Wrecking Ball

Yesterday, I hiked Mount Mitchell, rode 30 miles down the parkway (thank goodness it was almost all downhill), did contra for 3 hours, and walked an hour to the place I stayed for the night. I've been going going going for a week now and, with aching legs, sore Achilles's tendon, and right shoulder so sore to lead me to think it damaged, can go no longer. I am resting all day inside the abode of a wonderful family I met in Asheville some ten months ago.
During the two days on the parkway, the one song that never failed to come to mind every other hour or so was Gillian Welch's Wrecking Ball. (I have two recordings in my head: the one from her ever-so-appropriately-titled album, Soul Journey, and a World Cafe EP version, which holds the most memory for me). The violin's melancholy melodic phrasing made the view of the powerful mountainside watery and distorted. The question that pervades my thoughts as I head back down from Mt. Mitchell is this: am I a wrecking ball?

I met a lovesick daughter on the San Joaquin.
She showed me colors I'd never seen
Drank the bottom out of my canteen
Then left me in the fall
Like a wrecking ball.

Standing there in the morning mist,
And tug a cord at the end of my wrist.
Yes, I remember when first we kissed,
Though it was nothing at all
Like a wrecking ball.