Another longer than normal break between posts. Last Sunday was disrupted by golf. First round of the summer/fall… and by the time I got home it was nap time rather than writing time. It seems any out of the ordinary Sunday plans disrupt the blog.
Last two weeks…
Worked a week of dayshift. It was bearable. Sometimes loud and distracting. Sometimes quiet and good for working. I’ve grown back into the use of my headphones. In CPSIC, I stopped doing it entirely, but now I’m back to podcasts and music through my work day. Not sure what it is about recorded noise that’s less distracted than live noise… but there you go.
Then worked a week of evenings. Just two of us in the department makes for much quieter times. The Monday was nuts busy with priority work. I skipped breaks just to try to keep up with it. The rest of the week was more reasonable… with take out for supper on Friday. I order a baked lasagna which is tasty, but it isn’t really lasagna. It’s really pizza toppings mixed with lasagna noodles. So goes the experiment with take out lasagna.
A Return to the Great Outdoors
I cut back on my summer walks this year. Circumstances were against it. Two leg injuries while playing softball kept long walks down for a six week spell. And constant construction work in the area created a layer of moon-like dust along trails and in the nearby vegetation.
One day I went out after the trucks had finished their work. A wander through the brush turned my black shorts volcano ash grey and each step I took along the trail left astronaut prints behind me and a cloud of ‘Peanuts’ Pigpen dust fluffing about my knees and lower legs.
The forest trails would have given me relief from the dust but summer walks in there brings a bombardment of mosquitos.
It’s funny. As a child and teenager, mosquitos never caused me much bother. Sure I’d get bites but they weren’t often… and those I had to deal with only gave a few hours of itchiness before becoming a non-issue.
But as I’ve aged, the bites have taken over. The majority of my bug bites are around my calves and ankles… or in the crevasses of my fingers. And the itch will last for the better part of a week. Often I’m woken in the middle of the night due to the need to scratch screaming ankles. So my summer walks are away from the forest. The trail along the ponds is a safer route on the bug front… it’s just that’s now the dirtiest, dustiest place on earth.
So on the day I went out in the dust, along with turning black shorts grey, an obscene amount of dirt absorbed through my shoes and socks… leaving my toes and feet in hobo condition.
Such conditions lessened the desire for my nature walks. And what was previously an every other day event become a once or twice a month trek.
But Fall has brought relief. Although the construction trucks still run, increased rain has kept the dust at a minimum. And the cold nights has defeated the mosquitos. And, on this Thanksgiving Weekend, I’ve returned to the woods.
There’s the smell of the Fall woods. The crispness of the leafy carpet. You forget about that smell during the summer. But the first hint of it, as you wander among the trees, brings on a reflexive deep breath.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d walk this day. I planned on the woods trail (a fifteen minute round trip) but simply kept going. It was like running into an old friend as you walk along the street. A pause of moments stretches into hours as you catch up.
And so, when I reached the turning point of the woods trail, I ventured further. Crossing the muddy scar left by months of construction trucks. Peeking into the ditch pool I see, to my surprise, a small school of fish continuing to endure their cooling world.
I reach the far pond and decide to enter the woods trail here as well…. Further catching up with my ‘neighbourhood’. On the end of this trail, I reach the farmers field. This season, it is left fallow. Where soy beans were here last fall, painting the land a rusty orange, this year has low grasses and weeds.
I walk along the track marks left from an all-terrain vehicle. And my presence is felt by a family of geese. A few calls from the one who spotted me brings the entire flock into the air… as they vee away from me, over the houses to a more private place.
I follow the route I’ll be snowshoeing in a few months. Wandering through the tall grasses of the overgrown trail. Crossing the barely seen trail that I’d veer down on my snowshoe trek home… thinking about the coyote I saw here last winter. Coming out to the open fields where I once spooked a deer… his bolt spooking me just as much, as I wasn’t aware of his presence until he hightailed it from some fifty feet in front of me.
And then I cross the power line corridor. And enter the open space that is bordered by ‘my’ woods. The woods that hold the trail I started with. The trail that leads me home.
In past years, this open area would have been part of those woods. By the time I moved into the area (almost four years ago), it was a bare, somewhat scarred meadow. Back then I’d walk through and see moose tracks in the mud… wild turkey prints cris-crossing the land as well… and geese bedded down here for the night. Today, there are now paved roads. Street signs and fire hydrants stand at the corners of these empty streets. In the far end of the place, a dozen homes stand at several stages of completion. Some, looking near ready to be moved in to. Others being nothing more than the wood skeleton.
My first summer here, I happened across a moose skull among the grasses where some of these houses now stand. I’m left to wonder if the new home owners will be haunted by moose ghosts. It further makes me wonder what ghosts may inhabit my home. Was it built atop the final resting place of a deer? Could a fox have breathed it’s last where I now sit? How many snakes met their maker in the excavation of my basement?
I finish the paved part of my walk. Leaving muddy prints upon asphalt where once turkeys left their prints within the mud. And I slip out of the open, into the woods I’ve come to know so well. Entering a near invisible trail with ease. I make my way back home. Doing the second half of my fifteen minute walk a good hour after originally coming by this way. I’m walking across the slowly deepening carpet of leaves as that smell of Fall once again causes me to breathe deeply. Almost home.
