restorersmind

Today, I am up a little earlier than usual. It’s Monday, and since I worked a long day on Saturday, I could consider today, my Sunday. Often, I do.

Not everything is shaped liked a violin – pretty close though , if one applies a metaphorical kind of Golden Ratio to the machinations of an ordinary life. In my case, the Dog wins out today, as the balance has shifted away from the backlog of work, which will still be there for me on Tuesday, which is my Monday. We hit the trail.

It’s been raining. And while that is not unheard of for December in Massachusetts, it’s a little suspect, and rankles, given that our first serious snowfall happened nearly a month ago.

This morning, the fog is heavy as we set out. Dog has already been disappointed by the drive-thru bank teller who has failed to dispense the requisite milk bone with the return of my deposit slip. She, Dog, doesn’t know yet that the universe will be restored with the slice of American cheese proffered by the woman who will buffer my own reentry with a 12 oz dark roast. This will happen, by the way, in about an hour and a half, at the crest of Mountain Rd, where the sun will have broken through the clouds.

In the meantime, the water is high, where we walk along the Mill River. It’s been a spectacular season for fungi of all stripes. The late corn crop sits with its feet in a transient lake and someone has decorated a trail side hemlock sapling with Christmas ornaments.

Beyond the woods and back into the farm fields, Dog tolerates my need to poke and ponder. “Oh, jeez, she’s got the camera out again”. We have an understanding. I indulge her nose and she indulges my eye. But I wonder, does she think in metaphors the way I do?

Maybe not. Today, among other unexpected things on a frequented path, there is a farm harrow mired in the mud alongside the trail. A lovely blue in a palette of greys.  Oops, nasty flat tire. I wonder if the farmer will be back to extract it before the earth is frozen, or will complacency set in, or other unavoidable priorities. I’m heading home now. I can feel my brain shifting. I have a lot of work to do, an increasingly unpredictable environment and a disgraceful president.

We walk here a lot. Sometimes the corn crop is a sunflower crop. Sometimes the path is snowy or icy, almost impassable. In the spring, hard to imagine now, the fields are spread which such a delight of richness and promise that there is nothing to be done but roll in it. Always there is the river, the woods and a way forward.