Rush to judgment

I may have misjudged the Solitary Man. I know I made a mistake. Today he was hiking toward the town in a hard rain, not quite torrential, but hard, not like we’re used to around here. A guy would have to be pretty hungry to walk more than a mile in that rain. And that got me to thinking what would bring him out. He didn’t have any different clothes, still the broad-brimmed hat, the lined denim jacket and his backpack, nothing that gave him any added protection against the rain. Then it hit me, same time every morning, walking as if there were an obligation instead of a choice … maybe he has a job. And, that was when the idea of the mistake hit. In Alaska you just don’t judge a person by clothing. This is a place where people go who want to escape careers and try something wild and new. The guy in the beat-up coveralls could be a physicist, the fisherman a former stock broker, the one prospecting for gold a banker, the noisy guy at the bar in raunchy boat clothes a writer of some repute. You just can’t know and it isn’t a good idea to judge because most likely you will be wrong. But, that’s what I did with the Solitary Man. So, now the horizon of speculation has broadened.