Small treasures and forgotten items have begun to appear on somewhat dry land after the ice has begun to recede. I’ve been walking at least a couple of miles each day again, now that it is safe enough not to take another spill and my sprained ankle is healed enough.
Today I picked up a smooth rock that I’d first noticed five or six days ago. It looked at first glance like a smooth Lake Superior stone, but in the hand it felt like pumice, rough, with the texture of sandpaper.
I’ve found two keys, one a house key and one a car key. Laying in the street were two pennies, one dime and a very corroded quarter.
Today, in the fresh mud, deer tracks were left behind. That’s nothing extraordinary these days as my neighborhood alone usually finds six or seven sleeping in one of my neighbor’s yards. There are usually tracks in our new, grassless boulevards every morning.
This track, however, with its splayed-out hooves took up more space on the ground than my whole palm. A large buck. I carried the memory of the tracks along with me on my walk and I brought the rock along for the duration.
Sometimes you can smooth the surface of a flat rock simply from the oils on your fingers as you roll it around in your hand. This rock remained as rough as it was when I found it, though it warmed from my touch. As we thaw and freeze and thaw some more, dropping down low enough at night to perhaps even snow again in a measurable storm later in April, I will continue to walk. I’ll keep my eyes peeled.
Found a pair of white socks, well, they were gray now. I’ve spotted nails, screws, a twelve-inch length of bubbled, yellow-ochre colored hardened spray insulation. There’s plenty of candy containers, garbage and beer cans in some of the ditches on side streets that don’t have sidewalks.
None of these things add up to anything notable. None of them could be used in the creation of a folk-art carving or fishing decoy in any way of interest that I can currently conceive.
The rock is sitting by my front door.
I’ll take it on some more walks. I like the way it sits in my hand.
David comes along sometimes, his four feet splashing through the little rivers of meltwater. His whole body shakes because of all the smells uncovered from the melted snow and ice. He gets very excited. He will climb some of the piles of remaining snow that border lawns, but he will only climb the ones that he’s interested in.
You can bet if there’s a path that leads back through the hollow snow to a patch of brushy woodlands, he’s interested in that. I assume he smells deer. He’s very bright eyed and bushy tailed on these walks and I find myself, while soaking up the new Spring feelings of warmer sunshine, the same.
Most of the walking time I spend listening either to the birds and rustling of squirrels or my own footfalls or a book in my earbuds on Audible.
Today I caught the distinctive, loud and overbearing call of a Pileated Woodpecker. Except that upon locating it in a tree above my head, it wasn’t that at all. Well, the call was correct, because the bird singing it was definitely right above me. I could see it for sure, but the chest puffing out to give that call was that of a Raven. He’d picked it up well enough to fool me for sure.
Perhaps, these days too, like some of the days of old, are just a false Spring and we aren’t quite done with Old Man Winter yet. Who knows. The fun part is taking the walk through them. Don’t forget to look around, you never know what might be waiting for you.
