Thursday, October 27, 2016

THE FOREST QUIET AND THE VALLEY PATH



It was wet but not as rain-soaked as previous days. How quickly the weather and therefore the entire atmosphere can change. The wildflowers for the most part had gone but there were some beans that once opened (and I have no idea how this happens), some cottony-billowy-feather-like material comes out of the old shell and waves in the wind under the late October sun. I took some photographs of these peculiarly interesting plant/flowers. If there are feral animals around there currently, they are next to silent or masked, because I saw and heard none. How I wished to see a deer, a fox, a coyote…a hawk or even a rabbit. It was like in the movies of science fiction or the paranormal where an area becomes extra-quiet before some big event. Bu the big event was not to occur. Instead, we walked and wandered through the regular beautiful if a bit darkened summits and labyrinthine pathways, by the regular set of tractors and sandpit. Staying a long time out there, possibly two hours, the dogs got more than enough fresh air, sights, exercise. 

The long and narrow path that stories itself along the top of the ridge is of some import. I looked and looked down the valley to the floor, and didn’t see anything. How many times I had heard the rustles of animals and kept walking, taking them for granted. I should have gone and looked then, and seen the animals, seen what was there. But what was there then were many autumn leaves, - yellow, orange, brown, dark green. And the wind came through and fell shook the leaves from the branches, many of them in any event, and they fell and fell but softly, like a quiet song. In the distance, quite far away, could be heard the reports from the gun ranges. But we are used to this. We kept on, and sometimes saw odd wild mushrooms, fallen birch bark, and mossy rocks and logs. Eventually we made our way out and called it a day as it were.


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