The Old Junk Pile

August 29, 2010.  Sunday.

Situation.  Work all day today, and when I come home it’s still light out, and unfortunately am still faced with the opportunity of being able to take Mway for a walk.  Shortly after I come into the door, Moi says to me, “There were some kids today playing in the back acre [our more common term for what I’ve been calling the old orchard].”  “Where were they playing?” I ask.  “On the old junk pile.”  I nod.  “What did you do?”  “I kicked them off.  I told them they could get hurt and ought to go home.”  It’s a sad thing (remembering how I used to roam through woods and fields as a kid, or even as an adult when we first moved here), but I think Moi did the right thing.  The kids were probably having the time of their lives, but a kid will usually accept any adverse consequences of freedom; it’s a rare parent who will.  And it seems to me that the type of people who buy a house in a development, with restrictions against clotheslines, raising poultry, and accumulating debris, and regulations concerning the height of the grass of one’s lawn, are just the type of people to turn to the government’s courts of law for monetary assistance if their kid is hurt playing in someone’s woods not their own.

State of the Path:  I bring along the new lilac stick I tossed yesterday.  Mway makes a left turn onto the side path, and I follow, but I don’t take much note of anything, except to look at the Boy’s old tumbling down fort in the biggest tree of the back acre.  I also note how much of the goldenrod is finally flowering, most of it dangling yellow, a lot of it sticking up green, some of it a different kind with smaller leaves and flowers, but mostly I just walk absentmindedly along, pulling up whatever goldenrod I can grab hold of, thinking about what Moi said, and composing in my mind the last few sentences I wrote above.

State of the Creek:  More mud appearing where water once was.

The Fetch:  When she drops the stick after her first fetch, the saliva pours copiously out of Mway’s mouth.  A great many fetches after that.