Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Diary of a Walker
Sunday, August 29, 7:15 pm Mountain Time:
My second walk in this shimmering, rain-washed day. I’d been reading on the deck and decided I had to see the horses grazing behind fences and breathe in the sprawling pasture a mile and a half down the road.
The neighborhood is strangely quiet, as it has been all week. The summer activity has ceased; the cars trundling up and down the road leaving clouds of powdery dust in their wake; the unwieldy logging trucks maneuvering the inclines with their jake brakes; the chainsaws and heavy equipment; human voices; the barking dog up the hill. All are gone. Even the skies are still, empty of buzzing planes. I feel as if I’m the only living soul in this part of the world, a small, breathing, moving dot crunching on the pale gravelly track, surrounded by steep forested hills, meadows, and the winding, ever-present creek. Today I embrace this aloneness, this utter rest.
Yet I’m not completely by myself. Even though the next-door neighbors have moved out, selling their home for a price we wouldn’t have dreamed of a few months ago, and although ages go by between passing vehicles, the woods and open land are ringing with the sounds of living creatures. It’s as if now that the people have vacated, the animals are encroaching. I’ve nearly abandoned my favorite route because of a small baby bear my daughter and I spotted high up in a tree. I had to see to believe those animals were lurking in the thick vegetation, roaming the dark, springy earth near the creek.
And deer… they are everywhere, although shyer out here than when they are grazing boldly in front of our house. One sticks its head out between tall curtains of grass and regards me with its liquid eyes. The squirrels, always het up about something, scold incessantly. Grasshoppers and crickets chirrup from a weedy, neglected property where the collapsed roof of a greenhouse gives mute evidence of heavy winters past. The horses that drew me from my deck are cropping the lime green short grasses of their creek-sodden enclosure. They glance at me and go on eating.
I reach the meadow and stare out at the acres of open land with the handsome farmhouse at the far edge. Vivid mountains scallop the horizon. I take in the young trees in the foreground, one dotted with dark red apples. And I listen again. Despite my preference for lilting birdsong, some species of bird I can’t identify calls out harshly. Magpie? The crows add their caws to the milieu, busy with their dark avian projects. Somewhere far away, a rooster crows. The creek rushing through the culvert provides the backdrop for this natural symphony. I snap pictures and start to trudge home. In the waning evening, a sharp line of demarcation separates the sunlit tops of the hills from the cool, shadowy woods beneath. The day is almost gone. But I got what I came for, and then some.
The meadow. My phone camera won’t do justice to the colors and dimensions.
A caterpillar of startling hue.
The road home.
A Great Blue Heron flew away when I stopped on my evening run to admire it.
Nice!
In the midst of all the toil and tumult, I’m claiming this peaceful pastoral post as part of our Group Writing Series under the August 2021 Group Writing Theme: “A day in the life.”
Prayers are warranted for @SomeCallMeTim and others in the path of Hurricane Ida. We’ll likely not see his post Monday, as an eventful real day in the life unfolds.
I’ll post September’s theme this Monday.
Interested in Group Writing topics that came before? See the handy compendium of monthly themes. Check out links in the Group Writing Group. You can also join the group to get a notification when a new monthly theme is posted.
This was absolutely lovely. Thank you!
Thank you for reading, Bethany.
Bethany definitely spoke for me… this is one of the loveliest posts I have seen on Ricochet, or anywhere else-Thank You!
I’m going out for a walk right now. Thanks for the inspiration.
Lovely. Thank you for taking us with you.