Dogs and Fledglings

It has been an ominous day. A dark sky, a light sky.  Sunshine.  Rain.  Just after dinner I enjoy a walk up my road.  It is a place I have walked since I moved here.  For years, I was the only one making a path where loggers used to work.  A neighbor moved in and had his crew weed wack it.  It is wider and much nicer, too.  That is the same neighbor who destroyed some twenty of my trees.  I don't much like him.  It didn't take the destruction to get to that point.  He just isn't my cup of tea.

As I walked along the path, my thoughts turned to memories.  My two cocker spaniels and I used to walk this area for years.  Before the saws, trucks hauling wood, and my new Miami neighbors, the dogs were unleashed.  Free to run up and down the hills.  Sometimes they would go on tour and it would be twenty minutes until they returned.  Chasing squirrels no doubt.  They always came back to the house.  I was always worried they wouldn't.

It isn't the same walking up the hill anymore.  I struggle to even do it.  It isn't so much that it is lonely for it is not.  It is just different.  My heart is filled with appreciation for all the years I had my little buddies.

Today's walk was different.  It appeared the rain had stopped completely so I waited a while to walk.  As I arrived at my favorite spot along the path, the area where the fox birthed three kits some years back, the skies opened up.  I couldn't get back to the house fast enough.  And, I couldn't go up the front porch for shelter from the downpour.  A Carolina wren and her four babies are in a nest there.  She has made it clear it is a verboten area.  I am a good listener.  In a week, she and her soon-to-be fledglings will have left.  The porch will be washed down because of the pollen.  It is a weekly duty usually reserved for post yoga Mondays.  I won't be doing it today.  I want her to feel peace.

On my walk, as brief as it was, I thanked my parents.  I thanked them for buying the house they chose in Woodlawn, a suburb in Baltimore.  Our home backed up to the woods.  It was in the woods that I became who I am today.  I loved it under the canopy.  From early morning to lunch and back outside until dinner.  For many years, I have tried to get back there. To the house where I grew up, which isn't so safe anymore.  But I tried to find my woods in every place I owned a house. As far from a city as I could get.  And now, I live in a forest.  The animals are an integral part of my daily life and I wouldn't have it any other way.

The darkness will envelope the dome soon.  For now, the clouds bang together.  Vibrations fill my house on a cliff.  I am so lucky.  The best part of this is that I know it!