Published December 1, 2000

What was it like twenty or thirty years ago? One cannot know until an actual intimate encounter brings back reminders. Over the weekend and up to yesterday, such brought back remembrances.

On the one instance, we revisited the grounds of a time where we once indulged in youthful exuberance. In that sprawling property of a late friend, we paused. Over the tombstone of one whom we fought with as a best friend, and the over the other whose marker was our brother's own bosom buddy, we stood.

In that remote glade, reminded of more balmy years ago by the sound of a waterfall, we stood sad. A couple of decades before, that same spot was where we strummed our guitars and sang of our youth. Last week, we could only remember.

In another hill, far across from there, we recalled another and similar time. AT that knoll, covered again by murmuring pines, we sat to remember of a time past when our late father pointed to where his own forebears rode down on horses to tend to a herd. Midway of those hillsides, we had visited the home of a cousin. There was where sheer nature has been made to prosper. In that glade, no artificial introductions have been allowed. The entire expanse, six hectares or so, has been preserved. For the lucky, and unconscious people, below, it is their watershed that guarantees water yearly.

A distance away is where we trucked to. There is where a group hopes to establish an organic-no chemicals and no artificial gardening-farm might be cultivated. It overlooks the city and, perhaps later symbolically, might show how producing food and ensuring chastity to nature might be profitably combined. It's a prospect that beckons.

The three-day exploration was capped by a chance meeting with friends. That was occasioned by a financial reminder that brought six of journalist and sporting days of us together. Lunch was in order.

In that accidental gathering, remembrances were in proper order. And what welcome it was.

In first order was just to be reminded that there are friends, and friends who care. What better time to know that there still is a world out there that one has to deal with and be part of. At time, the isolation that one might group into is defeating. Getting to literally group with real people can be invigorating.

That is an aspect that reminds. The next part if to be recalled from a pretension of distance.

Getting back together with old friends can be disconcerting, not the least because it reminds one of "kinder and gentler" times.

In its way, recollections are means of actually looking forward. Looking back, and moving forward, is the phrase I recollect from years ago.

And, therefore, in that mien, this corner dares to move. There is a past that we all look to, and yet there is a future that has to be attended.

If I were to listen to my friend, whose attentions the city has benefited from, it would be to focus on making this city once more the population that listens to the whisper of the pine. It's been a generation since that. A time ago, my friend and a people begged the city to just be true to the purpose.

So, then, I submit: We are here, a mixed people and yet bound by a common future that asks us to assert ourselves.

It is a general agenda we propose here, with little and more-or-less directions. And yet, it is specific nonetheless. What is laid on the table is to act.

If two days ago, there was consensus among friends, why should it not be more general and public in application?

That is why friends get together. People too.