring, something taken out of you that was keeping you together.  I remember seeing you as you passed through on the way back there.  Maybe you need that view, those happy people, that familiar stomping ground.  As I said, I didn't know exactly why I left, but I know why I didn't stop to think of staying.  I just couldn't sit in that town longer, just waiting for something to happen.  I mean, things did happen, but nothing that really changed anything, you know?  Sure the girl down the lane was having a baby, but that was just the way it had happened with her mother, to hear them all tell it, and I'm sure it happened that way with her grandmother too.  The only thing that wasn't in that set pattern of sameness was the TV, and not the local channels, the national ones that nobody watched but me.  Nobody really cared who the president was, or who was famous on Broadway, or who was the next big Hollywood star, or what new technology came out of silicon valley.  The high schools were still teaching kids how to use a slidrule "just in case".  That might have been it, the noise of the TV I left on filtering out the window up to me.  It was a trivial thing, some pop singer kicking the bucket, or maybe it was a senator, I don't really remember the face so much as the death bit, and then they started talking about all the things he had done in his life, and I just sat there, wishing.  I wished myself a job down at the corner store that spring, I wished myself the money and the car and the gas and the ticket out of that town, perfect as it was.  Everything out here, out in the world of change, is so wrecked, so broken, so twisted, buy I can live here.  I think you probably know that better than me though, you got your ticket early.