for us and that late and soon we lay waste to our powers in getting and spending, I'm forced to pause andreflect upon my experiences with the dead and the hold they exert on our lives.This may seem a macabre perspective on one's life, but at a certain point it seems to be the only onewe have. Mortality is not kind, and do not let anyone tell you it is. If there is such a thing as wisdom, andI have serious doubts about its presence in my own life, it lies in the acceptance of the human conditionand perhaps the knowledge that those who have passed on are still with us, out there in the mist, showingus the way, sometimes uttering a word of caution from the shadows, sometimes visiting us in our sleep, asbright as a candle burning inside a basement that has no windows.On a winter morning, among white clouds of fog out at Spanish Lake, I would see the boys inbutternut splashing their way through the flooded cypress, their muskets held above their heads, theirequipment tied with rags so it wouldn't rattle. I was standing no more than ten feet from them, althoughthey took no notice of me, as though they knew I had not been born yet, and their travail and sacrificewere not mine to bear.Their faces were lean from privation, as pale as wax, their hair uncut, the rents in their uniformsstitched clumsily with string. Their mouths were pinched, their eyes luminous with caution. The youngestsoldier, a drummer boy, could not have been older than twelve. On one occasion I stepped into the waterto join them. Even then, none acknowledged my presence. The drummer boy stumbled and couldn't righthimself, struggling with the leather strap around his neck and the weight of his drum. I reached out to helphim and felt my hand and arm sink through his shoulder. A shaft of sunlight pierced the canopy, turningthe fog into white silk; in less than a second the column was gone.