The beginning of wisdom, as the Chinese say, is calling things by their right names. (E. O. Wilson, as cited by Elizabeth J. Rosenthal, Birdwatcher: The Life of Roger Tory Peterson)

Friday, January 28, 2011

Mud Riddled with Prints

January 28, 2010.  Thursday.
Situation:  Have to leave for work around 3:30, so take Mway out around 2.  Moi has cemented what I believe to be the last crack in my boots.  Dried mud stirs up like dust as I put the boots on.
State of the Path:  Mway shoots out the door, dashes to the chicken pen to bark at the chickens.  The mud on the path is all jumbled up and riddled with prints, and it takes up more and more of the path.  I walk in the weeds as much as possible.  The streams through the maples are little more than long shallow puddles and trails of mud.  I don’t hear water sucking into the hole.  The wind is roaring high in the sky, sending frequent gusts into the trees.  I think about walking along the skating pond, but there is water and ice in the feed channel, and it looks too formidable today to cross.  Moi must have removed the red willow that was sticking in the path on the way back toward bug land, because I don’t end up stepping on it.
State of the Creek:  You can hear the water gurgling loudly over the rocks beneath the roar of the wind.
The Fetch:  I lose track of how many times I throw the stick for Mway.  I throw it every which way, toward the exit to the clearing, into the weeds toward the cement pile, within the clearing toward the electric pole, down the path toward the strawberry patch.  When I get back inside, Moi asks me how my boots held up.  It’s hard to say, I tell her.  My socks may still be damp from previous days’ walks.

2 comments:

sisyphus gregor said...

It baffles me a little, this preoccupation with Joyce – I should think you’d prefer writers like James Herriot, Jack London.

Anonymous said...

Herriot? A monster couldn’t possibly write anything good. London? I think his books would be more readable if he had let Buck walk with his muddy paws over his manuscript and had published that instead. (I confess it’s been a while since I read either writer. Part of Moi’s library. Maybe they were important to me at one time.) M.