Yesterday’s walk reminded me to be grateful we live in a county with conservation areas through which one can walk and hear only the sounds of prairie grass rustling, trees swaying, small mammals darting, and birds calling. The steady drone of midday traffic certainly dampens the healing effects of an afternoon in the woods.
Image captured last Monday at a conservation area.
Because of the unexpectedly icy conditions, it took nearly two hours to walk just four miles this morning. An inch and a half of snow on Halloween! Many trees still have most of their leaves, so the remainder of our fall cleanup will be a wet mess. I’ll think about it tomorrow. Or Saturday.
Yesterday morning at the dam.
Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself. Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget.
— From Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451
Yesterday at the conservation area.
The first image is from our walk on Saturday at the state park. The next two images were taken yesterday at a favorite conservation area; the last three, today, same location.
At the conservation district this morning.
The heat warning ended, more books arrived, and really? Nothing is right with the world, is it? But Friday still becomes Saturday and Saturday, Sunday, so here I am, reading Nights of Plague for a book discussion, practicing Florence Price’s “Juba Dance” for band rehearsal on Monday, and wondering whether I should walk first this afternoon or do the yard work first. And with a thud of all-at-onceness, such banal dithering has made me as uncomfortable as my first encounter with Ilya Kaminsky’s poem.
(forgive us)
But new books are cool.
Check your neighbors. Stay hydrated. Find a cool place. Don’t worry about that training session until Friday, okay? Take care.
Nerdishly 