This was the way of it.

Outside of him there was color in the dying leaves. Inside the pain of his neck and upper back competed for the attention of his muscles with the relentless pull of gravity as it dragged his head closer to his navel. The mossy rock that served as a seat had been squared somehow, its worn edges made right angles of his knees. The severe straightness of his shin bones puzzled the fingers of his left hand while the right curled around his dipped and tilted head to lend shelter from the crisp wind ripping through the ravine.
Above the wispy clouds marbled the vault of the sky. From where Samuel sat, to his tipped vision, the leafless trees were stacked like cordwood. Raising his head from the protection of his sleeve to look about the ravine, the trunks were now a palisade on either side of him. An old obelisk-shaped stone post leaned. It had a rusty ring at its tip and an exposed piece of skeletal rebar that complimented the ruddy shades of the fall forest floor. Looking at the tilted edge of the old hitching post, he saw in his blurry periphery the hazy orange-read of the interwoven fallen leaves. Allowing his focus to slip, the straightness of the trees and the rebar cut into the awareness of meshed colors. For a while he played with his vision, shifting his focus from color to line.
Later, walking through the woods with an unfocused, bobbing vision, Samuel stumbled over a lone piece of railroad track mostly buried in the dirt. A swarm of long soft pine needles in an air-blown interwoven layer offset its easy iron curve. He squatted to touch tiny pits and divits in the smooth line of metal. The dull brown track looked warmer than it was. The chill brought his thoughts more into focus.
A knowing smile spread across his face. He walked away from the ravine allowing his eyes to swallow the unbound formless interaction of perspective and color that floated around him. The patches of vividness substituted the hope he no longer had, while his neck bent to the weight of his formulaic mental compositions.
[1]

The ribbed plastic sheeting covering the trailer that passed her, heading the other direction, reminded Angela of a Conestoga wagon. It ruffled the air around her Dodge Duster and rippled through her mind, leading in later weeks to a nightmare of being left behind in the carcinogenic cities of the East while her doppelganger headed west for gold. The car found its way to the nature trails where she knew Samuel to be. Upon pulling in she spotted a shape through the slim trees; the bright blue vest of a man facing a wide tree and standing motionless. Lost in her thoughts, she stared as her hands parked the car, took the keys out, and opened the door.
The blue vest moved to show a small child pulling up its pants with a vacuous look of concentration. Angela watched as the pair moved to their van, the child plucking a stray green frond that had freakishly managed to survive the chilling onset of late autumn.
She pulled on boots, whistling a soft medley of easy whistling standards as she often didn’t when spotting strangers who’d yet to make note of her. Tightness in her chest reminded her that children are always amazing, even if amazingly frightening. The feeling cured into a dry thought about community and pan-generational obligations as she noticed the nearby vacant playground. The old pipe-work monkey bars had padding affixed to each of its deadly right angles, but a few of them had come undone and now flapped in the chill wind like loose band-aids. The van pulled away and no one noticed as she entered the woods.
Uncertain as to where Sam was, she wandered between the piles of moss-covered cobble stones and angular rocky outcroppings amazed by the tall dead trees leaning against the live ones for support. The caffeine percolating through her system left buzzing flecks of lost image in her vision. Some of the flecks seemed to drift downward like slow-falling snow. She found a small cave and ducked inside. Peering through the darkness she found it was more of a niche than a proper cave, but a mostly broken lawn chair provided a welcoming seat. From the outside the dark stone provided a backdrop to the scene of her settling awkwardly into the battered aluminum folding chair.
Leaves fell singularly but continuously in her vision. The downward motion of the leaves gave the impression that the denuded trees rose around her. With the world outside moving in two directions at once she could only feel detached and static, wondering where Sam was.