Have to Stop, Take off My Gloves

September 28, 2010.  Tuesday.

Situation:  On Sunday I relayed the incident with the hawk to Wade, who, having been raised on a farm, asked me if we ate it.  I told Moi about this, and she said she hadn’t thought about it at the time but supposed that she could have plucked its feathers and put it in the freezer (that night we were going to a job where the one fringe benefit is that we get a meal after we finish our work, so we couldn’t have eaten the chicken that day – and Moi seldom thinks, unlike myself, about meals ahead of time).  Right now a strong rain has just blown over, and the sky has turned blue.  I have work to do during the day.  On my way out I see three hawks sailing over a couple McNeighbor’s houses toward the creek.  I get back about 4:00.  The chickens are milling about the lilac bushes.  Mway is waiting for me in the kitchen.  “Tiny Mway -- ready for a walk?” Moi chirps, as she moves around the stove, fixing a meal on a day I don’t work at night.

State of the Path:  The sun is shining bright through the gaps between dark clouds.  The black walnuts seem to have lost at least half of their leaves.  The line of sumacs nearest the pig pen sticks up mostly leafless, but those sumacs nearest the maples are still bearing red leaves.  I take the side path, where I haven’t walked in a while.  The path is carpeted with leaves, which rustle as I walk over them.  With the leaves coming off the trees, the old orchard looks open, the Boy’s old fort clearly visibile in the center tree.  Some of the goldenrod flowers are getting a brown tinge to them. The two asters that I saw here in the upper field look beat up from the rain, but the asters down by bug land still appear firm and flashy.  Most of the jewelweed in bug land has taken on a pale withering look.  As I walk along the creek, I suddenly realize that I can see birds again.  I hear something going “too-wheet,” then I see some sort of brown bird.  Then a bluejay lands on a locust tree that has lost most of its leaves, and beyond it other birds flit about the branches that are growing bare – including one with a yellow stripe on its wings – I don’t know if this is a goldfinch or what.  I look briefly at the green-sepaled plant, then walk on.  Past the swale, I turn left to check on the feed channel – there’s water in it, and because of this, and the asters that are blocking the view of the footholds, I don’t bother to try to step over it.  I turn around and continue on through the “chokeberries,” some of the bushes of which still hold onto their dry withered berries, until I reenter bug land.  As I’m walking along looking at New York or New England asters sticking up through the weeds along the ridge and at what I think is fleabane growing in the flat area, my eyes suddenly start welling up with tears, and I have to stop and take off my gloves, and wipe the tears out of my eyes, so I can see to continue walking.

State of the Creek:  Mway steps into the water beneath the tree stand and takes a sip of it, but as she walks up the creek bed to come up to the path, I can hear her stepping on dry rocks.  Beneath the tree stand and elsewhere the pools have returned, but the rain from last night and this morning didn’t turn the creek back into a continuous stream.  The pool beneath the now nearly leafless black walnut tree has a bright rusty color to it, probably from the red and brown oak leaves that the water covers, and as I stand looking at it, a frog leaps from in front of my foot into the water.

The Fetch:  Mway greets me at the clearing with her usual smile, ears perked, tongue hanging from her little snout.   The mucous from my cold, worsened by my crying fit, is thick in my nose, and I pitch the birch branch just ten feet or so into the weeds within the clearing.  Mway makes about five or six fetches, then coaxes me to play “Put it down” once.  Then we set off back to the house, Mway running off ahead of me, and me pushing back with my walking stick or my hands the goldenrod and briars that sag into the path along the sumacs.